2023: A Year In Review
Participatory Science is special because it involves lots of people in producing new knowledge and discoveries. For many projects at SERC, volunteers may only get a chance to see a tiny slice of the research they are involved in, and we want to show you the fruits of all of your time, energy, and resources!
At A Glance
Reflection from the Participatory Science Coordinator
“Getting to know the volunteer community at SERC this past year in my new role as the Participatory Science coordinator has been incredibly rewarding. You all are very passionate about what you do, and are always looking for new ways to further SERC’s mission to provide science-based knowledge to meet the environmental challenges of the 21st century.
So much of SERC science and research would not be possible without your help, and your perspective, experience, and input make everything that SERC does better. The questions we ask, the data we collect, and the stories we tell are all made better when you all are a part of it.
Thank you for volunteering your time, energy, and resources. I’m excited to see what 2024 brings, and invite you to reach out at any time to share your stories, insights, and ideas.”
The Year In Photos
A Chesapeake Water Watch volunteer collects a water sample from the Magothy River during a Satelittes and Samples event.
A group of volunteers smiles at the camera for a moment while they are working together to process a mud crab trap at SERC's docks.
Charlie and Sue Staines collect an insect during one of their many insect surveys on SERC's campus.
A red mangrove forest on Channel Caye, Belize in September 2021. Photo by Hannah Morrissette.
As a part of the Fisheries Conservation Lab's long-term benthic infauna survey, volunteer Morgan Wolk uses a microscope to search for small invertebrates.
Postdoc Anya Hopple stands atop freshwater tanks for the TEMPEST experiment. Each tank can hold 10,000 gallons of water, which will be used to simulate heavy rain events. Photo by Rick Smith.
A group of volunteers look through oyster shells dumped out of a mud crab trap as a part of the Chesapake Bay Parasite Project.
The Environmental Archaeology Lab hosts a public dig day, in which new and experienced alike are invited to work together to better understand the history of SERC's campus.
Volunteer May Behlke counts stems on a hot sunny day during the 2023 field season. Photo by Alia Al-Haj.
Volunteer Heather Scheffield counts stems on a hot sunny day during the 2023 field season. Photo by Alia Al-Haj.
Science and Research Highlights
There was a lot of great science and research at SERC last year across different labs and projects. Jump to the project or lab you are most interested in using the hyperlinked list or continue scrolling to read through them all. The list is organized alphabetically
- Beetle Surveys
- Belize Blue Carbon Project
- Benthic Infauna Survey
- Biogeochemistry Lab
- Chesapeake Bay Parasite Project
- Chesapeake Water Watch
- Environmental Archaeology Lab
- Investigating Methane Emissions In The Wetland
- Project Owlnet
- Technology in Ecology
- Urban Otter and the Rhode River Parasite Survey
Beetle Surveys
This past year marked the 6th year of the annual beetle surveys on SERC's campus in Edgewater, Maryland. SERC's resident entomologists (or people who study insects), Charlie and Sue Staines, went out and used a variety of methods from March to October to find and document beetles on SERC's campus. In 2023, they identified 143 new species, bringing the campus total to 955! That’s a lot of beetles!
One of the species they were excited to find was a rove beetle known as Homeaotrasus badius. This was the first Maryland record of this species, and we know very little about its biology. It doesn’t even have a common English name!
In 2024, they are looking forward to working with the Spatial Ecology and Conservation Lab to start a new beetle study at the BiodiversiTREE site on SERC’s campus, where a 100-year-long experiment is being done see if tree diversity (less or more) during restoration affects the ecosystem.
Belize Blue Carbon Project
The Marine Conservation Lab’s main project is the Belize Blue Carbon project, the first national effort to determine how much carbon Belize mangroves hold nationwide.
This past year they estimated that the 58,000 hectares of mangroves hold over 25 million metric tons of carbon in the trees and in the sediment. That’s roughly equivalent to the emissions of 20 million cars for an entire year! This information has already been used in national policy and management decisions and will help Belize achieve their climate goals related to increasing national protection and restoration of mangrove ecosystems.
None of this work would have been possible without the Lab’s primary volunteer Sarah Luigard. Sarah processed 180 sediment samples for various lab analyses and created a StoryMap to highlight the lab’s work.
Benthic Infauna Survey
Since 1979, SERC researchers have been tracking what is going on with the benthic infauna community along the bottom of the Rhode River. “Infauna” refers to critters that live in the sediment; “benthic” refers to anything that is at or in the bottom of a body of water.
This past year, the Fisheries Conservation Lab oversaw the survey. Eight volunteers spent 186 hours sorting and assisting with the sampling efforts, which happen every 3 months. This project’s continued success relies on the dedication and enthusiasm of its volunteers. Thank you Morgan Wolk, Anju Chopra, Margaret Herbers, Alex Kaufman, Gary Stanlake, Julia McElhinny, Emi McGeady, and Julia de los Reyes.
Biogeochemistry Lab
A big highlight for the Biogeochemistry Lab was conducting the second TEMPEST flood on SERC’s campus. TEMPEST stands for Terrestrial Ecosystem Manipulation to Probe the Effects of Storm Treatments, and this year they were able to add double the water output used in the 2022 experiment covering more of their experimental forest plots: 160,000 gallons of freshwater and 160,000 gallons of seawater to our 2,000 square meter forest plots (that’s a lot of water!).
The TEMPEST project goal is to simulate storms both accounting for rainfall (fresh water) and storm surge (salty water) to understand how forests will respond to intense storms and so we can predict outcomes of these all more frequent storms that we have begun experiencing due to climate change.
Chesapeake Bay Parasite Project
This year celebrates the 10th season of the Chesapeake Bay Parasite Project working with volunteers! There were 68 amazing volunteers who came out on the docks to process traps and/or go through collected samples in the lab.
If you aren’t familiar with the project, the research team aims to understand how a parasitic barnacle Loxothylcus panopaei ("Loxo” for short) affects the white-fingered mud crab, a native species in the Bay. These crabs are small scavengers that live in oyster reefs and woody debris. But when Loxo infects them, it takes over, preventing the crab from reproducing, and producing its own parasite offspring instead.
The team is still at work pulling together the numbers of mud crabs they collected, but they do have final numbers of the other critters they counted in the traps. They found seven species of fish: naked goby, skilletfish, striped blenny, American eel, mummichog, largemouth bass, and oyster toadfish. Additionally, they found small blue crabs, grass shrimp, and their first sea horse!
Chesapeake Water Watch
Chesapeake Water Watch is a joint project between SERC and the City College of New York (CCNY) that works with volunteers to collect water quality data to “train” NASA satellites to accurately monitor the Bay.
On August 31st, 2023, the project celebrated an exciting milestone: 1,500 observations were entered into Fieldscope (where all the data is publicly available). This big bump in number of observations was in no small part due to the efforts of volunteers during two Satellites and Samples events. During these events, when there were not one but two satellites passing over the Bay, volunteers went out all around the Bay collecting bottles of water, filling out datasheets, and dropping them off at local collection hubs.
Another accomplishment was thanks to the hard work of two high school interns, Sophia Huan and Elias Arnold, who created an interactive map of publicly accessible docks. The project relies on samples taken at least 100 feet from shore, and docks are a great way to accomplish this. However, it can be tricky to find a publicly accessible dock if you aren't familiar with an area. Thank you to Sophia and Elias for your great work on this!
In 2024, Chesapeake Water Watch will be expanding its efforts to the southern reaches of the Bay and working with Anne Arundel Community College to identify whether any of the project’s measured metrics, such as turbidity (or water clarity), can be related to high bacterial loads in the Bay.
Environmental Archaeology Lab
The Smithsonian Environmental Archaeology Laboratory (SEAL) Team returned to full pre-pandemic strength with 89 volunteers contributing over 4,500 hours to archaeological activities and research. Unlike most labs at SERC, this lab is entirely run by volunteers who are engaged in a number of interesting and important projects.
Here are a few highlights from 2023:
- Josefa O’Malley is leading a team identifying and cataloguing a collection of iron artifacts from a late 19th-century blacksmith shop in Port Tobacco. This work will shed light on how local smiths shifted from creating their own materials to purchasing manufactured parts.
- Emily Allen, Erin Allen, and Ember Horn have continued the work of previous volunteer scientists Bailey Berry and Siara Biuk to understand the shell button industry on the Eastern Shore in the 1900s.
- Mike Eybel, Tate Stevens, and Jorge Gracia are continuing efforts to locate and document copper mining sites in counties throughout Maryland. The research is well on its way thanks to a donation of photographs, maps, and notes from Bill Sears, a retired Carroll County teacher.
- Abigail Kennedy returned to the team after acquiring her master’s. In 2023, she worked with a new team member, Aidé Coyle, to finish analyses of scraps of bones from colonial-era meals that will be included in a book on diets and the ecological implications of those diets.
In the new year, be on the lookout for Tim Bowders and Dan Higman’s 26-chapter piece on SERC history and ecology on SERC’s website.
Want to get involved? Reach out to Rachael Mady, the Participatory Science Coordinator (MadyR@si.edu).
Investigating Methane Emissions In The Wetland
This past summer, 14 volunteers helped count and measure over 10,000 sedge stems, brokek down the experimental “marsh organs,” and took samples from the “organ pots.” These “marsh organs” are located in a freshwater stream near the Global Change Research Wetland (fondly called GCREW). They help measure what will happen with methane cycling during future sea level rise and warming in the area.
Alia Al-Haj, a postdoc in the Global Change Ecology Lab working with these volunteers, just wrapped up a 2-year experiment using these marsh organs. In 2024, Alia will be leading a new experiment that will involve manually adding high water and high temperature events to study what is driving the high rates of greenhouse gas emissions.
Ultimately, this experiment will help the researchers figure out what is driving instances of high methane or nitrous oxide cycling, and then predict ecosystem-level responses of greenhouse gas emissions in coastal wetlands as a whole.
Project Owlnet
Project Owlnet celebrated its 7th successful season at SERC! The team of 19 volunteers banded nine Northern Saw-whet Owls this past October through November. Like the Environmental Archaeology Lab, this project is entirely volunteer led and run. Melissa Boyle Acuti, or, as many people know her, “The Owl Lady,” volunteers her time and energy to lead the team in nocturnal banding sessions that can last until midnight. The team collects important banding data that can help illuminate the timing, intensity, and migration pace of these cute owls.
Looking ahead to the 2024 season, Melissa is predicting that this year we’ll see a lot of owls migrating through. The 2023 season was “low” year and because capture numbers fluctuate due to natural variation in the Northern Saw-whet Owl population, the hope is 2024 will be a “high” year.
We expect there to be a few open spots for new folks to get involved in the 2024 season, so stay tuned!
Technology in Ecology
The Technology in Ecology Lab designs and builds sensors and experiments in collaboration with labs at SERC and around the world. One focus is creating low-cost, do-it-yourself electronics that measure several environmental variables. This past year Tom Kibalo was the lab’s primary volunteer, working with staff and students to standardize existing circuit boards and create new circuit boards that will be used in the coming years to understand greenhouse gas inputs and outputs at GCREW.
“Tom is an amazing guy and real problem solver. He adds knowledge and fun to the TE lab. He is a great sounding board for new ideas and approaches to measuring ecological parameters." - Roy Rich, head of the Technology in Ecology Lab
Urban Otter and the Rhode River Parasite Survey
The Coastal Disease Ecology Lab worked with volunteers on two big projects: Urban Otter and the Rhode River Parasite Survey.
In the Urban Otter project, the Lab collaborated with 7 volunteers, Maryland DNR staff, and the Conservation Corps to check camera traps and go out on foot to identify river otter latrines (land or boat docks where otters repeatedly visit and poop) in the Bay region. Right now the lab is working with project partners to process all the collected camera trap photos—and analyze just over 200 fresh river otter scats, to understand their diet and parasite loads. If you want to learn more about otter latrines, Katrina Lohan, head scientist of the Coastal Disease Ecology Lab, was featured on season 10 of the Smithsonian Sidedoor podcast.
The Rhode River Parasite Survey celebrated a successful 5th year in 2023 thanks to the help of 6 volunteers, multiple interns, SERC staff, and teachers in the Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) program. The survey’s goal is to track yearly changes in diversity and abundance of local shrimp, snail, and bivalve parasites, and determine what their impacts are on the Rhode River ecosystem. Volunteers collected samples in the field, processed those same samples in the lab, and entered data. One volunteer, Teresa Vaillancourt, even shared a useful technique that has been adopted to identify when an oyster has a Perkinsus parasite infection.