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Photo: Ben Young Landis/USGS
It’s been great fun at the USGS Western Ecological Research Center kicking off the new blog, WERC From the Field. Still getting on our feet, but enjoying some excitment here and there — including having one blogpost picked up by io9.com!
Here’s a selection of my posts since the blog’s launch in November:
- Night of the Brain Snatchers!
- Urban Sprawl Disrupts Wrentit Gene Flow
- Can Migrating Waterfowl Spread Avian Flu to U.S.?
- Mercury Linked to Nest Failure in Forster’s Terns
- Birth of a Desert Tortoise
- Weekend Project: Invasive Species Coloring Sheets
- Save It, Don’t Spray It
- Turkey Day Science: What Do Gobblers Gobble?
- Suburban Sightings: Orange County Bobcats
- Endangered Tadpoles Released in Snowy Stream
- Coyote and the City
- AskWERC: The Desert Tortoise
- USGS Expert: Southern California Must Change Wildfire Mentality
- Ask WERC: Christmas Tree Science
- Satellite Tracking Reveals Hotspots of Traveling Seabirds
- Earth As Art
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Cover photo: Ben Young Landis. Design: Linda Noble
Permit me to raise a glass to NOAA’s North Carolina Sea Grant and my editor there, Katie Mosher, as well as Kathleen Angione and Linda Noble.
The training and experience I gained with Sea Grant allowed me to move forward in my career and helped me develop as a writer, interviewer and graphic artist. Not to mention exposing me to fascinating stories of people dedicated to coastal sciences and industries.
Here is a look back at some of those stories (with lede):
Community Supported Ingenuity
Coastwatch Winter 2010 issue
Up and down the East Coast, something fishy is happening in local communities. People gathering at Harvard University to pick up freshly caught cod and pollock. A truck pulling up to an inland Maine church to deliver shrimp from nearby Port Clyde.
Dreams of Black Pearls
Coastwatch Spring 2010 issue
John Thomas Osborne has some unfinished business. It’s a project he’s been working on since he was four.
Rebuilding the Economy, One Oyster at a Time
Coastwatch Summer 2010 issue
Pamlico Sound’s economy and ecosystems are getting a much-needed boost this year, courtesy of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. More than 130 jobs are being created for contractors, barge workers, commercial fishermen, truck drivers and many other coastal residents — all from a $5 million Recovery Act grant to restore 49 acres of oyster reefs in local waters.
Listening to the Sea
Coastwatch Summer 2010 issue
To many of us, “spiny dogfish” are meaningless words. Some of you might know it’s a small species of shark, while others know that the species is found worldwide and eaten by Europeans as “rock salmon” or used in fish and chips.
On Currituck Pond
Coastwatch Holiday 2010 issue
Mainland Currituck County is experiencing a gentle reawakening. The sleepy, humid coastal air that bathes this serene lowland of hardworking farmers and fishermen and buoys many an easygoing Sunday afternoon is now joined by a steady breeze of innovation and inspiration.
Cheers.
A darner is born from its nymphal skin on a breezy April day. In the background, the lonely fountain and the barren stormwater pond of the Currituck County Cooperative Extension Center awaits its own rebirth.
Story and Photos by Benjamin Young Landis
Edited by Katie Mosher
Mainland Currituck County is experiencing a gentle reawakening. The sleepy, humid coastal air that bathes this serene lowland of hardworking farmers and fishermen and buoys many an easygoing Sunday afternoon is now joined by a steady breeze of innovation and inspiration.
A site for this reawakening is the Currituck County Cooperative Extension center. Staff members there are working with residents, county partners and local businesses to better utilize and preserve the land and waters they depend on, while balancing the demands of economic growth and historic livelihoods.
A hub of education and collaboration, the center is within a mostly undeveloped 95-acre tract. Central Elementary School sits next door, and the county plans for the campus include a senior center, a YMCA and athletic fields — the foundation for a vibrant community center for all of Currituck County.
Previously, a barren stormwater collection pond with unflattering algae welcomed visitors driving into the campus. But in recent months, a rebirth has been taking place. With the help of North Carolina Sea Grant specialists, many partners are transforming this pond by adding a demonstration wetland to educate visitors on the intricate connections between coastal land use and inshore water health.
Like the campus and the county, this pond is finding new life.
MUDDY WATERS
When Gloria Putnam first drove up to the then-new Currituck Cooperative Extension center for a meeting in July 2008, she saw a huge, unshaded, denuded pond smack dab next to the main driveway. The lonely spout of an aeration fountain looked stark against the watery field. It gave her pause.
CLICK ABOVE FOR AN INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC. Set off your own fireworks show and learn how these elements are also used in our everyday life.
Ever wonder what gives fireworks their colors?
Chemical elements, the fundamental units of all matter on Earth, are the answer.
Colors result from the burning of chemical elements. Those elements are usually part of molecular compounds.
These compounds can look quite different from the elements that created them. For example, the elements hydrogen and oxygen are gases at room temperature. But add two atoms of hydrogen to one atom of oxygen and you get water — H2O — which is liquid at room temperature.
Some compounds, however, still show their elemental traits. Sodium gives off flashes of yellow when it burns, but so does the sodium nitrate, a compound that is easier to work with (pure sodium reacts violently to water and moisture in the air).
So pyrotechnicians — the experts who create fireworks — select compounds they can more safely use and still give off an element’s color.
Blue is the most difficult color to produce, says Ben Schwegler, chief scientist of Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development. Schwegler advises the company on the science and technology behind many of its rides and shows.
