Category: ecology
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Sapelo Island Week Three
Sea oats have everything you are looking for in a plant: shade tolerance, perenniality, general hardiness. They provide food for small mammals and birds, can be used for bird nesting material, and host Skipper butterfly caterpillars. Gardeners and home decorators are encouraged to purchase sea oat seeds from nurseries rather than pick their own because […]
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Sapelo Island Week One
I recently returned from a week of fieldwork on Sapelo Island, one of the barrier islands along the coast of Georgia in the Southeast United States. It was a gentle introduction to fieldwork in a humid subtropical climate. Our small team of graduate students helped each other measure average stem height and stem count in […]
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The History of Sapelo Island
Sapelo Island is famed for its rich history, but many accounts are confusing or gloss over important details. For instance, Georgia Coast Atlas refers to creator of Sapelo Island Research Foundation and co-founder of the University of Georgia Marine Institute, R.J. Reynolds, Jr., as a businessman. Another article refers to one previous island owner as […]
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Swampland
Today marks the SIXTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY of definearth! Thank you so much for reading and participating in my posts about science in the world around us. In honor of the blog’s birthday, today I am posting a short review of a study on two Kenyan communities that came together to improve their local swamps. Manguo […]
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Wetland Wednesday and Updates
Everyone knew going into this semester that it would be a rocky one. Classes at my university started two weeks ago, but it took only a week for administration to pause face-to-face teaching due to a rising case count and COVID breakout in two campus dormitories. I’m glad I could take my courses online, but […]
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Kabartal Wetland
Another wetland biography up on my blog – this time we travel to India!
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The Timber Era of Wisconsin
Research on restoration gives insight on how we can better support wetland recovery. Read how in my new post.
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Alvin
Alvin is the only manned deep-sea submersible vessel in the United States. Read my new blog post!
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Maybe All Invasive Species Aren’t Terrible?
I explore the idea that perhaps non-native plants are chaotic neutral.
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Sphagnum Bogs
The Virginia Iris can be found in marshes, wet pinelands, swamps, and wet meadows across the United States and Canada. When we discovered a cluster of wildflowers at this bog in Northern Wisconsin, they were around 4 feet high and looked nothing less than magical. We snapped a picture and continued our trek as the […]
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