The poultry industry helps drive the economy of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, but poultry litter — chicken manure — has been blamed as one of the greatest contributors to pollution in the Chesapeake Bay. Large producers, farmers, and state initiatives alike are working together to lessen the industry’s environmental impact while preserving the businesses.

“Currently, there is no financially viable way to treat poultry litter,” Gary Felton, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Maryland, College Park.

However, he added, with Maryland taking the lead in addressing pollution and trying to be part of the solution, the state “has the potential to make a big difference,” Felton said.

Avoid Springtime Conflicts With Bears

Maryland Teens Get Ready for First Round of Environmental Education Competitions


ANNAPOLIS, MD- Teenagers across Maryland are trading their cell phones and MP3 players for binoculars, insect nets and specimen jars as they return to the great outdoors to compete in the first round of environmental qualifying heats leading up to the 2011 Canon Envirothon, North America’s largest environmental education competition for high school students.

Largest solar deployment in the state of Maryland

The University of Maryland Eastern Shore celebrated the activation of a 2.2 megawatt solar-energy facility on March 28, on the land-grant institution's campus.

The 7,800-panel "solar farm" occupies 17 acres and is the largest concentration of photovoltaic modules on one site in Maryland, according to university officials and SunEdison, the company that built and will operate the facility.

Located on university-owned land adjacent to Tom Nichols Road off Maryland Rt. 388 (West Post Office Road), the solar farm will enable UMES to reduce its energy bills over the next 20 years.

More renewable energy policies aim to save money and environment

By Megan Poinski This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The push to use more renewable energy sources from the governor and legislators is one of the green themes of this year’s General Assembly, and the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday heard mixed testimony on six bills to enhance the state’s renewable energy policy, including trash talk from the chairman.

Recycling Poster Contest Accepting Entries through April 30

Anne Arundel County's “Recycle.More.Often.” Poster Contest for elementary school students is underway.  The winners will be announced on April 30, 2011. Just like you, we want students and staff to recycle more at school. When students and staff recycle at school they save money, resources, landfill space, energy, and become better recyclers at home. The prizes for this year's contest winners are:

First place: Recycled Plastic Bench for their school’s entrance
Second place: $250 for schoolyard habitat supplies and a rain barrel
Third place: $200 gift card for school supplies

All entrants can also look forward to having their design posted on www.RecycleMoreOften.com <http://www.recyclemoreoften.com/>  for all to see and download.

For more information about the contest, visit www.RecycleMoreOften.com <http://www.recyclemoreoften.com/> .

Third Annual Earth Day 5K Run in Silver Spring, MD on April 30th Hosted by Pacers Events and Benefitting The Nature Conservancy

Proceeds from the event will help restore oyster populations in the Chesapeake Bay

Bethesda, MD - Last year 1,200 local runners helped us add over five million spat (baby oysters) to southern Maryland’s Patuxent River, improving habitat for fish, local water quality and helping to rebuild oyster populations in the Bay.

What:                 Third annual Earth Day 5K to benefit The Nature Conservancy in Maryland.

Where/When:    Silver Spring, MD April 30th at 9:00AM – to sign up and view race details visit: www.silverspring5k.com.   

“The Eastern oyster is a key piece of what makes our Chesapeake Bay so special,” said Mark Bryer, director of the Chesapeake Bay Program for The Nature Conservancy. “To succeed in restoring the bay we will need an emphasis on restoring and protecting key habitats as well as improving water quality.  Runners on April 30th will help us make great strides, but we have a long way to go before we cross the finish line of restoring the Bay.”  If you can’t join us on April 30th you can still support The Nature Conservancy’s Chesapeake Bay initiative www.nature.org/maryland.

Five fast facts for the 5K:
·         Oyster populations in the Bay are only about 1% of their historic abundance.
·         Small but hard-working oysters filter out tiny algae and organisms and actually clean the water.
·         A century ago Eastern oysters were so abundant they could filter the entire volume of the Bay in less than a week.
·         Oysters build reefs that help stabilize shorelines and create homes for other marine line including striped bass.
·         Oysters are part of a fragile Chesapeake Bay ecosystem that helps contribute $50 billion to the region’s economy.

The Nature Conservancy in Maryland/DC and Virginia are working to restore the Chesapeake Bay by protecting forests and wetlands that help clean water before it enters the Bay, through innovative partnerships with farmers and watermen and by supporting the work of state and federal agencies with practical solutions.

The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people.  To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 18 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 117 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Evening Lecture Series 2011
(April-November)

This series is free, donations are accepted
Refreshments: 6:30-7:00 p.m.
Program: 7:00-8:00 p.m.
Informal Discussion:
8:00-8:30 p.m.

 
April 20th
“Osprey Biology on the Patuxent River”
Mr. Greg Kearns
MNCPPC Naturalist, Patuxent NWR

My program will be about osprey biology on the patuxent river and my 27 years of experience with them . Including nest structure provision, bolstering the population, latest data on population, facts and info .The speaker is Greg Kearns, a MNCPPC naturalist for over 27 years at Patuxent River Park in Croom, MD is an accomplished photographer, worldwide traveler and leader of eco-tours both here and abroad ,expert birder, and a renowned authority on the Sora Rail (an elusive bird of the marshes) Ospreys, and wetland ecology at Jug Bay. He was named conservationist of the year by the Md Dept. of Natural Resources in 2006 for this work and restoration of the wild rice there which has been recognized as one of the best wetland restorations in Md.   Jug Bay is a component of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (CBNERR) under NOAA                 


May 18th
“Ice Age Americans: Voyagers of the Mid-Atlantic”
Dr. Dennis Stanford
National Museum of Natural History

This presentation will focus on exciting new discoveries of archaeological sites dating to the Last Glacial Maximum found on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, and on the Mid-Atlantic Continental Shelf.  Artifacts found at these sites are similar to those of contemporary Paleolithic sites of southwestern Europe.  These discoveries suggest that we need to rethink the issues of the Peopling of the Americas and that maritime use of the North Atlantic may have a deep history.

June 15th
“Tracking the Birdman/ An Art Historic Search for a Pre-Columbian Deity”
Mrs. Sandra Star
National Museum of the American Indian

Scholarship attests to a legendary creator-benefactor deity who walked ancient lands and then flew away or walked away on the sea promising to return, whose visual description bears remarkable similarity within most Pre-Columbian cultures in Latin America. A photographic analysis of over one thousand objects in pursuit of tangible evidence of this deity shows direct relationships in iconography that speak of this personage whose beneficent remembrance adorns not only the art of the ancient Andes, Mesoamerica and Mexico, but that of Adena and Etowah, thereby extending art historic material evidence from southern South America into Mississippian North America.  

July 13th
“A Rising Tide in the Heart of the Bay”
Mr. David Harp
Photographer

I will show photographs and some brief audio visual presentations that show and tell the stories of the communities that grew up around the oyster, the crab and the market fish that are in jeopardy due to rising sea level and the resulting erosion.    Islands like Smith, Hoopers and Tangier are most vulnerable. Hollands Island is now mostly under water.   My perspective is that of a journalistic photographer,  and I will tell a few stories of individuals who live or have lived on these islands.

August 17th
“Orchids and Earthworms: A Connection You’d Never Expect”
Dr. Melissa McCormick
SERC

In nature all orchids depend on specific fungi to grow. Some orchids, like the threatened small-whorled pogonia, need fungi that must associate with particular types of trees. Non-native earthworms have invaded forests throughout much of the world including most of the mid-Atlantic. While earthworms are undeniably great for gardens, one effect of earthworm activity in forests is that the fungi associated with trees become less abundant. The resulting scarcity of the fungi that they need adds to the challenges faced by rare orchids.

September 21st
“Exploring Ancient Rivers and Lakes of the Northeast Sahara” (using satellite imaging)
Dr. Ted Maxwell
National Air and Space Museum

Orbital data from a variety of satellites has enabled us to identify key sites in western Egypt and adjacent Sudan that reveal evidence for climate change over the past million years.  Like the planet Mars that has undergone immense climatic shifts, the northeast Sahara is a fertile field for exploring the effect of wet and dry climatic cycles that have left an imprint on the landscape. Now a hyperarid desert, field studies of the rivers that are visible only through orbital radar images, and lakes that are studied with topographic data provide ample evidence for a much wetter Sahara Desert in the past.

October 19th
“Sources and Sinks for Nutrient Discharges from Watersheds of the Chesapeake Bay”
Dr. Tom Jordan
SERC

Chesapeake Bay has become overloaded with the plant nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus.  This has led to over-production of algae, depletion of oxygen, and demise of submerged vegetation.  Now the EPA is putting the Bay on a pollution diet to cut back on the nutrient overload.  Scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have been investigating the sources of nutrient discharges from the watershed and the potential for some ecosystems to serve as sinks for nutrients by trapping or removing nitrogen and phosphorus.  Tom Jordan will summarize the findings of research spanning the past three decades and still continuing.

November 16th
“Of Seals and Ice: Weddell Seals in the Deep Antarctic”
Dr. Olav Oftedal
SERC

Dr. Olav Oftedal, a nutritional ecologist at SERC, led a Smithsonian team to study lactation and pup rearing by the world’s most southerly breeding mammal, the Weddell seal. This species is particularly interesting because the mothers penetrate deep into the land-fast ice around the Antarctic continent, and have to keep holes open in the ice by grinding the edges with their teeth.  He will review the life history of the seal, the conditions under which the research was done, and some of the remarkable findings on the energetics of this species.

For complete descriptions visit:
http://serc.si.edu/public_programs/ev_lec.aspx

Supported by a generous donation from
The Adam J. Weissman Foundation