Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

One week left to apply for a “Life on a Sustainable Planet” #fellowship, and help discover how people and nature can thrive together. Dr. Annie Tamalavage, a 2024 fellow, has been joining research in Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula this year. She’s working with a team of Mexican scientists who research cenotes, sinkholes that can be a source of both freshwater and wealth for the region’s residents. The team is looking into whether cenotes can also fight climate change by locking away carbon. #OurSustainablePlanet These #fellowships have opportunities for postdocs and graduate students. Apply by Oct. 15: https://lnkd.in/eHy5ZC4V 📸 by Annie Tamalavage

This Wednesday: Join us for an otter-ly amazing virtual field trip, with our colleagues at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute! In the next "Classroom Conservation," find out why scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center are studying river otters....and their poop. As a sneak peek, we're sharing this short video of Calli Wise, one of our research technicians who tracks river otters. The live program starts at 2pm ET, but there are plenty of other activities you can enjoy on your own schedule. Check them out at https://s.si.edu/3XXxH9v . . . Video description: Calli Wise, a young Caucasian scientist with blonde hair, alternately sits and stands on a dock beside a river describing otter research. The video occasionally switches to black and white footage of river otters on docks from wildlife cameras.

What environmental question would you answer if you had the chance? Apply to join our 2025 #fellowship team, and you could pursue your own research project with Smithsonian scientists as your mentors. Open to graduate students, predoctoral students, postdocs and senior researchers! Apply by Oct. 15: https://s.si.edu/4daacOQ

Want to join our next cohort of Life on a Sustainable Planet fellows? Applications for these environmental #fellowships are open through Oct. 15! Dr. Abigail Lewis, a 2024 climate fellow, is building forecasts for how much methane coastal wetlands emit across the U.S. “Just like weather forecasts help us plan for future weather, these forecasts will help us better understand and manage coastal ecosystems in the face of climate change,” Lewis says. While many wetlands combat climate change by locking away carbon dioxide, they can also naturally emit methane—an even more powerful greenhouse gas. How much methane any given wetland emits can vary tremendously. Lewis’ research is creating a clearer picture of wetland carbon, so the U.S. can create more accurate carbon budgets to fight climate change. Apply to join our 2025 team at https://lnkd.in/eHy5ZC4V #OurSustainablePlanet 📸 by Jaxine Wolfe

The owls are coming! Want to join our team of Project Owlnet bird banders this fall? The first step is to sign up for the "Project Owlnet 101" webinar on Oct. 8 at 7pm ET, hosted by project lead Melissa Acuti. This webinar is a prerequisite for volunteering (watching the recording also counts). You can also join the webinar if you're just curious about these tiny, kitten-faced birds: https://lnkd.in/evsuwwYX This year, we're looking for four to six more volunteers to join our team. No prior experience needed! Project Owlnet volunteers commit to 1-2 full nights banding any northern saw-whet owls that pass through our station. (A full night lasts from 5pm or 6pm until midnight--start time varies with daylight savings time.) Since interest usually exceeds space, we'll select the final six volunteers by lottery after the Oct. 8 webinar. Don't miss your chance to get up close with the tiniest owls in eastern North America! Video by Nina Chung. Video shows photos and video clips of small, brown-feathered owls with yellow eyes getting measured and outfitted with silver bands on their feet.

#WildlifeWednesday We don't see many large carnivores on our campus. But our security manager, Martin Elborn, caught this rare image of a coyote wandering our grounds last Friday. Coyotes were once largely confined to the Great Plains west of the Mississippi. But they've expanded across the U.S., partly thanks to the dwindling of competitors like wolves and mountain lions. Coyotes first appeared in Maryland in 1972, making Maryland and Delaware the last two eastern states the animals reached. Most coyotes are naturally afraid of humans and will avoid them when possible. But to minimize the risks of an unfriendly encounter, avoid feeding coyotes and feed pets indoors. According to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, when a coyote attacks pets or livestock, it's usually a coyote that has lost its fear of people. 📸 by Martin Elborn

President Jimmy Carter celebrates his 100th birthday today. He now makes history as the only presidential centenarian, but his four years in the Oval Office also marked him as one of the nation's most environmental presidents. From 1977 to 1981, he created the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), approved tax incentives for wind and solar energy, and opposed dams that could harm river habitat. He doubled the size of the National Park System by protecting over 157 million acres of land in Alaska from development, in two then-controversial moves. Today, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (third photo) remains the biggest single expansion of protected land in U.S. history. In 1979, he also installed the first solar water heating panels on the White House (black and white photo). "A generation from now this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people,” President Carter told reporters after the installation. His office issued three reports on global warming—the last released a week before he left the White House. The final report advocated limiting global average temperature rise to 2°C , the same standard agreed to decades later in the 2015 Paris Agreement. 📸 credits: Jimmy Carter portrait by Ansel Adams, via National Portrait Gallery Dedication of White House solar panels on June 20, 1979, by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Signing of Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act on Dec. 2, 1980, by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)

Need a pick-me-up? We just found ours in…a tropical sinkhole! Cenotes (“say-noh-tays”) are sinkholes that form in chalky sediments, in places like México’s Yucatán Peninsula. And scientists are just beginning to tap into their potential to fight #climatechange. Cenotes can lock carbon away for thousands of years and are often surrounded by mangroves. As part of a #LifeOnASustainablePlanet fellowship, SERC postdoc Dr. Annie Tamalavage is helping nail down exactly how much carbon the nation’s cenotes can store. She’s working with Mexican scientists on the ground, including project lead Dra. Flor Arcega-Cabrera and Dr. Efraín Chávez Solís, shown diving in the cenote in this video. With that kind of hard data, México can calculate the climate benefits of conserving its sinkholes and perhaps include them in its regional carbon budget. And cenotes can take their rightful place beside mangroves, marshes and other more famous #bluecarbon sinks. Explore more blue carbon ecosystems in México, Panamá and Belize in the StoryMap at https://lnkd.in/enby_2GT #ClimateWeekNYC 📽️ by Annie Tamalavage. Description: A diver swims under turquoise water in a cenote surrounded by mangroves.

It’s #ClimateWeekNYC, and coastal wetlands are having a hot moment. Several, in fact. These normally peaceful ecosystems—more famous for storing carbon in their soils—can also experience sudden outbursts, where they release large pulses of planet-warming greenhouse gases instead. We’re still not sure what sets them off. But our scientists created an experiment this year to root out the causes. Called the “hot moments” experiment, they’ve been testing whether extreme events, like flooding or temperature spikes, can bring about these greenhouse gas surges. Here’s how it works: The scientists grew a common wetland sedge inside 20 chambers, including the ones shown here. The plants in those chambers experienced an extreme event for three days—hotter temps, flooding or a rapid influx of nitrogen into their soil. Roughly every 2.5 hours, the chambers closed automatically and took greenhouse gas measurements. The experiment is over for now, but it will return next summer. Meanwhile, our scientists are spending the cooler months analyzing the thousands of data points it churned out—so we can be ready for the next season of hot moments. Learn more at https://lnkd.in/eswixyQM

The 2024 Climate Literacy Guide is out this week! It’s packed with resources for educators, communicators and decision-makers. The principles inside offer launching points for learning about climate change and climate solutions. First published in 2008, this is the third edition of the guide. The latest version draws on local and Indigenous knowledge, social sciences, cultural and social contexts and climate justice, in addition to physical climate science. To download a free copy, visit https://lnkd.in/eBWrrBsh #ClimateWeekNYC