Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
addition to clipping and bagging a sample for the DNA lab, Bernstein fills
out identification questionnaires on his GPS unit, noting, for example,
whether the suspect is short, tall, or intermediate in height; dense or
sparse at the stem; and which Sherwin Williams paint chip (Strawberry
Plains, Lady in Red, Cotton Candy, to name a few) it most closely matches
in color. The GPS monitor, meanwhile, pinpoints the exact location and
time of the sample. The answers get downloaded into the project's com-
puters and can be updated later as surveyors revisit sites.
The sampling, eyeballing, and monitoring process speeds up dramati-
cally from the air. Instead of having to kayak into the most remote marshes,
it is much easier to hover about 10 feet above it in a featherweight helicop-
ter, hopping from point to point or following a line. Helicopters can give
biologists access to steep, wet, or roadless places on islands, cliffs, and
marshes. The Spartina Project's expert pilot will even touch down in the
marsh so the biologist can grab a DNA sample. “Every second you're in a
helicopter, the dollars are flying out the window, so you can't hesitate. You
have to be real fast, real honed with your spartina inventory—it's speed
mapping and super fun,” says the project's Jen McBroom. “Even better,
though the Clapper Rails sometimes flush and run when we fly over, it's so
quick there is very little disturbance.”
Underwater Restoration
As projects to restore the wetlands and uplands that ring the bay steam
ahead, scientists have been able to turn their attention to a part of estua-
rine life most easily forgotten by human residents: the area underwater.
Including all areas from mean low-tide level and below, these subtidal
areas encompass both the water column and the bay floor—essentially,
any place a fish can reach. Following the model of collaboration that cre-
ated the Baylands Ecosystem Habitat Goals , scientists recently completed
subtidal habitat goals as benchmarks to guide underwater restoration for
the next 50 years.
Little scientific information exists about what the bay's underwater
surfaces were originally like. This is partly because human activities have
wrought substantial changes to these unseen areas, blasting out ship-
wrecking rocks, coating oyster beds with mining debris, dredging, dump-
ing, and mining for sand and oyster shells. The federal government con-
ducted the earliest survey of the bay floor in the mid-1850s. They took not
only depth soundings but also samples of the bottom. It is these 160-year-
old scraps of the bay floor—handfuls of mud, buckets of shellfish beds,
sacks of gravel and sand—that scientists dearly want to lay their hands on,
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search