Marsh Madness Attacks Monster Invasive Species
Professor Kazempour-BiSci3 Spring 2022 Environmental-Awareness & Community Action Project
Introduction:
Our group is Marsh Madness and we are Zach Fuller, Yash Parikh, Ryan Curtiss, and Tommy Kalash. Tommy is in his sophomore year, he is majoring in accounting, and his favorite part about this experience was getting closer to nature reminding him of his childhood.
Research:
Our research was about Invasive species and the struggles of managing national parks. The invasive species we focused on were Phragmites (common reed), Callery pear tree, and the tree of heaven. All these are invasive meaning they have no natural predator since these plants are not in the habitat they were made for. Therefore these plants grow uncontrollably. The common reed grows on the banks of the water and survives even underwater. The Callery pear is invasive in the way it spread so quickly thanks to birds trying to eat the little pears and then rapidly spreading the seeds elsewhere. Then the tree of heaven is invasive because it grows and lanternflies (also invasive) eat the bark and leave a black, ash-looking residue that kills the trees to the roots. The roots can also then spread this disease to other trees putting them at risk.
The other topic we researched was on managing federal lands and national parks. This ranged from how natural disasters like erosion, wildfires and tropical storms damage the environment on those lands. There’s lots of negative human involvement that affects these parks that we may not realize. Some are climate change, pollution, depletion of natural resources, overcrowding, drilling, fracking, and negative policies that affect national parks.
Issues managing and Maintaining federal parks <–(Link to the Pamphlet)
Service:
Our group Marsh Madness partnered up with Brianna a park ranger as part of our service component at the Blue Marsh National Recreation Area, to help them out by cataloging invasive species. Our cataloging consisted of us walking around the Blue Marsh area and finding the invasive species, taking pictures of them, and logging that into the database. The rangers then use this information and come up with an idea on how to get rid of or slow the invasive species. We as a team clocked in 8+ hours of community service and in that time learned a lot more than we thought we would.
Reflection:
We got to really spend time outside isolated in nature, this made us explore the natural beauty of the environment. We all had a certain way of thinking when it came to parks and nature and it wasn’t really our priorities. We now realize that if not us then no one. We have to start taking care of it and not just ignoring the problems the national parks face every day. It doesn’t take much to help, something as simple as throwing away your trash and being energy efficient can go a long way.
Thank you to Dr. Kazempour and Brianna for helping the group mature in our environmental awareness and forming a connection to nature.