Join Nature’s Notebook Pest Patrol citizen science work

PROJECT BACKGROUND

Nature’s Notebook is seeking observers to report their sightings of insect pest species that cause harm to forest and agricultural trees. Your observations as part of this campaign will help validate and improve the USA-NPN’s Pheno Forecasts, which help managers know when these species are active and susceptible to treatment.

JOIN US!

You can contribute by reporting observations of key pest species over the course of the year. The campaign focuses on 13 species that are considered to be insect pests.

Learn more about these species on the species profile pages and Pheno Forecast pages linked below. You’ll find a phenophase photo guide linked at the bottom of each species profile page to help you with identification of key life cycle events, such as active caterpillars and active adults. Each Pheno Forecast page shows maps of which locations have reached key life cycle event stages this year, and gives information on why managers care about that species.

Species Profile (overview of protocol) Phenophase Photo Guide (ID tips and photos of life cycle stages) Pheno Forecast (and why you should observe this species)
Leaf-feeding insects
Bagworm Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis Photo Guide  Forecast
Eastern tent caterpillar Malacosoma americanum Photo Guide  Forecast
Gypsy moth Lymantria dispar Photo Guide  Forecast
Winter moth Operophtera brumata Photo Guide  Forecast
Sap-feeding insects
Hemlock woolly adelgid Adelges tsugae Photo Guide Forecast
Magnolia scale Neolecanium cornuparvum Photo Guide Forecast
Pine needle scale Chionaspis pinifoliae Photo Guide Forecast
Spotted lanternfly* Lycorma delicatula Photo Guide There is currently no forecast available for this species, but your observations can help researchers to develop one!
Wood-feeding insects
Asian longhorned beetle* Anoplophora glabripennis Photo Guide  Forecast
Bronze birch borer Agrilus anxius Photo Guide  Forecast
Emerald ash borer Agrilus planipennis Photo Guide  Forecast
Lilac (aka ash) borer Podosesia syringae Photo Guide  Forecast
Fruit-feeding insects
Apple maggot Rhagoletis pomonella Photo Guide  Forecast

*If you see these species, please report them immediately to USDA APHIS via the reporting forms for Asian longhorned beetle and Spotted lanternfly

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

1. Select one (or more) species to track from the list of species. To see which species are available in your state, go to The Plants and Animals page, and filter for your state and Pest Patrol Campaign (under the Animal Types dropdown in the Advanced section).

2. Join Nature’s Notebook. If you haven’t already, create a Nature’s Notebook account. See our specifics of observing if you need more details on getting started.

3. Sign up to receive Pest Patrol messaging (in the right sidebar of this page – you may need to scroll back up to see it). You will receive information about how to identify species and phenophases, as well as results of your efforts. You will also receive notifications when your area is approaching the time to look for the activity of pest life cycle stages of interest.

4. Take observations. We invite you to look for pests approximately two to three times a week once you receive the message that your area is approaching the activity period. We encourage you to continue to observe your pest species until it is no longer active.

5. Report your observations. As you collect data during the season, log in to your Nature’s Notebook account and enter the observation data you recorded. You can also use our smartphone apps to submit your observations!

 Learn how to plant a riparian forest

September 11, 9:00-2:00pm

Virginia Department of Forestry Training Room                                                                           

900 Natural Resources Drive Suite 800

Charlottesville, VA 22903                                                                                                           

.                                                                      

This training is being offered to 

Master Naturalists and Tree Stewards.

There is no cost to you and lunch is included.

Learn from professionals with years of experience 

  • Techniques used to plant forest buffers that can be applied to the Virginia Total Maxiumum Daily Load commitment to the Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts.
  • Why planting in riparian areas takes a unique skill set than other tree plantings.
  • How to select a site and species that will result in a successful riparian planting.
  • How the professionals handle seedlings, draw up plans for planting sites
  • Little tips that save dollars but don’t compromise results
  • Learn outreach words and techniques that speak to landowners’ needs, concerns, and stewardship ethics.

The desired outcomes of the training are: 

There will be Master Naturalists and Tree Stewards willing to select planting sites, recruit groups of citizens to help with plantings, and shepherd planting projects from start to finish.  You will have the assistance and support of those who have the experience to produce sustainable tree planting projects in riparian areas.  All trees, and needed supplies will be supplied and available for plantings. 

**Continuing education credits will be made available

How can universities and colleges advance community science?

Reposted from On the Job, a blog hosted by the American Geophysical Union

A cool thing about working at Thriving Earth Exchange is learning about excellent work being done in community science. There is a lot going on in colleges and universities, and even research-focused universities are starting to change in ways that advance and support community science. In making those changes, they can look to a history of community science in two-year colleges, agricultural extension offices, tribal colleges, and historically black colleges. I love that idea that the emergence of community science is an opportunity to recognize their long-standing leadership.  How cool is it that Stanford might learn from Haskell Indian Nations University?

Here are some of the things universities and colleges are doing, distilled into a set of recommendations for any university or college seeking to advance community science.  Don’t think of this as a list of hit singles, think of it as the tracks on an album, where the songs are mutually reinforcing and tell a larger story (e.g. Lemonade). That is, the biggest impact seems to come from tackling all the practices described here.

 

  1. Redefine Success. For the past 75 years, professional success in science has been based primarily on original discovery, usually measured by publications and citations. Worcester Polytechnic Institute has revised their tenure process based on Boyer’s model of scholarship, so that they recognize not only discovery and teaching, but also application and engagement. West Chester University has long allowed faculty to shift the relative weight of service, teaching, and research in their tenure portfolios, which means faculty who focus on community science can weight that higher. At University of Washington, the dean of the college of the Environment invites new faculty to write one less paper, and instead spend that time working with her team to translate their work into real world impact.
  2. Learn to Count Impact. I am convinced that one of the reasons papers count is because we know how to count papers. How can we shift from impact factor to societal impact? Let’s support research into the benefits of community-engaged approaches, including their benefits for communities, faculty and students.  I think a promising place to start is around the idea of community science literacy, which emphasizes a community’s capacity to use science by linking it with their members other skills and assets.  This framing is powerful because it’s asset-based and it includes both concrete accomplishment and future potential.
  3. Organize around priorities, not disciplines. Community priorities don’t map onto single disciplines, so being good at community science means being multidisciplinary. Colleges can make interdisciplinary work easier though centers that bring together faculty and students from many departments, like the School for Innovation and the Future of Society at ASU or the Haskell Environmental Research Center. Centers like these can also offer seed-funding, new kinds of course work and preparation, project management support, and coordinate community partnerships. For communities, these centers can help communities avoid getting lost in university bureaucracy.
  4. Build Institutional connections to community organizations. For community science to succeed at scale and last over time, a university or college has to build strong, trusting relationships with community groups. A long-term, university or college-wide commitment allows a college to reach across disciplines, engage different people over time, present a single point of contact for managing projects and relationships, and guide the institutional evolution necessary to support community science.  Of course, motivated faculty and students will build relationships anyway, but without university support and alignment, those relationships disappear when the students or faculty move on or risk being undermined  by actions in another part of the university.  An institutional leadership can look like a vice-chancellor for community engagement, or even a presidential commitment to community partnership. UC Davis has a Center for Citizen and Community Science that serves as hub for both doing and studying community engagement.
  5. Build the infrastructure for community science. One of the things I often hear is that community science is hard to do and takes a long time to get results. Numerical modeling is also hard and it also takes a long time to get results, but we make it easier by providing infrastructure (computing centers, for example). What if colleges and universities invested in infrastructure for community science?  Infrastructure includes space to hold community meetings, hubs in local neighborhoods, online engagement tools, workplace flexibility that allows people to manage engagement around community work schedules, help navigating languages and cultures, solid partnerships with community-serving organizations, and administrative services that support community engagement (see point 8).
  6. Educate people to do community science. Make it a part of every science graduate program and encourage proficiency before graduation. Create opportunities to learn and practice community ethics, community engagement, cultural humility, conflict management and listening as a research skill. There are fields that do this well already – public health, human geography, ecology, and anthropology – other sciences can learn a lot.  Offer mentorship program around community science.   For physical scientists, NSF has a new program that pays students and advisors to do internships – why not internships in community science?  One thing that would be especially cool is classes where community leaders and scientists learn community science together. Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a remarkable project, the NOISE project, that does exactly that.
  7. Make equity the foundation of community science. Science is already influenced by and a partner in the implicit biases and systemic inequities that are part of the larger world. Unless you are designing with equity in mind, you’re probably perpetuating inequity. Equity as a foundation of community science means respecting, welcoming, and advancing all communities. It also means being a partner to communities in their efforts to tackle inequity and looking for ways science can help elevate community voices and perspectives. Institutions that were designed to advance equity – Tribal Colleges, HBCU’s – are the obvious exemplars, but I think any institution, can and should, make a commitment to equity.
  8. Share power, money and decision-making. Doing community science means that institutions with power and privilege, universities and colleges, will make a conscious decision to share that power and privilege.   The most successful community science projects share the budget so that community organizations benefit as directly as the science institution, build in fair compensation for the expertise and participation of community members, have well-defined leadership roles that are shared by community leaders and scientists, and have clearly outlined processes for making decisions. This backed up by open agreements about intellectual property, community review boards, and shared ethical principles of engagement.  One thing I would love to see is research dollars going to community groups, so they can invest in the research to answer their questions.   We should also look at how resources are shared among colleges and universities. Will new funds for community science go to smaller schools that have been doing it well forever, or to high-profile institutions that are new to community science?

 

The cool thing about all of these practices is that they are doable. In fact, some institutions are already doing them – as revealed in the recent AGU Union Session.  What that means is that the revolutionary part of the community science revolution isn’t knowing how to do community science, or even finding people who are doing community science. The revolutionary part is changing structures and systems so that we encourage, facilitate, and reward community science.  I think universities and colleges have an opportunity to lead that revolution, and some already are.  What do you think?

Raj Pandya, Director, Thriving Earth Exchange, American Geophysical Union

Ten tips for creating successful community science projects

Join Thriving Earth Exchange for a free webinar on community science on 15 August,  2:00–3:00 p.m. EDT. Speakers will offer key tips and strategies based on their experiences with successful community science projects.

Register to attend.

Work with a scientist on a community priority

With its new Community Science Fellowship program, Thriving Earth Exchange is ready to support more communities than ever before! Please take a moment to share this opportunity with a colleague:
Would you like to work with a scientist to advance a priority in your community? If you have time and community buy-in, Thriving Earth Exchange will help you design a practical project, match you with a scientist, and accomplish something meaningful.
Learn more. (apply by 16 August to be considered for a September start)
(Don’t forget to have the incredible project you design approved so that you get credit.)

VMN CE webinar: Building Cultural Competence

Thursday, 25 July  2019
12:00 pm
Meeting Number: 908-683-587
Link to Join: Join Webinar
Link for recordings of this and past webinars:
VMN Continuing Education Webinar page

This workshop will take an active, participatory approach to building cultural competence. As we walk through the world, our own bias can effect how we interact with people and places. By recognizing our identity, we can increase our ability to create welcoming environments to serve our stakeholders. Building cultural competence can help attract and retain youth and participants from diverse audiences and encourage the Virginia Master Naturalists to expand capacity in their volunteer network to continue managing natural resources and natural areas in their communities.

Dr. Tiffany Drape is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education at Virginia Tech. She conducts research and teaches about program planning and evaluation.

Chesapeake Bay Ecology trip, August 17-18, 2019

Calvert County, MD
Saturday, August 17, 9:30 a.m.
Sunday, August 18, 11:00 a.m.

Fee: $95 Audubon Society of Northern Virginia members, $115 non-members, includes guided tour of Battle Creek Cypress Swamp, lunch on Saturday, admission at the Calvert Marine Museum, and a two-hour private charter on the Dee of St. Mary’s.

Group Limit: 15 participants.

The group will explore Calvert County, MD. They’ll meet at 9:30 a.m. at Battle Creek Cypress Swamp, where they’ll explore one of the northernmost naturally occurring bald cypress stands in North America. Then they’ll head to Solomon’s Island for a guided tour of the Calvert Marine Museum and private charter on the Dee of St. Mary’s, one of the few remaining skipjacks on the Chesapeake Bay. We finish our visit with an early Sunday morning visit to Calvert Cliffs State Park (state park fee $7/car), the site of astonishing quantities of prehistoric marine fossils. Although Calvert County is close by, it still seems remote and is a treasure to visit.

The Chesapeake Bay provides the ecological, cultural and historic foundation of our region. To understand the bay, its seasonal narration, complex history, and stewardship needs each of us should be grounded in this place. For over 150 years, our stewardship of the bay region has been disrespectful to the complex natural systems. Water quality, indigenous species, and even people living around the bay have suffered from the impacts of mistreatment. With increased public awareness, public policy has slowly changed, and some progress has been made. Join Dr. Tom Wood on this experiential learning weekend to explore this national treasure.

Dr. Wood is an Associate Professor of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Studies in the School of Integrative Studies at George Mason University. He conducted his doctoral research at the Smithsonian and helped create the Smithsonian-Mason Semester and directed the development of Mason’s joint program with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.

Hotel Reservations: A block of rooms has been reserved at the Holiday Inn Solomon’s Conference Center and Marina at a rate of $109 (not included with fee.) Please make your reservation no later than July 26. Group rate code will be included in the confirmation email sent from EventBee.

Register here.

VMN CE webinar: Wilderness Preparation and Safety, July 16th

Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Noon
Meeting Number: 849-499-650
Link to Join: Join Webinar
Link for recordings of this and past webinars: VMN Continuing Education Webinar Page

Have you led a community group on a wildflower walk in the woods, either on trail or off? Hiked off-trail to retrieve a wildlife camera? Been to a remote corner of your county for a bird or frog survey? Some naturalists spend a lot of time outdoors, occasionally in remote places. Whenever you are going into the field, no matter how short or long of a distance, it’s important to plan ahead and prepare to help you and everyone in your group stay safe. In this session, you’ll learn from an expert about how to plan ahead for your field experiences, as well as what safety-related items to carry with you. While this session won’t substitute for an in-person first aid class, it will help you think through likely risks you might encounter in the field and how to prepare for them.

The presenter is Matt Rosefsky,a certified Wilderness EMT and Geo Medic. He has been a wilderness medicine instructor for MEDIC SOLO Disaster + Wilderness Medical School since 2007, teaching more than 200 courses and more than 3,000 students. He is a volunteer with Blue Ridge Mountain Rescue Group and the Medical Reserve Corps. Over 19 years he has led hundreds of outdoor adventures through groups such as Outdoors at UVA, the Sierra Club, and the Outdoor Adventure Social Club. Backpacking is Matt’s favorite outdoor activity.

Smithsonian Gardens presents Habitat

HABITAT is a two-year Smithsonian-wide exhibition exploring one big idea: Protecting habitats protects life.

Here are the 14 exhibits:

  1. Sheltering Branches
  2. Life Underground
  3. Dead Wood Is Life
  4. We Need You!
  5. Nests
  6. Bug B&B
  7. Biomes: Life in the Balance
  8. Key to the Forest
  9. Sign of the Dragonfly
  10. Foundation of the Sea
  11. Homes
  12. Monarchs on the Move
  13. Habitat of Flight
  14. Native Landscape

Learn more

 

Service opportunities with Plant NOVA Natives

Photo by Barbara J. Saffir

“Art Director” needed – Some concepts are expressed better with art than with photos or words. If you would like to coordinate the work of artists who might enjoy donating artistic interpretations for the PNN website and other purposes of things like  “Baby birds need insects, and insects need native plants,” email [email protected].

A second website manager needed – The work is light, but it is good to have more than one person doing updates to the PNN website.

Know of any good lawn and garden maintenance companies? PNN would like to compile a list of vendors that have experience in maintaining native plantings and/or environmentally friendly landscapes. Email your recommendations to [email protected]. PNN will then email the companies and ask them if they would like to self-identify as ones that have that kind of experience.

Help label plants at garden centers – There are now 16 garden centers where we are putting red stickers on the Virginia native plants. PNN needs more volunteers at several of those nurseries (particularly Lake Ridge Nursery in Dumfries, Merrifield Fair Oaks and Burke Nursery, but there are others as well). It is a great way to get to know your native plants, and very fun as well! PNN tries to have someone visit each nursery a couple times a month and to have at least two volunteers at each place. They also need help approaching garden centers that are not yet participating.

Another volunteer opportunity – Sept 29: NatureFest, Herndon. Sign up here.

Next Steering Committee meeting – All are welcome! The next meeting is scheduled for August 13 at 10:30 am, but please always check the Event Calendar in case there is a change.