Join Dragonfly Workshop at Clifton Institute, 11 August

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On Saturday, August 11, 1:00PM-4:00PM, join Dr. Steve Roble, zoologist with the Virginia Division of Natural Heritage, for a program on dragonfly and damselfly biology and identification. Dragonflies are some of the most mysterious and beautiful animals that live at the Clifton Institute. And northern Virginia is a hotspot of dragonfly diversity, with at least 65 species present.

Steve Roble is a leading expert on the dragonflies and damselflies of Virginia. He will present on the fascinating biology of these insects and then we will explore the field station in search of dragonflies. We will visit lakes, streams, and fish-free vernal pools, each of which host distinct dragonfly communities. So far we have observed 34 species of dragonflies and 14 damselflies at Clifton.

Clifton Institute has a project on iNaturalist to host your observations.

Come help us add to the list! To RSVP please email Bert Harris at [email protected].

Join the North American Butterfly Association Count at the Clifton Institute, 28 July

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The Clifton Institute is hosting its 23rd annual butterfly count and celebrating its 16th year in collaboration with the North American Butterfly Association July count. They need novice and experienced butterfly enthusiasts to serve as citizen scientists. As a participant, you will be assigned to small teams, led by an experienced butterfly counter. Teams will survey a variety of sites within our count circle.

What you need to know:

Saturday, July 28, 8:00AM-4:00PM (Check-in begins at 8 am with refreshments. Volunteers should be on site no later than 8:30)

$5 fee for participating adults; children 8 and older may participate (fee waived), when accompanied by a parent

Bring your lunch and spend the day. Outdoor clothing and shoes, hats, sunscreen, and water bottles are essential. Cameras and close focus binoculars are suggested. (If you are a photographer, please let us know. We would like to place one photographer on each team!)

Contact Bert Harris at [email protected] for more information and to RSVP (required).

Lead a storm drain education project

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Volunteering to lead a storm drain labeling project is a fun way to give back to the community and help protect our natural world. Each project focuses on a neighborhood, informing people who live there about the dangers of dumping anything into a storm drain. Storm drain labeling is an effective, low-cost method of educating residents about water quality problems in our streams, lakes, rivers and the Bay. The Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District is currently recruiting volunteers to lead storm drain labeling projects. Click here for more information.

Stream monitoring events in July: Plan now to attend

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Sunday, 8 July 2018

Prince William County Stream Monitoring Session: Woodbridge
Time:   11 am – 1:30pm
Location: Off of Springwoods Dr, Woodbridge

Join certified volunteer monitor Janis Cook at her adopted site along Airport Creek in the Lakeridge neighborhood. For directions and to RSVP, please contact Janis at [email protected].

Saturday, 14 July 2018

Pohick Creek Monitoring Workshop: Springfield/LortonPohick
Time: 9 – 11:30 am
Location: Pohick Creek Stream Valley Park, Springfield
Help monitor big and beautiful Pohick Creek as it winds through its rocky valley just north of I-95 and Lorton. Please RSVP to Dan Schwartz at dan.schwartz@fairfaxcounty.gov or sign up through Fairfax County’s online Volunteer Management System (initial registration required).

Sunday, 15 July 2018

Prince William County Stream Monitoring Session: Haymarket
Time: 10 am – Noon
Location: James Long Park, 4603 James Madison Hwy, Haymarket. Park at the Old Library parking lot.
Join longtime certfied volunteer monitor Elaine Wilson at her beautiful adopted site on Catharpin Creek in the Gainesville area. This site has some outstanding and unique critters. Spots are limited. For information and to RSVP, contact Elaine at elaine.wilson@dcwater.com.

Saturday, 28 July 2018

Reston Association Stream Monitoring Workshop: Reston
Time:  8 am
Location: Reston Association Property, exact stream to be determined
Join Will Peterson of the Reston Association and help monitor the health of one of the many beautiful streams on Reston Association common land. Please contact Will at wpeterson@reston.org for RSVP instructions and directions to the site.

Saturday, 28 July 2018

Difficult Run Stream Monitoring Workshop: Great Falls
Time: 9:30 am
Location: Difficult Run Stream Valley Park near Leigh Mill Rd
Help monitor beautiful Difficult Run as it flows through leafy parkland just upstream of Great Falls National Park. For more information or to RSVP, please contact Dan Schwartz at [email protected] or use Fairfax County’s online Volunteer Management System (initial registration required).

Sunday, 29 July 2018

Stream Monitoring Session: South RunSouth
Time: 1:30 – 4 pm
Location: Parkland behind South Run Rec Center, 7550 Reservation Dr, Springfield
Join certified volunteer monitor Veronica Tangiri as she monitors her adopted site along beautiful and healthy South Run as it flows under a leafy canopy of trees between Burke Lake and Lake Mercer. Please RSVP to Veronica at vera.tangiri@gmail.com for directions.

Volunteer opportunities at Earth Sangha

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Founded in 1997, the Earth Sangha is a nonprofit public charity based in the Washington, DC, region. Their mission is ecological restoration as a form of socially engaged Buddhism. Volunteers come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and the work is secular and science-based.

In the DC area, they operate a volunteer-based program to propagate local native plants, restore native plant communities, and control invasive alien plants. The Wild Plant Nursery is the region’s most comprehensive effort to propagate native plants directly from local forests and meadows. Nursery and office addresses are different. Click here for directions to the Wild Plant Nursery.

The summer nursery workdays are Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 9 AM to Noon.  Please be sure to bring a water bottle and stay hydrated.  There is no indoor space, air conditioning or even fans at the nursery.  Keep a close eye on the volunteer calendar.  For safety reasons, they may have to cancel volunteer workdays and nursery hours on short notice because of high temperatures, poor air quality, and thunderstorms.  Contact Matt Bright, Conservation Manager, to RSVP to volunteer or for questions or concerns at [email protected] or at his cell: 703-859-2951.

Volunteers can help with watering, weeding, pot preparation, transplanting, and sowing seed.  Gloves and tools will be provided.

In addition to environmental work, Earth Sangha hosts weekly meditation sessions in Alexandria, Virginia, along with discussions of what it means to live in a responsible way. These sessions are free and open to all.

Earn Stream Monitoring Service Hours at Holmes Run

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Earn FMN service hours by volunteering as a stream monitor at Holmes Run in Annandale. Participants will collect live samples of benthic macroinvertebrates, then sort, count and report on their findings to determine the stream’s current health. No previous experience is required.

If you are interested, please contact Valeria Bertha at [email protected] for more details. For master naturalists: This ongoing project is listed in the service project catalog as: C020 – NVSWCD Biological Stream Monitoring.

Holmes Run, Annandale
Sunday, August 5
9.00AM-12.00PM

Check out new tools, partners, and opportunities for meaningful work

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During the AAAS Community-Driven Citizen Science for Health and the Environment symposium on 14 June, the speakers roamed across themes addressing how to engage in citizen science, the importance of understanding the reasons and potential outcomes of the work (so that the outcomes are really, really valuable), and which tools are available to make the work easier to do and easier to share.

The potential for meaningful work and friendships is quite high.

Would you consider trying out these resources for yourself and your projects? and then reviewing them for Curated Resources? (Did we mention that service hour credit is available for FMN members?)

Water Reporter, platform and social network for monitoring water quality

Thriving Earth Exchange, community-centered consortium sponsored by AGU100 Advancing Earth and Space Science and source of projects for service hours

Anecdata.org, New Gen Citizen Science Platform so that we can diversify how we work and with whom

Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON), platform from US Geological Survey, allows you to download species occurrence and maps

ISeeChange, community climate and weather journal

Community Science Connect, community science consortium

ESRI ArcGIS, cloud-based mapping platform

Air Sensor Toolbox for Citizen Scientists, from EPA

Want to review a resource? We’d love to hear from you. Instructions for submission await your click and commitment.

Become part of Nature’s Notebook, a platform from the National Phenology Network

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Are you looking for a meaningful project? Does becoming a citizen scientist intrigue you? Want to learn a 21st-century tool that connects naturalists?

Nature’s Notebook is the National Phenology Network’s (USA NPN) online program and platform through which amateur and professional naturalists regularly record observations of plants and animals to generate long-term data sets used for scientific discovery and decision-making. As a citizen scientist, you can become a part of the community of observers by downloading the app (IOS or Android) and signing up for a campaign, such as Flowers for Bats, Shady Invaders, and others relevant to naturalist work in Virginia.

You can also start your own project and become certified!

If you just want to get your feet wet, or find materials for your classroom, NPN offers free, sharable resources.

Take a systems view and broaden your understanding of the network effect

As naturalists, we know that phenology (the study of periodic plant and animal lifecycle events and how they are influenced by seasonal variations in climate and habitat factors) is nature’s calendar—when dogwood trees bloom, when an eagle builds its nest, and when leaves turn color in the fall.

Phenologists take a systems view of the natural world. According to the National Phenology Network (USA NPN): “Many birds time their nesting so that eggs hatch when insects are available to feed nestlings. Likewise, insect emergence is often synchronized with leaf out in host plants. For people, earlier flowering means earlier allergies. Farmers and gardeners need to know the schedule of plant and insect development to decide when to apply fertilizers and pesticides and when to plant to avoid frosts. Phenology influences the abundance and distribution of organisms, ecosystem services, food webs, and global cycles of water and carbon. In turn, phenology may be altered by changes in temperature and precipitation.”

Learn more

Volunteers Needed for the Great American Campout

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Mason Neck State Park will be hosting 15 to 20 children from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington the weekend of 22-23 June. The campout gives children a wonderful  opportunity to spend time outdoors fishing, canoeing, hiking and learning about nature.

The Park needs people to help set up tents on Friday evening, June 22 and to help cook meals on Saturday, June 23.  Can you help?  If you can, please contact the Park at 703-339-2385.  You’ll be glad you did!

Caterpillars Count! Join new citizen science project

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Caterpillars Count! is a citizen science project sponsored by the National Science Foundation for measuring the seasonal variation and abundance of arthropods like caterpillars, beetles, and spiders found on the foliage of trees and shrubs. Arthropods are an important food source for birds and other wildlife.

Climate change is affecting the timing of spring leaf out, insect activity, and bird migration and breeding. But are the plants, insects and birds all responding to the same degree? If either insects or birds are not keeping up with the shifts of the other organisms that they depend on, then further climate change may have negative consequences for their populations.

Caterpillars Count is part of a multi-university study of phenological mismatch across three trophic levels in eastern North America. The lead universities are University of North Carolina, Georgetown University, and University of Connecticut, with co-investigators from University of Florida, Institute for Bird Populations, Penn State, Evergreen State College, and Ontario Forest Research Institute.

Participants will monitor a site at the Walker Nature Center in Reston for Georgetown University. We will examine 50 leaves on each of 10 trees weeklyor bi-weekly thoughout the spring and summer.  We will count and classify the arthropods we observe. Each monitoring session will take about one hour. There will be approximately 16 monitoring sessions. Volunteeers are not required to participate in every session and the timing is up to the volunteers who are participating. Volunteers must sign-up in advance for training and schedule coordination.

This project is eligible for credit for master naturalists under code C-254.

Learn more