Karla Lant

First, how are you doing? As more of us shelter in place in response to the global COVID-19 outbreak, worlds seem to be shrinking. Waking up to the daily reality of living through a pandemic has incited a mix of old- and new-school tactics for staying in touch and self-expression. From comparing recipes via video chat to searching “inspiration” and “hope” online, humans have found a number of solutions for outsmarting the boredom and loneliness of isolation.. . .

In a (post?) Kardashian world, hearing about influencers has been unavoidable. Yet, what is an influencer and why try to be one? Influencer Marketing Hub said influencers possess two critical things: 1.) The power to affect what other people do –and– 2.) A distinct niche following. The latter serves as a vector for their influence, having allowed them to impact what others do on a gargantuan scale. At the heart of why influencers have earned status is this: They care about what they do.

The race to save wildlife from extinction has begun. While conservation efforts can be complicated by many motives, The Rhino Orphanage is among the first noncommercial centers to rehabilitate sick, injured and orphaned baby rhinoceroses with one goal: Return them to the wild. The refuge has tackled the poaching crisis innovatively, aiming for regional biodiversity and future survival.

Where and how to monitor water quality is always a challenge, particularly in complex aquatic ecosystems. The new REASON Project from a team at Clarkson University is working to demonstrate the utility of using water quality instrumentation in dams on major rivers in the Great Lakes system.

As we hear more and more about algal blooms of different kinds across the United States, teams of scientists are working hard to ensure that they don’t become our new normal. One project in Florida is taking a multi-disciplinary approach to the problem—including genetic analysis. The team’s work is part of a full-court press in Florida recently, making a serious push to understand what is triggering more frequent blooms.

From extreme weather such as Hurricane Harvey to spills and other accidents, the Gulf Coast of Texas is no stranger to dangerous situations. This is where the data provided by the Texas Automated Buoy System (TABS) comes into the picture. Among the nation’s most successful and longest-running coastal ocean-observing systems at the state level, the TABS real-time oceanographic buoy system monitors currents, waves, salinity, winds, and other parameters.

Formed by a glacier, Jordan Pond is among Maine’s clearest, most beautiful bodies of water. It’s also a critical freshwater resource, and watchful eyes are protecting it.
EM spoke with Dr. Rachel Fowler, Friends of Acadia’s aquatic scientist, about her work monitoring Jordan Pond.

River management is inherently complex, demanding mastery of constantly dynamic conditions even when the climate is stable. As the climate changes, however, river management will become even more difficult and unpredictable—and old models and techniques are likely to fail more often. Now, researchers from around the world are calling for attention and change to how we manage and model the rivers of the world.

This summer a new way to learn about water recreation—and environmental stewardship—paddled into Ohio. With the help of the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments (TMACOG), the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (US EPA’s) Urban Waters Program brought the Wilderness Inquiry Canoemobile “floating classroom” to Toledo for a few days.
TMACOG Water Quality Planner Sara Guiher spoke to EM about the programming and the experience.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission’s Inland Fisheries Division has been working to restore brook trout in the state. Coldwater research coordinator Jacob Rash, who works with the brook trout team technicians on this project, spoke to EM about the work. “In North Carolina, brook trout are our only native trout species,” explains Mr. Rash. “With that come biological and ecological considerations as well as cultural importance...."

Each year in Germany, as many as 450,000 living fish undergo live animal experiments to test how fish-friendly hydroelectric power plants in the country are. The idea is to discover how readily the fish can move through hydroelectric turbine installations in order to ultimately reduce mortality rates.
Of course, subjecting live fish to a potentially deadly test to save others is a bitter irony--one that a team of scientists from the RETERO research project hopes to eventually mitigate with a robotic fish for testing.

Dr. Jeanetts Schnars (red shirt) and RSC Lab Technician, Morgan Schnars at Pymatuning State Park’s 1st Annual Onion Festival where the Mobile HAB Lab (MHL) educated 243 visitors. Notice the side of the Mobile HAB Lab is a “selfie station” which includes the website for more information about HABs; this is to reduce the number of print material (brochures, etc.) that the team needs to distribute.

In the battle against harmful algal blooms (HABs), time is important. The need for laboratory equipment and testing is a serious challenge for water managers. This issue caught the eye of Qingshan Wei, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University. “Our research group is interested in developing low-cost sensors,” Wei told EM. “Recently we have been developing sensors for environmental monitoring, and cyanotoxins came to our attention.”

New research from scientists at the Environmental Working Group (EWG) shows that an approach that assesses cumulative risk from water contaminants could save lives. EWG senior scientist Tasha Stoiber spoke with EM about how the team developed the innovative new approach. “Our organization has worked extensively on tap water over the years, and an updated version of our tap water database was just released in 2017,” explains Dr. Stoiber. “We’ve been thinking about new ways to analyze that data...

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) scientists are using a customized underwater robotic vehicle (remotely operated vehicle or ROV) called the Saab Seaeye Falcon on a critical conservation study of threatened and imperiled rockfish. Dr. Dayv Lowry, a Senior Marine Fish Research Scientist, spoke to EM about using the ROV to facilitate rockfish conservation and recovery in the Puget Sound.