Thank you _____ _____.
All right, my name's Jim Rassman.
Thank you, Bruce. I'm the stewardship coordinator
at the Waquoit Bay Estuarine Research Reserve.
And very quickly, I'm gonna be going through the science process
of what we call the Bringing Wetlands to Market Project.
Which we're using to track greenhouse gases in a saltmarsh,
and particularly looking at end users' use of this information.
As Bruce alluded to, we are up in Massachusetts,
but the National Estuarine Research Reserve system
is a system of 28 coastal reserves,
and that includes reserves in the Great Lakes area.
So, that map there down in the lower-left-hand corner
just helps you locate some of those reserves.
And, you know, to people listening out there,
you may have one in your neighborhood, and it would be a good place to get involved in.
There's a lot of education activities
that go on at the reserves as well as good science.
So with that, we're gonna move into,
this is the type of question we normally ask,
with lots of different groups, when we're
talking about carbon sequestration and coastal ecosystems.
And, you know, so you can see some choices,
down here, of what systems store the most carbon,
tropical forest, boreal forest, temperate forest, so different forest types.
Or saltmarshes, mangroves, and seagrasses.
And, you know, many people will answer – well, we get a variety of answers, nowadays,
but lots of people are familiar with forest ecosystems
and their ability to store carbon.
But it's been more and more recognized
that what we call the blue carbon areas,
the saltmarshes, mangroves, and seagrasses,
have fantastic abilities to store carbon, and that's what this project's about.
So, here's a little bit about what we're calling green
and blue carbon in this slide, but the traditional places
that we talk about carbon sequestration.
So if you see tropical rainforest down there
at the bottom, and then you see those other ecosystems
that I was talking about, the blue carbon ecosystems.
And really what you'll notice is, it's the
soil storage capabilities, or the brown part of those bars, that are really
what gives the blue carbon areas – again, those coastal
marches, seagrasses, and mangrove forests, the ability to store
a massive amount of carbon.
So, you know, more particularly, and we've already kind of talked a little bit about this,
but the blue carbon ecosystems include some –
the freshwater wetlands as well as the saltmarshes,
the mangroves, and the seagrasses.
And the take-home message, here, is that –
that upper-left-hand slide is our site, _____
mangrove swamps you see over on the right,
and then seagrass is on the bottom.
But the take-home message here is,
the reason these ecosystems
have fantastic carbon sequestration abilities
is they can lay down and grow vertically, essentially.
So, if you look at that mangrove picture
there on the upper-righthand corner, you see
that amount of sediment that's been stored
under these systems. And we see very similar things underneath the saltmarsh
and in seagrass beds, as well. It's that underground storage
and the ability to build vertically
that allow these systems to be such carbon sinks.
So, this particular project is taking a look at that,
and particularly in saltmarshes,
although there are some other pieces of this
that involve some of those other ecosystems.
But it's looking at going out and quantifying in the field,
so there's a lot of field investigation parts,
the total storage capability of these ecosystems,
building some predictive models so that an end user –
a piece that we can look at handing off to people,
so that they can make these carbon sequestration estimates
without doing all the field investigations.
And then, we're working with some of the international groups
to look at bringing some of these carbon stores,
essentially, onto the international
and regional carbon markets
as, actually, a tradeable and sellable carbon credit.
And you can imagine, there's a lot of policy
and economic analysis that goes along with that,
so it's not just based on basic science,
but it's a lot of social science, as well.
And this is a three-year project.
So, this is, you know, we're up in Waquoit Bay;
the little tiny map in the upper-righthand corner
gives you just a zoom-in of our site off on Cape Cod.
And this is what some of that –
the infrastructure that's necessary
to go in to do _____ _____ _____.
So, you see kind of an aerial view
that shows you some of the ecosystem types,
from the water's edge where it says "Sage Lot Pond"
up to the forest edge.
It's a lot of plots and a lot of work to look at,
essentially, the carbon gas shed of this ecosystem,
looking at all the inputs, both from the atmosphere
and from the water column, through this marsh,
through all the different seasons of the year,
all the different times of the year.
So what I'm gonna do now
is I'm gonna go into a little bit of details
of what the inputs and outputs are,
and how we go about measuring them,
and some of the end user pieces.
So, there's two major things you have to look at
when you're looking at carbon storage in any ecosystem.
It's vertical flux
is essentially the exchange of gases
in and out of the plants that live in that ecosystem.
So, this kind of conceptual framework could apply
to a grassland system or a forest system,
but it's simply the uptake and output of these gases.
And when I say "these gases,"
I'm talking about carbon dioxide, you know,
_____ oxide, which is laughing gas,
but has a greatly increased ability
to store carbon and methane.
So, you probably _____ _____ with those gases,
but it's those fluxes in and out of the plants,
as they respire and photosynthesize,
that we're looking at with the vertical flux piece.
So that's the first thing we'll look at.
This is what a vertical gas measurement
looks like in a saltmarsh.
What we do is we go out and we put these plexiglass chambers,
these clear plexiglass chambers,
so essentially, they're, you know,
sunlight can get through and the _____
plant's been continually photosynthesizing them.
And you could see, on the left-hand side,
you see a boardwalk we built to move these gas analyzers
out around the marsh,
and it's just pumping the air in and out of these chambers,
and looking at [glitch interferes with audio]
those three gases _____ oxide, carbon dioxide,
and methane, through the day, through cloud cover,
through night, through different tides.
But it's all about that vertical uptake
and output of those gases over the year.
And then, this is just a very simple,
but it is some of the real data
that comes out of those plot _____.
So, don't worry about the plots;
the plots are just when each time the chamber's put down.
But you see things like that you'd expect to see;
anything below the zero line is storage of carbon dioxide,
and anything above is an output.
So you can see that, obviously, during the morning
and especially in the afternoon,
those plants are photosynthesizing _____
and taking up that carbon dioxide;
at night, they respire and release that carbon dioxide.
And so, this is the type of data we're looking at,
but for all three gases.
And then, the other piece I mentioned was the lateral flux.
So, in saltmarshes, it's a little bit different
from some of the other ecosystems,
_____ you also have these twice-a-day, you know,
tidal flooding that goes on, and in that water column,
you have those same three gases dissolved in the liquid.
And that's flooding the marsh, interacting with the plants,
and going into the _____ space and interacting
with all the microorganisms that live in that soil.
Remember I talked about how deep that soil was.
And some of those constituents and carbon constituents,
nitrogen constituents or methane get left behind,
some get released depending on the time of year,
and so you'd have to look at all that
if you're trying to quantify this total
exchange out on the saltmarsh of these greenhouse gases.
This is a little bit what that _____ looks like.
It's a little bit hard to show you in the field,
but essentially, it's that same boardwalk system;
this is a narrower view of that.
And you can see, in the lower-righthand corner,
there's a blue arrow that's kind of pointing to the creek mouth.
So, it's kind of a watershed of, even though that the marsh
is very level from when you look at it,
there still is a slight slope to it.
And so, the tides come in through that channel,
and they flood the marsh, they interact, like I said,
out in the _____ spaces and in the grasses,
and then they recede back through the marsh spaces
back down that channel and out.
So you're measuring that flow in and out of the water
and the dissolved gasses constituents in that water.
And this is what that data looks like.
The top grass is the tidal cycle,
so you see the tide coming in and out,
and so you have to get a measurement
of volume of water moving,
that's _____ we're doing here.
And then, that middle graph is gas concentration of this one's
– I think this is carbon dioxide we're looking at here.
And then, when you put those two together, you get a gas flux,
or if you know the volume _____ _____ _____
know the dissolved constituents of gasses,
you can get a, you know, milligrams per second movement
of those gasses or a rate of those gasses
in and out of the water system, as that marsh floods and drains.
And what does success look like on this project?
Well, there's been lots of things.
There's been tons of science innovation,
you know, we've been looking at
– I talked about the boardwalks themselves _____
_____ _____ innovative, those gas chambers,
looking at this all in the field in real-time.
This hadn't been done in the past;
we usually take samples back to the lab
instead of working in the field like this.
So, with the boardwalk construction,
we've been able to get tons of people out on the marsh,
during all seasons,
during all times of the year, very successfully,
and there's been lots of spinoff projects.
Down in the lower left-hand corner,
we've been very active in engaging end users all along,
from the project design to the implementation
and right on throughout. _____ _____
still have a year left of this project,
but we're getting input from end users, advice
from end users, of products they would like to have.
And then, that last piece over there
on the lower-righthand corner _____
talks about those products.
There have been lots of multimedia tools
that have been developed, and lots of outreach,
and one of those _____ _____ to you folks with the curriculum
that's been developed from this project.
So, with that, I am going to hand it over to Joan
to talk about the curriculum.
Hey, guys. Just, before you pop over,
I just wanted to make a note that
if anybody has any questions for Joan or for Jim,
please, of course,
type them into your question box in your control panel.
I actually have one question, Jim,
before we move over to Joan, which is from Mary _____.
And she asks that, "I assume _____
carbon ecosystems are wet or water ecosystems?"
Can you just very briefly go into a brief explanation
of what we're considering blue ecosystems,
blue carbon ecosystems, again?
Yeah, so, yeah, Bruce, so, it would include riparian systems,
except, in most cases, what we're looking at
would be the wetlands that would be associated,
the bordering vegetative wetlands
associated with those riparian systems.
So, on bigger flood _____
type forests, that would be included.
Okay, thank you.
[Side conversation] Hi, this is Joan Muller,
the education coordinator at Waquoit Bay Reserve.
So, I can tell you a little bit about this curriculum
that we worked on, based on the research project
that's going on here.
So, first of all, it's a high school curriculum,
it's interdisciplinary, you can find it online,
and it has Web-based, classroom, and field activities.
And it gathers a lot of existing resources and activities,
and there's a few new things, as well.
And how we created the module, we actually were lucky enough
to get a transfer grant from the NERRS
Science Collaborative, which also funded the research itself.
And through that, we were able to –
well, we worked with, also, a team in Oregon,
the education coordinator in Oregon, Tom Gaskell,
and two of his staff members.
And we were able to also hire a consultant, Pat
_____, to work with us and do most of the writing
and a lot of the research.
And then, we correlated the topics that the research had,
to the next-generation science standards.
From that, we created a needs assessment
for our teachers and NERRS education coordinators.
And once we got their preferences for topics
and other things, we created the draft module,
we had the research team review it, pictured here,
and also, our teacher advisory committees reviewed.
And then, we _____ to have a –
something that we could use during the summer,
and we tried it out with some of our student programs,
and also, some of our Teachers on the Estuary
teacher training piloted it. And you can see, here,
the students and the teachers doing the same _____
activity created by MIT to illustrate photosynthesis.
And during the Teachers on the Estuary pilots,
they were able to go out and see the –
well, the one in Massachusetts was able to go out
and see the research,
and also try quite a bit of the activities.
And then in the fall, they piloted with their own classes,
and then came back in November
and talked about what they had learned, and gave us feedback.
So, that's how we ended up with our current version.
And I'll just click over
and let you see what it looks like, with this link.
So, you can see it's got, on the right,
you can click through the different parts,
and they'll tell them a bit about those parts.
[Side conversation] So, it's got
a general introduction,
and then four different parts, as well as _____ _____
wetlands stewardship project and field study part
that actually brings all the other _____ parts together.
So, and the components of the lessons are basically
what the Estuaries 101 middle school curriculum uses.
There's an overview box, a focus question,
performance tasks, background procedure,
readings and links, and student pages.
I want to bring special attention
to the readings and links,
because there's a lot of great little mini videos
that we were able to incorporate,
as well as links to a lot of other really good resources.
And I know that's something that Bruce mentioned
in the beginning that was a need.
So, the part one, which is the introduction
to wetlands and carbon,
includes a few different activities
such as a carbon walk,
photosynthesis and carbon storage in wetlands,
and something on wetland ecological services.
And part two focuses on the research project itself,
so, the introduction to this part
gives you a lot of information about the research project,
how it was done, _____ about it.
And then it includes the process of science,
water quality, and choosing a site.
And this is also the section
where we put the engineering design challenge,
and most of those challenges relate to students
designing the study,
and equipment to use for the study,
and making sure that they don't hurt the habitat environment
that they are going to look at.
The third part focuses on economics and blue carbon,
and there's an activity, there, where students value a wetland,
or thinking about valuing it.
And then, there's also a blue carbon trading simulation game,
which has, you know, _____ fake money and cards,
and you get more or less carbon credits
and things like that. So that's in part three.
And then, part four focuses on pressures on wetlands,
and also stewardship,
and it includes activities and information
about sea level rise, nitrogen and coastal wetlands,
and also has information on _____
stewardship projects as well as on DS4 stewardship projects.
And that section,
the adopt-a-wetland stewardship project and field study,
we put in both Word and PDF,
so that if you want to take some of the student sheets
and adapt them for your own use,
you know, teachers can do that, they can switch it around.
And there's also a, in that one besides the adopt-a-wetland,
activity which is where students adapt a wetland
near their school,
and design a study of it, and monitor it over time,
and hopefully do stewardship projects related to it.
And there's also a study of studying
the carbon content of plants or that you choose _____ _____.
It's rather involved, but it's kind of a neat activity
that they actually did out in Oregon,
and developed there at their site.
In the adopt-a-wetland, there's for fresh and salt,
and when we had our TOTE workshop, we had one –
we split into two groups:
the freshwater group and the saltwater group.
So, we have information for both,
and we even actually put in,
for people who aren't near any wetlands
or just for some reason can't get out to a wetland,
there are ways to virtually visit a wetland,
in this curriculum, so.
And one thing the teachers asked for was an index,
so we put in an index so that you could look things up,
either if you hadn't _____, you know, you wanted to
– just had something specific you were looking for,
or you wanted to find something that you've done
and it's hard to find again.
Our next-steps is,
we consider this a beta version of the curriculum,
so, we wanna continue gathering suggestions.
And there's a link, on the homepage of the curriculum,
where you can go to a Survey Monkey and give us suggestions.
So, we'd ask you to try things out and give us feedback
– we'd love to get it.
And also, although there's a lot of data in here,
there's not a lot of data
from this particular research project,
because we were creating it while it was going on.
So, when the project is finished,
we would like to add some more of the specific data
from this project to the curriculum.
Oh, and I'd like to invite everyone, if you're interested,
to join us, this summer, for our Teachers
on the Estuary program, in Massachusetts.
We are having it July 14th to 17th,
and we will be going out to the study site
and introducing this curriculum. And also, in Oregon,
they're gonna be having it at two different sites,
in Newport and Charleston, in Oregon.
And they also will be focusing on this curriculum,
but they have adapted it for the West Coast.
And actually, if you're not near either Massachusetts or Oregon,
there's many more TOTEs around the country, and there's the –
you can just look on the estuaries.noaa.gov website,
to find where all the other TOTE workshops are going on.
And there, again, is the link for the curriculum,
and just like to acknowledge all the many people
who put a lot of work into getting the curriculum finished.
And with that, I think that Jim and I
are ready to take any questions that people might have.
That's great. Thanks a lot, Joan.
I will tell everyone who's listening that I do have
a series of links
already set up in some slides, which I'll share with everyone.
And we can put those in an e-mail out,
later on, as well.
One question for Jim.
In one of your earlier slides that you showed,
there was a chart that showed CO2 flux
during the day versus night.
And the question is, what does the zero line represent?
Is it CO2 concentration between night and day?
So, essentially, the important thing to see on that is,
anything below the line represents an uptake of CO2,
and anything above the line represents an output.
So, if you think back to that slide,
there were two in each space on night session
that were below the morning and the afternoon.
So, that means the plants were obviously photosynthesizing
and uptaking CO2, and at night,
they were respiring and releasing that CO2.
So, the zero line is, essentially,
the change from acting as a sink to a source.
Mm, well, thanks. And another question we have is,
have you guys connected with other marshes,
to do similar research?
Are these going on at other NERRs or other marshes around?
Yeah, so, this project, particularly looking at it
from the basic science level, is, you know,
it's a pretty expensive project, as you can imagine.
So, we've done lots of transfer projects with other NERRs,
and there's some similar work going on down in the Carolinas
and on the Gulf Coast. But to be honest with you,
this is one of the most in-depth looks at a saltmarsh
anywhere out there, right now, so.
[Crosstalk] could say is that many of the research reserves
are doing this program called Sentinel Sites,
where they're measuring _____ _____ and things like that.
And that is actually, we are gonna be focusing, also,
on that in our TOTE, this summer,
our Teachers on the Estuary program.
[Crosstalk] reserves we showed on the map
would have lots of programs on looking at climate
change effects at the local level, for sure.
Oh, very good. Another question for
Are researchers also looking at changes in soil carbon,
as a complementary way to measure sequestration?
Yeah, so there's a whole other piece, of course,
with the reduced amount, there's a whole other piece,
this summer, going on, on coring and dating cores,
different ways that mercury dating and _____
dating of cores, looking at carbon sequestration
rates over time, and the ages of marshes.
So, yes, that is going on, as well.
Okay, and another question we have, here, is:
How big would a freshwater wetland need to be
before we could obtain similar measurements?
Well, I mean, it's not really the size –
the size doesn't matter,
I mean, all these weapons are functioning that way.
I mean, of course, the smaller the marsh is,
the more disruptive this type of sampling is on that marsh.
You know, you'd see similar,
you know, similar things going on in those marshes.
The one thing about size
that's the really importance piece of marshes is,
when you start looking at carbon credits
and economic value of this carbon sequestration,
it's the large marshes, you know, again,
down in the southeast United States,
over in Southeast Asia,
that really have a lot of potential, on the global scale,
to affect, you know, global carbon budgets.
Gotchya. And I have a question from Sarah Thorne,
and I think this would probably be one for Joan,
or perhaps for Jim.
And this is if you guys could give your quick elevator speech
on the TOTE program.
Because Sarah wants to know if it's a training session
specifically for the curriculum,
and I think maybe you could provide some enlightenment.
The Teachers on the Estuary program
is a National Estuary and Research Reserve system program,
so there's many going on all around the country.
And I can tell you more about the one
happening in Massachusetts. So, ours is a four-day program.
We will be introducing this curriculum during it,
but we will also be talking about the sentinel sites.
And, so, last summer,
we were totally just about this curriculum,
and this summer, it will include this curriculum.
And I don't know if that's – and we give a stipend,
so that the teachers can implement
their stewardship projects at their schools.
We have a callback session in November,
and we'll have a virtual one in the spring.
People from far away, we can make some arrangement
if they can't come back to the callback in November.
So, we focus on NOAA resources, so we do Estuaries 101 _____
_____ the Estuaries 101 curriculum,
as well as the estuaries.noaa.gov website.
And you get out in the field with people like Jim –
he always helps us, every year, with our TOTE program.
It's really a tremendous program.
And just so that everyone who's listening knows,
_____ _____ is the education coordinator
for the National Estuary Research Reserve system,
nationally, has provided me with a link
to all of the TOTE programs that are going on this summer,
in the United States. And I will be distributing them,
along with answers to questions that Jim and Joan provide,
that you've posted during the webinar.
Let's see – another question for Will
the curriculum be adopted for younger grades?
Will it be adopted for younger –
Adapted, yeah.
Oh, can it be adapted. Definitely, we have _____ _____
– we invited middle-school teachers to come,
last summer, as well,
and they seemed to have no problem
incorporating the activities into their curriculum.
We haven't tried it with elementary.
I think it's more middle and high school
that you can adapt it for.
Okay, that's great. [End of Audio]