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BES provided the keynote address at the Baltimore Watershed Conference on 1 March 2008. The Conference celebrated the announcement of the Baltimore Watershed agreement by Baltimore County Executive Smith, and City of Baltimore Mayor Dixon. The two leaders confirmed their commitment to working jointly to improve the environmental quality and sustainability of these important land-water resources. They charged a blue ribbon Committee of Principals, representing the action agencies and community leaders in both the City and County, with recommending priorities to the two jurisdictional executive leaders for activities advancing each of the five goals for improving watershed sustainability in metropolitan Baltimore: 1) community greening, 2) development and restoration, 3) stormwater management, 4) trash as a contaminant, and 5) public health. For the text of the agreement and more on what each of these goals might encompass see http://resources.baltimorecountymd.gov/Documents/Environment/Watersheds/watershedgree06.pdf

Steward Pickett, BES Project Director and Distinguished Senior Scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, gave the introductory keynote address. In his remarks, he summarized the ecological concept of sustainability. He went on to address whether sustainability was a "reality or myth" in the Baltimore region. Based on insights from BES research, he proposed that sustainability, while not yet a reality, can be greatly improved by the cross jurisdictional and cross agency interaction promised by the Baltimore Watershed Agreement. One meaning of "myth" is as a narrative that provides a guide to ethical behavior and a caution against inappropriate behavior. Pickett suggested that sustainability can play this positive, narrative role as a vision and a yardstick against which all management and planning actions are measured. The watershed agreement and the five general goals it espouses, place the City of Baltimore and Baltimore County in an enviable position for realizing the vision of improved sustainability in their shared watersheds. He noted that BES is pleased to be a partner with the city and county agencies charged with meeting the goals of the watershed agreement, and to have its ecological and social science research complement the data being collected by the city and county governments.

In addition to Pickett, other senior members of the BES community in attendance were Claire Welty (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), Ken Belt (USDA Forest Service), and Dan Dillon (Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies). The day long conference included discussion groups to provide input to the Committee of Principals on the priorities for the five watershed goals.

One of our BES efforts has been to move from "Pixels to Parcels" by implementing long term characterization of ownerships (parcels) in terms of social and ecological phenomenon.

These methods have proven to be useful for studying policy and planning as well. The Cheaspeake Bay Program to enhance urban tree canopy cover (UTC) and development of UTC goals in numerous urban areas in Maryland are examples. Other cities such as New York and Boston have been successful with UTC forecasting as well.

Baltimore now plans to increase its cover from 20% to 40% over the next 30 years. Much of this cover will need to be on private lands.

We are in partnership with these cities to combine social and ecological methods and theory to predict the best places to plant trees from social and ecological perspectives. We will also use these methods and theory to discover and understand the motivations for participation from the owners of the private lands. This is a classic example of "adoption theory" in our research questions for the social sciences.

The pixels to parcels approach is being adopted collaboratively among a number of LTER sites including Central Arizona Phoenix (CAP), Florida Coastal Everglades (FCE), and Plum Island Ecosystem (PIE).

The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) is a grassroots effort linking universities, scientific societies, science centers and museums, government agencies, advocacy groups, media, educators, businesses, and industry in a peer network having as its goal a greater public understanding of the nature of science and its value to society. A key objective of COPUS is to build bridges among its participants, creating new forums for communication and developing new partnerships for engaging the public with science.

2009 has been designated the Year of Science; coordinated by COPUS. The 2009 year of science is a celebration of how we know what we know. It is a national year-long celebration of science to engage the public in science and improve public understanding about the nature and processes of science.

Click on the icons for additional information about COPUS and the 2009 Year of Science.

“Buried Streams Pose Risk to Bay,” by Sun Reporter Rona Kobell appeared in the Baltimore Sun on February 26, 2008.

Kaushal with the help of Andrew Elmore, both of the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science, have located hundreds of buried streams using advanced mapping techniques and computer modeling. Also interviewed for the article was Bill Stack, Baltimore city water resources chief, a BES collaborator. For the full story click the link below.

Baltimore Ecosystem Study – Quarterly Research (Science) Meeting
K-12 and Graduate Education and Research

9:30 AM	Coffee, Donuts and Bagels

	Morning Session – Education Research
10:00 AM	Janet Coffey, University of Maryland – College Park. The role the scientific method plays in student scientific inquiry: a case from an environmental science classroom.

10:20 AM	Alan R. Berkowitz. Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Developing a place-based urban ecosystem learning progression for Baltimore.

10:40 AM	Rebecca Bell, Maryland State Department of Education. The status of and prospects for environmental concepts in the Maryland State Curriculum Frameworks and Assessments.

11:00 AM	Erle Ellis, University of Maryland – Baltimore County. Anthropogenic biomes: a global framework for ecology research and education in the 21st century and beyond.

11:20 AM	Mary Washington, Parks and People Foundation. TBA.

11:40 AM	Morgan Grove, US Forest Service. A distributed network approach to LTER education: From yardstick to gyroscope: Interdisciplinary methods for the long-term study of social-ecological systems.

noon	General Discussion

12:30 PM	LUNCH

	Afternoon Session – Graduate Student Research
1:30 PM	Paul Lilly, University of Vermont. Lawn management and C cycling in turfgrass systems.

1:50 PM	Steve Raciti, Cornell University. Nitrogen retention in urban watersheds.

2:10 PM	Melanie Harrison, University of Maryland - Baltimore County. Hotspots of denitrification in urban restored watersheds

2:30 PM	Olyssa Starry, University of Maryland - Baltimore County. The effect of greenroofs on urban freshwater ecosystems: translating ecological analyses into predictions for community use.

2:50 PM	Kirsten Schwarz, Rutgers University. Spatial patterns of lead in urban residential soils.

3:10 PM	Concluding Discussion

3:30 PM	Adjourn to BES Picnic outside TRC

BES Meeting Schedule 2008

Quarterly Research Meetings:

June 24, 2008. Topic: Education. Followed by the BES Annual Picnic

BES Annual Meeting: October 15-16, 2008
Community Open House: October 15, 2008

The Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES), Long-Term Ecological Research Participates in the Baltimore Watershed Conference