Saturday Morning Cartoons? More Like Saturday Morning Trash Pickup!

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Group photo in downtown Manteo.

The Town of Manteo held a litter pick up day named after Rodney “Crow” Murray. Hundreds of people showed up to enjoy coffee and doughnuts before setting out in the crisp fall weather. People were divided into groups to cover different areas of the town.

 

 

 

Our group led by Jaye Massecar (Friends of Elizabeth II Operations Director) picked up along back roads, the cemetery, the highway, and in front of the elementary school. We found a lot of cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and beer cans. It was interesting to see the different kinds of trash and where it was mainly located which was along the highway. Jaye told us that a lot of people tend to throw trash out their car windows. It is important to do litter pickups especially in a town like this where sewer ditches need to be cleared when heavy rains come to prevent excessive flooding.

We were able to fill five trash bags by the end of the day. However, as a whole, the town manage to collect a truck full of garbage!

A lot of people found really interesting items in the ditches:  birdhouse, a duck decoy, and children toys. I found what appears to be a jewel placed on a pet collar.

The morning ended with pizza provided by the town to thank those that all showed up. It’s always a good day to help the community look clean and beautiful!

 

 

To Preserve, To Prosper, To Pet Cats!

Do not worry I will totally explain the cat thing, but my internship for the OBXFS 2016 was with the Town of Manteo. Located conveniently down the street from the Elizabeth Friends II house, I was able to walk to my internship every Monday and Wednesday (so do not worry if you have a car or not!).

My mentor was the wonderful Erin Burke who taught me all things related to being a town planner in a small town. The first day of my internship, Erin took me along to learn the history of the town and to meet people who have lived in Manteo for years! It is a very close-knit community and I was so happy that I was able to be apart of it.

My main task was to develop a unified recycling program for the Town of Manteo. This required me to draft a proposal bid to submit to the Board of Commissioners for approval to place the bid in the local paper. The bid is to advertise to contractors that the Town of Manteo is in need of supplies and labor for a recycling program.

However, when I was not working on the new recycling program, I was helping to refurbish an old playground. A lot of the equipment was rusted and out of date, so children could no longer safely play. When the project was completed, it was heartwarming to see the kids rush to play after school.

I also attended meetings hosted by DOT, Government Education TV, and FEMA to get a first-hand look into the inner workings of local and regional government.

Now the moment you have all been waiting for!

Along with my internship, I made a new friend: TOM the town cat. His name stands for the Town of Manteo (GET IT??). He came to the town hall to live several years ago and never left. He lives in my office and demands belly rubs throughout the day. He was definitely an added plus to my time working for the Town of Manteo.

The staff in Manteo is amazing and helpful. The knowledge I gained here definitely helped me pick a career path after I graduate. I look forward to trying my hand at being a town planner just like my mentor!

Into the (Nags Head) Woods

While “Into the Woods” is a creepy Disney movie about a witch, Nags Head Woods isn’t anything like that. There have been reports of a pack of coyotes stalking trail-goers. But that’s largely uncorroborated.

My name is Julia Maron, I’m a sophomore Environmental Studies major and Public Policy minor, and I got to spend this fall interning with Aaron McCall at The Nature Conservancy’s Nags Head Woods ecological preserve. Aaron is the Northeast Regional Steward and oversees basically the entire eastern area of the state.

I had heard of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) before coming down here but I didn’t know that on the Outer Banks, which you think of as all beach (tell me you don’t only think of it as all beach), there would be 1,400 acres of maritime forest and swamps. And by the looks of the visitor’s log, a lot of other people didn’t know the Woods existed as either.

Unlike almost all of the other internships, my time spent at the Woods wasn’t focused on one overarching project, which was fine by me. I got to learn about stewardship, which is “the recognition of our collective responsibility to retain the quality and abundance of our land, air, water and biodiversity, and to manage this natural capital in a way that conserved all of its values, be they environmental, economic, social or cultural.” Basically, it’s important to know that we have certain environmental spaces and resources that we can and should use, but we have to use them in a responsible way.

With woods comes pine straw and leaves and with the Outer Banks comes storms and hurricanes. So naturally, sometimes the trails get covered with such debris and it is my dutiful task to make sure the trails are clear and walkable. As much as I loved doing this, I realized that it’s important especially to the people who visit the Woods. If you can’t walk easily, then it won’t be as enjoyable and people won’t visit as often. So yes, trail maintenance is important. Can I put “handy with a rake” on my resume? All I can say is that I got to explore all of the trails pretty thoroughly and spending time outside can be better than sitting in an office all day (no offense to those who work in offices, specifically the planning department of the Town of Nags Head).

*Disclaimer: One would STRONGLY advise visiting the Woods sometime after November, when mosquitoes the size of a quarter have gone to wherever they go. If not, coat yourself in bug spray, wear long sleeves and pants, and bring mosquito net hats. I can give you my personal one, if you’d like. Very handy.

Walking trails sometimes leads to running in to critters, some of which scare you half to death. Especially when you take Fergie, Aaron’s dog, with you and she doesn’t see the black rat snake in front of her. And you’re too scared to get close to it to see if it’s venomous, so you don’t know it’s only a black rat snake until you take a picture and show it to Aaron when you get back.

As I mentioned before, when I wasn’t raking, I did some Excel work, mainly inputting the Woods’ visitor’s log into a format where the total number of visitors could be gathered for each month. These numbers are useful because they get sent to The Nature Conservancy’s main office and can help the Woods get grants and different things, since TNC is a nonprofit. Additionally, bow hunting season for deer started September 10th in the Woods, and Aaron is in charge of collecting hunting licenses and information, so that too was put into Excel.

Nags Head Woods sits between Jockey’s Ridge and Run Hill sand dunes, which causes it to be shielded from harsh ocean winds. It has forested dunes, interdune ponds, marshes, wetlands and a whole lot of diverse plant and animal life. The most interesting part of my internship has definitely been capturing creatures that use the woods on wildlife cameras. At the beginning of the semester, I asked Aaron if there had been coyote sightings in the Woods, since that would relate to our Capstone project. As you may or may not know, coyotes are now officially found in all 100 counties of North Carolina, and have been increasingly seen up and down the Outer Banks. A lot of residents have been complaining about them as well, so I thought I’d see if I could find any. TNC had some wildlife cameras that they’d used before and I thought it would be super neat if I could put some out to try and catch some sneaky canids on camera.

When I went out to check the cameras, I took my laptop and popped the SD card out from the camera to see if there were new pictures. Honestly, it was kind of exciting when you saw any amount of pictures, even when you realized that there were 174 just of a squirrel (I think he just wanted to have a photo shoot). I had 2 cameras out for 3 weeks that never had any pictures on them, which was a little frustrating. But hey, it was even better when you got some clear shots of does, bucks, raccoons and even a possum. And sometimes you got a super cool picture of a young buck only 3 hours before you went out and pulled the camera.

All in all, interning at The Nags Head Woods was a great experience that has made me realize what I enjoy doing and what I only kind of enjoy doing. I’m appreciative that I’ve had this great opportunity and hopefully I can build on this experience in the future.

Oh, and this internship has also reaffirmed that I absolutely hate mosquitoes.

Swamped in the Swamp

Well not really a swamp, more of a coastal salt marsh, but I digress. If you had told me at the beginning of August that within a month I would be stuck up to my knees in muck, constantly pricked by omnipresent black needle rush, and have spent more time laying out Home Depot tiles then ever before while loving every moment of it, I would say you definitely don’t know me. As it turns out though, early-August-Alex apparently didn’t know me that well either because I’ve been doing just that for the last

semester while having an amazing time. My name is Alexander Smith, I am a Junior Environmental Science major, and my internship is conducting research under the guidance of Dr. Reide Corbett in the costal marsh right outside CSI.

My internship is rather equally divided between spending a lot of time in the field and analyzing the data I collected in the field, but, seeing as images of graphs and excel sheets can only be so exciting for so long, I’m going to focus a tad bit more on my fieldwork. The coastal marsh is really an indescribable environment to find yourself in (I say right before I attempt to describe it). The combination of an ever-present sulfurous smell, hidden canals that could dunk you in water up to your waste, and seemingly vengeful vegetation make the habitat truly unique to be and work in.

My research out in the marsh focuses on accretion and erosion rates and how these rates are affected by variables such as weather patterns, elevation, and distance from shore. Thankfully, a researcher at CSI about a year ago conducted a similar study so I am able to compare my results and use their methods as a starting point. When I do field work, I get to use a myriad of different tools, from something as high-tech as a RTK Trimble unit (which costs more than my rent) to bathroom tiles, to gather my data. The RTK unit is used so that I can get an accurate measure of the location of the shoreline, which I can then compare with previous measurements, as well as the overall elevation of the coastal marsh. The comparison of shoreline data is extremely significant to my research because that comparison can be used to determine the mean erosion and erosion rate along the shore of the coastal marsh.

The bathroom tiles are used so that I can measure sediment accretion at specific sites within the marsh. To do this, I’ve laid approximately three tiles at each site (there are a total of 13 sites within the study area) flush with the ground. This way any organic or inorganic material that would normally fall onto these areas is now on the tile. About every 2 to 3 weeks, I go out into the field and collect all the material that has collected on the tiles using such sophisticated instruments as water and a somewhat knife shaped piece of metal. In the lab I dehydrate and then combust the soil to get measure of the organic and inorganic makeup of the collected samples. From here, I can use time, size of the tile, and soil composition to determine the accretion rates at those specific sites.

This data collection culminates into a huge pool of data that I then get to analyze and visualize. Currently, I am about knee deep in this process, which is turning out to be more frustrating, but also more gratifying, than I imagined it would be. Being able to both collect and analyze data under loose supervision is something that I never thought I’d be doing at this point in my life. I can not thank CSI, Dr. Corbett, and the OBXFS program enough for letting me do this internship. Not only am I doing something fun and interesting, but I am doing something that I hope to do throughout my future.

Nags Head Woods 2: Caught on Camera

Last Friday, after an adrenaline filled Ecology quiz, we took a trip to Nags Head Woods. This is our second time out in the woods as a class, but the unique quality of the environment there has definitely not grown old. The last thing I associate the Outer Banks with is a forest of any kind so to have a maritime forest on the same strip of road that has beach accesses is incredible.

Our trip began there with a visit to the unofficial mascot of Nags Head Woods: Fergie the dog. Unfortunately, she somehow managed to escape our cameras. Fergie belongs to the more human representative of Nags Head Woods Aaron McCall. After our short orientation with Fergie, Aaron began his presentation where he emphasized the uniqueness of where we were as well as the importance of the Nature Conservancy, an NGO that focuses on preserving land and waters throughout the nation.

Nags Head woods is located between Jockey’s Ridge and Run Hill, two large living dunes. The presence of these dunes is extremely important for the persistence and formation of the woods. They provide a buffer for both wind and salt spray that allows for sensitive vegetation to colonize and grow in these woods. At one point in the wood’s history, the land was planned to be developed into a subdivision, but after that fell through, the land was donated to the Nature Conservancy. Now it provides cleared hiking trails and viewing stations that people can easily access for both recreational and scientific work.

After the orientation, Julia, our resident Nags Head Woods aficionado, had us collect a few wildlife cameras that she had deployed as part of her internship. These wildlife cameras had collected no photos since she had deployed them so we decided to move them northward in hopes that these new locations would boast some interesting photos; Julia has made it clear that she has more than enough pictures of squirrels so we’re really hoping for a coyote or possum. Fingers crossed!

Holly White is the Leslie Knope of Nags Head

If you read the title of this blog post and didn’t get the reference – I highly recommend you check out the show Parks and Recreation immediately. It’s a about a lovable group of local government employees who work in the Parks and Recreation department in their town hall and make dreams come true.  Not only is it prime entertainment, but you might end up learning a little bit about the workings of local government while you watch!

While we’re on the subject of lovable government employees, it seems fitting to introduce some of Nags Head’s newest interns: Erika Munshi (me!) and Viktor Agabekov! But we’re not just any interns, we’re working in the world-renowned Nags Head Planning Department! And just like in Parks and Rec, the department wouldn’t run without the oversight of a brilliant leader like Leslie Knope. In our case, this fearless leader is Holly White – Principal Town Planner and our mentor for the semester!

Holly’s ongoing projects include creating a comprehensive town plan called FOCUS Nags Head and putting together a Coastal Resiliency Plan called VCAPS (Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenarios) <- feel free to click on either project to learn more!

Over the past few months, we’ve been able to dive in to both the FOCUS Nags Head project and VCAPS by doing research, consulting  experts, and talking to residents. We’ve also been analyzing the proposed FEMA flood maps and groundtruthing flood damage from past storms in order to see which neighborhoods and properties may be affected by a change in flood zones.

In addition to our work with FOCUS and VCAPS, we are also working with Andrea Hitt from the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island to put together some messaging to send out to both permanent and temporary residents to inform them on how they can make their home more resilient.

Overall, my internship experience at the Town of Nags Head has been incredibly informative. Not only have I been able to better understand how local government works, but I’ve been able to work on a project that will help communities all over North Carolina’s  coast better prepare for sea level rise and increased storm events. I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity and I’m looking forward to the rest of the semester!

The OBX Ghost Town

Last week we had our very last Capstone retreat. This time it was a day long journey south down the outer banks to the little town of Ocracoke and beyond. Along the way were stops at the Hatteras Lighthouse, the Orange Blossom Cafe (we couldn’t miss the infamously huge apple uglies), and NCCAT building in Ocracoke. But the main reason, at least in my view, for trek down south was across the Ocracoke inlet in the abandoned town of Portsmouth, NC.

Courtesy of our friend Alton of NCCAT, we were able make the trek over to the deserted island on a rattling old boat. Lindsay of course had made sure we were prepared, and then some, for the conditions on the island but everyone had just assumed that it was not nearly as bad as she described. After all, how could there be any mosquitos at the end of October, even if it is the Outer Banks?

So we arrive, having no real idea of what we are going to find on this island we didn’t know existed before last week. As we approached the village, one major characteristic stuck out; every building in the area were still in great condition. No one had lived there in over 40 years, but the park service had kept up the appearances of the place for visitors like us. Of course we understood the reasoning for the upkeep, as it was a very historically significant place, but at the same time it seemed to be some post-apocalyptic scene out of a TV show. The pristine graveyards definitely did not help the matter as well. All I could think about while entering the town was what it was like at night, and whether or not the ghosts that inevitably lived here were friendly.

And right on queue, I got dragged back to reality by mosquitos the size of quarters and a grin of Lindsay’s face that screamed, “I told you so”. We pressed on through the town and then into the woods following some trail that we had seen Alton disappear down. Finally we arrived at the life saving station, and realize that yes, this place can indeed get more creepy. An empty house full of replica lifesaving equipment was just the thing to get my mind going again. We went up to the top of the station where Alton had just cleared of wasps with nothing but a hat and took in the view of the whole island. The place was both beautiful and scary at the same time.

We stayed up there for a while, but eventually came down in order to make it back in time for the ferry. The boat ride went back as I sat back thinking about how lucky I am to be out here seeing things like this. We continued to do other things for the rest of the day, including doing actual Capstone work, but I was thinking the whole time when I’ll be able to spend the night in Portsmouth and see if my imagination was right.

 

Even a hurricane has a silver lining

Life at the Outer Banks is remarkably different from Chapel Hill.  The people are more laid back.  The seasons change more slowly.  And you learn to accept nature, and whatever it might throw at you, as part of your daily life.  I realized coming in that storms had always been a part of this area’s history, and that we might experience them since we’re here during hurricane season.  But major storms don’t happen here often, and since there was one five years ago, there couldn’t be another this year, right?

About two weeks before Fall Break, my assumption was proven wrong.  Hurricane Matthew, which peaked at a Category 4 in the Caribbean, was predicted to strike our coast and hang around a while before turning east.  We were advised to head inland for a couple days to wait it out and return for a full week of work before Fall Break week so we would lose as few valuable class days as possible.

Unfortunately, high rivers and extensive flooding in the flat coastal area kept us away for six days, with many of us staying in Chapel Hill in an awkward limbo between off-site work and early break.  We all figured we’d have a lot of ground to make up in both class and Capstone work with all the time lost.  And maybe for your typical college classes, it would have been a loss.  But the classes here work pretty much the same way everything else does, surviving and adapting to whatever nature throws at them.

Crews wasting no time fixing up the beach.
Crews wasting no time fixing up the beach.

After returning, we immediately began making up lost classes outside the classroom, discussing the hurricane’s impacts on both the environment and culture of the place while seeing firsthand how the infrastructure was being rebuilt.  Trips to Nags Head Woods and the Kitty Hawk beach accesses showed us exactly how badly the environment had been damaged, but also exactly why this place is so enduring and resilient.

The whole environment seemed a little different, maybe a little more fall-like, after the weather settled down.  New insects and birds appeared, and the plants seemed spurred into rapid change after the relative drought we had up until the storm.  The experience was a great example of why adaptability is so important here, and how even a hurricane can have some positives if you get used to taking what nature gives you.

Water so high it's crowding the wetland.
Water so high it’s crowding the wetland.
Definitely hadn't seen any of these before the storm/
Definitely hadn’t seen any of these before the storm.

Nest or N.E.S.T. ?

When I first came to the Outer Banks in August, I was not sure what to expect. I have grown up surrounded by water, both in Long Island, New York, and in Swansboro, North Carolina, but I had never been on the coast solely for education. So much has changed since I arrived in August, and chasing degraded  sea turtle corpses stuck in the surf now seems completely normal.

As a part of my internship, which I’ll talk more about in a future blog post, I work with an organization called the Network of Endangered Sea Turtles (N.E.S.T.). The non-profit group is devoted to the protection of sea turtles as well as other marine animal’s habitats. My first experience with N.E.S.T. was supposed to be a nest excavation since the turtles had hatched days before; however, I received a call on my way to Southern Shores that there was a report of a live stranded dolphin in Nags Head. img_9391I decided I would stop off in Nags Head since it was on my way, and when I arrived on the beach I walked for about half a mile until I reached a group of people. They were all surrounding this distressed spotted dolphin, who was up on the sand. Two girls were trying to calm the animal and keep him comfortable, and I quickly joined in and followed instructions. The plan was to keep the animal calm and comfortable until the biologist, my internship mentor, arrived. Onlookers would ask questions about what was going on, and we made sure they were informed of the situation. A N.E.S.T. volunteer explained that, when a dolphin comes onto shore, there is a chance that their organs were ruptured from the waves, meaning the animal would need to be euthanized. When my mentor arrived, she had the N.E.S.T. volunteers bring the dolphin further up the beach.  The dolphin at hand was convulsing and curling its tail, which let my mentor know that the dolphin was sick and needed to be euthanized. She administered a vile into the animal, and I took notes on the reaction of the animal and its movements during the final moments of its life. We later took the deceased dolphin to a separate location where it would be measured and put in a freezer so that it could be transported to UNC Wilmington for educational and research purposes.

The next big move for me with N.E.S.T. involved the degraded leatherback sea turtle corpse that I mentioned earlier. My internship mentor asked me if I wanted to see something stinky, and naturally I was up for the challenge. I had to retrieve a muscle sample from this degraded mess of sea turtle and put it in a vile of alcohol. My mentor sent me alone to meet up with some lifeguards to retrieve the muscle sample. We struggled at first to bring the turtle onto shore since the corpse kept breaking apart. However, the afternoon ended successfully, and we were able to finally retrieve a muscle sample.

I’ve done other things with N.E.S.T. since being here, and I finally got to do a turtle excavation, but these two activities were my favorite and really made an impression on me. I am really excited to graduate in December, but I would not want to be doing anything different for my last semester at UNC Chapel Hill.

Hands On Learning At The Outer Banks Field Site

The day to day routine of shuffling around from lecture hall to lecture hall at UNC-Chapel Hill can get old really quick. While lectures are an important part of the learning experience, after a year of the same old same old, I was ready to take a break from the norm and escape the traditional classroom setting. So I came to the Outer Banks.

Thus far, I have not been disappointed by my choice. The learning experience is exactly what I had hoped it would be. Instead of being stuck in a classroom for five days a week, we are often out and about, exploring the Outer Banks and learning about the coast.

Just a few weeks ago, Lindsay held ecology class outside. And what’s a better place to learn about estuarine systems than right outside of CSI, surrounded by marshland?

Views from the third floor of CSI
View from the third floor of CSI

Lectures can oftentimes become disengaging when your instructors seem to be talking about abstract topics that are hard to visualize. Thankfully, at the Outer Banks field site, the course material is right outside the window.

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Lindsay trekking through the mud to show us various plant species

During her lesson on estuarine systems, Lindsay was able to first explain the adaptations that plants have to the conditions they are in, and then we all walked a hundred feet away and she showed us.

All in all, I have learned about as much outside of the classroom as I have inside, and that is how I like it. Getting outside and observing nature allows me to focus better in class, and really get the most out of my in-class experiences. Andy wasn’t lying when he said that the Outer Banks field site was different from all the other field sites. It is truly a unique, hands on experience that is very intellectually satisfying, and most importantly, fun.