Meeting Bill Mitsch, Naples botanical gardens and the invasive species talk- March 3rd.

Meeting Bill Mitsch

Temperature: 29 degrees, mainly cloudy

                                                                                                                                                  

Dr. William 'Bill' Mitch is one of the world's most foremost minds in wetland ecology and biogeochemistry. I was really excited to hear that we were getting a private audience with Dr. Mitsch and he gave us a very interesting lecture at he Everglades Wetlands Research Park. His talk centered primarily on Phosphorous (problems in freshwater), Nitrogen (problems in coastal waters) and Carbon (problems in the atmosphere) and the issues each of them can cause. He related these problems to climate change and sea level change. In regard to climate change he revealed a very interesting fact in regard to the increasing temperature we are experiencing worldwide, This fact was that temperature has increased by 0.85 degrees Celsius from 1880-2012. You would not be blamed for thinking this isn't that big of a change but you would be very surprised how big of an impact this can have. In regard to sea level change he also had some very startling stats. From 1901-2010 sea level had risen 1.7mm a year on average. To put this in context it has been rising by a foot each century and 1.2 inches per decade. The average rate of ice lost from 1971-2010 has been 226 x 10 to the power of 9 tonnes per year.

Bill also went into great detail into the increasing level of carbon found in the atmosphere with a major comparison in Carbon dioxide levels in 1958 and 2010. To obtain fair results both test would have been taken during the same season due to photosynthesis and respiration (oscillation etc.). Bill also stressed the importance of using wetlands to tackle these issues as it one of the best natural environments of long term storage of Carbon dioxide.

Carbon sequestration
Carbon sequestration is described as the amount of Carbon that stays in the soil and Bill emphasised the importance of this by telling us that 220,000 tonnes of Carbon are sequestered annually from the atmosphere in Florida. As most wetlands are Carbon dioxide sinks their role in emitting Methane gases have less of an impact as Methane decays in the atmosphere unlike Carbon dioxide. The importance of mangroves in Florida's wetlands can not be underrated as one Florida mangrove carbon sequestration is equal carbon emission of roughly 11,000 cars. For this reason, the Florida mangrove is now heavily protected whereas before many were destroyed due to development.

Naples Botanical Gardens

Just a small glimpse of the lovely scenery the gardens had to offer

I found the Naples Botanical Gardens to be really fun and interesting as it offered a variety of native and non-native plant species and the place was designed beautifully. There was such a wide variety of plants on show I could hardly keep track! Plants ranged from ones seen in Florida to more exotic ones from Asia, Australia and other parts of America. Royal palm (Roystonea regia), Royal Fern (Osmunda regalis), Sabal palm (Sabal palmetto), Florida Peperomia (Peperomia obtusifolia) and of course the Red Mangrove (Rhizophora mangle), Black Mangrove (Avicennia germinans) and the White Mangrove (Laguncularia racemosa) are all examples of plants seen in Florida which were on display in the botanical garden.

Red Mangrove spotted at the right of a bridge in the gardens.

I felt like this deserved a mention!

Non-native plants I saw while walking through the gardens included the Queensland bottle tree (Branchychiton rupestris-native to Australia), Flame of the forest (Butea Monosperma-native to Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Malaysia and India), Screw Pine (Pandanus-native to Madagascar) and Thai Bangor (Lagerstroemia loudonni var. rosea Lythraceae-Tropical Asia-Australia).







I found the Butterfly Garden to be one of the highlights here with some of the butterflies displaying beautiful colours and patterns.

Spicebush Swallowtail- Papilio troilus

Invasive species talk-'when nature bites back'

Before the invasive species talk (back at the Everglades Wetlands Research Park)we met up with Wynn just before to have the fourth ever recorded tailgate for a science seminar according to Wynn which was really fun! Dr. David M. Lodge of the University of Notre Dame was the guest speaker. I found it funny yet eye-opening when he described planes as flying zoos and ships as floating ones transporting non-native species around the world. The talk was primarily centered around combatting expenses which are caused by invasive species

Kudzu and the Kudzu bug

There was some fantastic examples of invasive species and specific figures as to their impact on an ecological and/or social scale. A great example of this is Kudzu (Pueraria), which was introduced in the 1930s to control soil erosion as it is a legume and fixes Nitrogen (through use of Rhizobium bacteria in root nodules). However, the Kudzu plant proved to be more harmful than helpful as it smothered almost all vegetation around it and began to spread through climate change. The Kudzu bug (Megacopta cribraria) was introduced in 2009 but although it eats Kudzu it also eats soy bean which has been very costly for agriculture.

Emerald ash borer, Zebra + Quagga mussels
Other interesting and costly invasive species included the Emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis), who is expected to kill almost all ash trees in the U.S. Zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) and Quagga mussels (Dreissena bugensis) have cost 150 million dollars worth of damage in Great lakes. The damage is mainly caused by plugging pipes (shuts down power plants) and by decreasing tourism as they make for unattractive beaches. Boats helped to spread the mussels spread across the country

The conclusion of the talk was that many of the invasive species are irreversible and exponential and a rational approach is necessary to address it. Methods of prevention included species profiling, increasing risk assessment on species with a growing population and water treatment. The best method of detection is to analyse the DNA of a species to determine whether it is invasive.