The Natural History of Your Place
By definition, natural history is the scientific understanding of living organisms and the natural world. Understanding our natural history is important, as it provides a key piece of the puzzle leading towards greater knowledge about our past, present and future. There are many facets within natural history, and here we observe and focus on:
- Geology of coastal environments
- Coastal environmental processes
- Coastal habitats: salt marshes, shellfish and eel grass beds, as well as watersheds and water quality.
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The Human History of Your Place
Humans have greatly impacted the earth, especially since the industrial revolution in the mid-1700s. Knowing our history is therefore important to map land and water changes and understand human development and management, and how can we make it more sustainable. Our video lectures focus on:
- Traditional uses of coastal environments
- The Boston Harbor Islands' history and protection
- The history and development of Savin Hill Cove, in Dorchester Bay MA.
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How Healthy is Your Living Environment?
Our environments are susceptible to change, both natural and anthropogenic (human-made). Therefore, gauging environmental health can allow us to better understand and adapt to these changes. For example, we can map and model changes in water quality and quantity, observe changes in species biodiversity and evaluate environmental health. Selected videos focus on:
- The Wellfleet Harbor Oyster restoration Project, MA
- Salt marsh restoration in Medouie Creek, Nantucket, MA
- Water quality monitoring in Folgers Marsh, Nantucket, MA
- The Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA) and their environmental programs.
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How Can We Adapt to Climate Change?
Climate change is something that we must all be aware of. Scientific understanding and discoveries surrounding anthropogenic climate change - seen with increased levels of CO2 - are leading adaptive management actions from various levels of governing bodies. The video lectures focus on:
- The LivingLabs in Wellfleet Harbor, MA
- Urban harbors: human development and missing ecological services
- The oyster reef and why is an oyster important keystone species
- The rising tides in Boston, MA.
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How Can We Scale From Local to Global to Local?
In order to know how a system works, we need to first understand its integral parts. By using the whole system approach based on biomimicry we learn from nature's wisdom. Therefore, we can use our local systems knowledge and upscale it to help provide solutions at a global systems scale. This in turn will feed help back to our local communities. Hence local to global to local!
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