But new research shows a troubling bottleneck that could threaten these efforts: U.S. tree nurseries don’t grow close to enough trees — nor have the species diversity needed — to meet ambitious plans.

The study was published in the journal Bioscience on July 31, 2023.

Seedling Scarcity

“Trees are this amazing natural solution to a lot of our challenges, including climate change. We urgently need to plant many millions of them,” says University of Vermont scientist Tony D’Amato who co-led the new research. “But what this paper points out is that we are woefully underserved by any kind of regional or national scale inventory of seedlings to get the job done.”

A team of 13 scientists, led by D’Amato and UVM post-doctoral scientist Peter Clark, studied 605 plant nurseries across twenty northern states. Only 56 of these grow and sell seedlings in the volumes needed for conservation and reforestation and only 14 of them were government-operated, they report. The team was more dismayed to discover an “overwhelming scarcity of seedlings,” they write, from different species and “seed collection zones” — trees adapted to local conditions and climate. In essence, forest nurseries tended to maintain a limited inventory of a select few species, electing to prioritize those valued for commercial timber production over species required for conservation, ecological restoration, or climate adaptation. Moreover, many areas had no locally adapted tree stock available.  And within the seedlings available, there were not enough types of trees and “future-climate-suitable” genetics to meet goals for conservation and forest restoration in a hot future.

“The world is thinking about a warming climate — can we plant towards that warming climate? We know we’re losing ecologically important species across North America and around the world. So, the goal is: can we restore these trees or replace them with similar species? It’s a powerful idea,” says UVM’s Peter Clark, the lead author on the new study. “But — despite the excitement and novelty of that idea in many policy and philanthropy circles — when push comes to shove, it’s very challenging on the ground to actually find either the species or the seed sources needed.”

“The number of seedlings is a challenge,” Clark says, “but finding the diversity we need to restore ecologically complex forests — not just a few industrial workhorse species commonly used for commercial timber operations, like white pine — is an even bigger bottleneck.”

One extreme example is red spruce. This ecologically important species along hundreds of miles of eastern North America has been under stress for decades from climate change, pests, and land clearing. Yet, in their 20-state survey, the team only found two tree nurseries that had inventory of red spruce, a species from which many millions of seedlings are needed to meet restoration goals. “Remarkably, only 800 red spruce seedlings were commercially available for purchase in 2022,” the team reports in their new Bioscience study, ” — enough to reforest less than one hectare.”

“It really points to just how bare the cupboard is when it comes to the diversity of options,” says Tony D’Amato, director of the Forestry Program in UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, “but also the quantity that’s needed to make any meaningful impact.”

Increased Investment

The team argues that dramatic increases in both seedling production and diversity at many regional nurseries will be central to any successful campaign to address climate change with tree planting. However, the novelty and risk involved, “likely generates uncertainty among forest nurseries, hampering investment,” they write. This appears to be especially true in regions, like the Northeast, where nurseries have declined over recent decades, the study reports, and where speculative investment — in growing new, future-climate-adapted, non-timber species and seedlots — may carry high financial risk.

Additionally, seedlings brought in from outside a region may be less likely to succeed. The new study reports that the vast majority (80%) of seedlings in the northern states, where the study was conducted, are produced in the North Central states — and very few in the Northeastern states. “Such concentration of production will hinder tree planting efforts,” they write, “because species and seed sources likely originate from similar geographic or bioclimatic zones.” On top of this challenge, seedlings are sensitive to stress. A misalignment between when seedlings are available — say in a southern nursery months before northern soils are frost free — and when they are needed, may doom their chances.

The team of researchers — including scientists from UVM; the USDA’s Northern Forest Research Stations in Minnesota, Michigan and New Hampshire; Minnesota Department of Natural Resources; Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources; Michigan Department of Natural Resources; University of Minnesota; the USDA’s Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science; and The Nature Conservancy (Albany, NY) — recommend a series of improvements from improved policy and financing to better training and expanded research.

For example, today government agencies, such as the US Forest Service and many US state governments, lack clear policies about the movement of tree species and tree genetics. They often rely on seed zones established in the 1970s based on historical climate conditions, not future ones — even though up-to-date guidelines for moving species under a warming climate are becoming available. Additionally, much forest policy and research has been framed around species important for timber production — rather than efforts to diversify species and climate-adapted seed-sourcing.

The team of scientists suggest that expanded federal and state investment will be needed to boost both public tree nurseries and seed collection efforts. “This strategy may stimulate production from private nurseries once a stable demand is apparent,” they write. In 2023, the federal government made an investment of $35 million in expanding federal nursery capacity. “However, given the existing (and growing) reforestation backlog, declines in nursery infrastructure, and complex needs for diverse seeds and seedlings, it is likely that substantially more public investment in the form of grants, loans, and cost-share programs will be needed to reinvigorate, diversify, and expand forest nurseries,” they write.

“People want trillions of trees,” says the University of Vermont’s Peter Clark, “but often, on the ground, it’s one old farmer walking around to collect acorns. There’s a massive disconnect.”

Welcome to the hottest part of summer, when the heat and smoke season may have you looking at your yard and thinking that it’s time to upgrade from gas lawn equipment to electric, or to go back to manual tools. Tobie Stanger, a senior editor at Consumer Reports, joins the conversation to talk about the independent, nonprofit product review site’s decision to endorse electric lawn equipment, especially for smaller lawns. According to the National Resources Defense Council, gas mowers, edgers, trimmers, and blowers are noisy, and their two-stroke engines pollute 20 to 300 times more than a car per hour of operation. A 2011 Environmental Protection Agency report concluded that gas lawn equipment emits large amounts of three volatile organic compounds that are known carcinogens, benzene, 1,3 butadiene, and formaldehyde. The environment and our neighborhoods would be better off without gas-powered lawn equipment.

Tobie has covered appliances, generators, lawnmowers, and much more for more than 30 years and is one of the most tuned-in observers of the electrification of consumer products. We’ll find out why Consumer Reports concludes that gas yard equipment still has the advantage in some cases and explore the key features and functionality to look for when choosing electric alternatives to polluting gas equipment. Check out the electric yard equipment brands she discusses when shopping, including Ryobi, Kobalt, Stihl, Greenworks, Husquarvana, and EGO. To find a collection of Consumer Reports reviews of electric lawn tools, visit Gas vs. Electric Lawn Mower: Which Is Better? (membership is required to see product ratings).

Climate change is expected to have a major impact on species around the world, especially endangered species, which are already rare. A majority of the organisms listed under the Endangered Species Act are plants and lichen, and yet the risk that climate change poses to endangered plants has not been systematically evaluated in over a decade.

To address this gap, Wrobleski’s team adapted existing assessment tools used to examine the threat of climate change for wild animals and applied them to 771 listed plant species. Specifically, they evaluated how sensitive the listed plants and lichens were to climate change, if climate change was recognized as a threat for each species and if actions were underway to address the threat.

The researchers discovered that all listed plant and lichen species are at least slightly threatened by climate change. While a majority of the documentation for these species recognized climate change as a threat, there were few actions being taken to protect the listed species.

While acknowledging the threat that climate change poses to rare plants is an important first step, direct action must be taken to ensure the recovery of many of these species, the team concludes. As conditions continue to shift over the next century, clear and focused objectives will become even more vital for successful species recovery. They urge that their findings be used to aid in conservation planning for endangered plants and lichens, and to inform future recommendations for listing species and planning their recovery.

The authors add: “We evaluated the conservation plans for all endangered plant and lichen species listed in the Endangered Species Act and found that while climate change is recognized as a threat to the species, few conservation plans include actions to address climate change directly. Climate change will not only impact the lives of people, but also rare and endangered species and the ecosystems we interact with every day.”

In mid-June, a team of freshwater researchers spent their nights drifting down Alaska’s Yukon River in an area that straddles the Arctic Circle. The hydrologists were using a GPS unit installed on their boat to measure the slope of the river at the same time that the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite passed overhead, collecting its own data on the waterway. The midnight rendezvous were part of a larger effort by ocean and freshwater scientists to validate the measurements from the recently launched spacecraft, which begins science operations Tuesday, July 25.

A collaboration between NASA and the French space agency, CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), SWOT is measuring the height of nearly all water on Earth’s surface and will provide one of the most detailed, comprehensive views yet of the planet’s ocean and fresh water. The mission will address some of the most pressing climate change questions of our time, offering insights into areas including how a warming world is accelerating Earth’s water cycle, leading to more volatile precipitation patterns. SWOT will also help researchers better understand how climate change affects water storage in lakes, rivers, and reservoirs, and how communities can better manage water resources and prepare for floods and other disasters.

But first, the mission needed to ensure the accuracy of its data. “If I want to monitor my weight, I wouldn’t want to buy a scale that has an uncertainty of 20 pounds – that wouldn’t be useful,” said Jinbo Wang, SWOT oceanography field campaign lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Shortly after the spacecraft’s December 2022 launch, science and engineering teams began what’s known as calibration and validation. Calibration involved ensuring SWOT’s software and hardware – including its main scientific instrument, the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) and its antenna – operate as designed.

“There are things we can model on the computer about how the spacecraft will behave in space before we launch it,” said JPL’s Curtis Chen, U.S. calibration-validation lead for SWOT. “But there are things we can’t predict about SWOT’s behavior until it’s in space, so we adjust things as necessary once the satellite’s in orbit.”

“Because of the novelty of SWOT’s measurements, we kept the satellite in a dedicated calibration-validation orbit for six months before moving it into to its operational, science orbit,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, SWOT program scientist and manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This opportunity mobilized the global community of water scientists to head out to sea, land, and air in campaigns from Australia to Alaska, helping NASA and CNES validate the new measurements from SWOT.”

By Land

During SWOT’s validation phase, dozens of research teams headed into the field to measure water levels and the slope of rivers. For the ocean, teams looked at sea surface height.

“We’ve been installing instruments called water level loggers that measure how water levels go up and down,” said Tamlin Pavelsky, the NASA freshwater science lead for SWOT at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Pavelsky directed teams that went to New Zealand’s Waimakariri River and the Yukon River in Alaska.

In addition, teams sampled freshwater bodies in Connecticut, Canada, and France, among other locations. They wanted to survey the types of lakes and rivers they expect SWOT to measure, and to sample freshwater bodies in areas that intersect with the satellite’s orbit to compare measurements from the ground and from space.

The calibration-validation data on rivers and lakes from SWOT looked good. “We were expecting to be able to measure rivers wider than 100 meters, but there are cases where we can see things as narrow as 50 meters, and sometimes as narrow as 20 meters,” said Pavelsky.

By Sea

SWOT sea level measurements were also promising when compared with ocean sampling data. “My fear before launch was that we were going to get a lot of surprises in the data because SWOT is unlike anything that we’ve done before,” said Chen. But that hasn’t been the case.

Researchers used two approaches to measure sea levels: airborne- and ship-deployed sensors. Using an airplane-mounted lidar instrument, the team collected sea level information in a manner similar to how SWOT takes measurements. This provided the most direct comparison between data from the field and the satellite.

The team also collected temperature and salinity data that can reveal ocean features – like internal waves and currents – that drive sea level changes. They deployed temperature and salinity sensors on 11 moorings roughly 200 miles (300 kilometers) off California’s central coast. And they used 11 autonomous underwater robots – some of which were also collecting data for a separate NASA project called the Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment.

These efforts are key because as analysis methods improve and researchers find new questions to answer using SWOT data, the measurements will help to gauge their accuracy. “It’s our benchmark data,” said Pavelsky. “It will be important for years to come.”

More About the SWOT Mission

SWOT was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the KaRIn instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. CNES provided the Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations. CSA provided the KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly. NASA provided the launch vehicle and the agency’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center, managed the associated launch services.

To learn more about SWOT, visit:

https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/

News Media Contacts

Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874

[email protected] / [email protected]

During his career, Franklin printed nearly 2,500,000 money notes for the American Colonies using what the researchers have identified as highly original techniques, as reported in a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research team, led by Khachatur Manukyan, an associate research professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has spent the past seven years analyzing a trove of nearly 600 notes from the Colonial period, which is part of an extensive collection developed by the Hesburgh Libraries’ Rare Books and Special Collections. The Colonial notes span an 80-year period and include notes printed by Franklin’s network of printing shops and other printers, as well as a series of counterfeit notes.

Manukyan explained that the effort to print money for the fledgling Colonial monetary system was important to Franklin not just as a printer but as a statesman as well.

“Benjamin Franklin saw that the Colonies’ financial independence was necessary for their political independence. Most of the silver and gold coins brought to the British American colonies were rapidly drained away to pay for manufactured goods imported from abroad, leaving the Colonies without sufficient monetary supply to expand their economy,” Manukyan said.

However, one major problem stood in the way of efforts to print paper money: counterfeiting. When Franklin opened his printing house in 1728, paper money was a relatively new concept. Unlike gold and silver, paper money’s lack of intrinsic value meant it was constantly at risk of depreciating. There were no standardized bills in the Colonial period, leaving an opportunity for counterfeiters to pass off fake bills as real ones. In response, Franklin worked to embed a suite of security features that made his bills distinctive.

“To maintain the notes’ dependability, Franklin had to stay a step ahead of counterfeiters,” said Manukyan. “But the ledger where we know he recorded these printing decisions and methods has been lost to history. Using the techniques of physics, we have been able to restore, in part, some of what that record would have shown.”

Manukyan and his team employed cutting-edge spectroscopic and imaging instruments housed in the Nuclear Science Laboratory and four Notre Dame research core facilities: the Center for Environmental Science and Technology, the Integrated Imaging Facility, the Materials Characterization Facility and the Molecular Structure Facility. The tools enabled them to get a closer look than ever at the inks, paper and fibers that made Franklin’s bills distinctive and hard to replicate.

One of the most distinctive features they found was in Franklin’s pigments. Manukyan and his team determined the chemical elements used for each item in Notre Dame’s collection of Colonial notes. The counterfeits, they found, have distinctive high quantities of calcium and phosphorus, but these elements are found only in traces in the genuine bills.

Their analyses revealed that although Franklin used (and sold) “lamp black,” a pigment created by burning vegetable oils, for most printing, Franklin’s printed currency used a special black dye made from graphite found in rock. This pigment is also different from the “bone black” made from burned bone, which was favored both by counterfeiters and by those outside Franklin’s network of printing houses.

Another of Franklin’s innovations was in the paper itself. The invention of including tiny fibers in paper pulp — visible as pigmented squiggles within paper money — has often been credited to paper manufacturer Zenas Marshall Crane, who introduced this practice in 1844. But Manukyan and his team found evidence that Franklin was including colored silks in his paper much earlier.

The team also discovered that notes printed by Franklin’s network have a distinctive look due to the addition of a translucent material they identified as muscovite. The team determined that Franklin began adding muscovite to his papers and the size of this muscovite crystals in his paper increased over time. The team speculates that Franklin initially began adding muscovite to make the printed notes more durable but continued to add it when it proved to be a helpful deterrent to counterfeiters.

Manukyan said that it is unusual for a physics lab to work with rare and archival materials, and this posed special challenges.

“Few scientists are interested in working with materials like these. In some cases, these bills are one-of-a-kind. They must be handled with extreme care, and they cannot be damaged. Those are constraints that would turn many physicists off to a project like this,” he said.

But for him, the project is a testament to the value of interdisciplinary work.

“We were fortunate to have student researchers on this project with interests both in physics as well as in history and art conservation. And the core research facilities as well as the Rare Books and Special Collections team were incredible research partners. Without an uncommon level of collaboration across disciplines, our discoveries would not have been possible.”

Two major components of the NISAR satellite have been combined to create a single spacecraft in Bengaluru, India. Set to launch in early 2024, NISAR – short for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar – is being jointly developed by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO, to track movements of Earth’s land and ice surfaces in extremely fine detail. As NISAR monitors nearly every part of our planet at least once every 12 days, the satellite will also help scientists understand, among other observables, the dynamics of forests, wetlands, and agricultural lands.

About the size of an SUV and partially wrapped in gold-colored thermal blanketing, the satellite’s cylindrical radar instrument payload contains two radar systems. The S-band radar is particularly useful for monitoring crop structure and the roughness of land and ice surfaces, while the L-band instrument can penetrate denser forest canopies to study the woody trunks of trees, among other observables. The wavelengths of the S-band and L-band signals are about 4 inches (10 centimeters) and 10 inches (25 centimeters), respectively, and both sensors can see through clouds and collect data day and night.

The payload took a roundabout journey to get to this point. The S-band radar was built at the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad in western India, then flown in March 2021 to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where engineers had been developing NISAR’s L-band radar. At JPL, the two systems were fixed to the payload’s barrel-like frame before being flown to the U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru in March 2023.

In the meantime, engineers and technicians at URSC, collaborating with teams from JPL, were busy developing the spacecraft’s main body, or bus, which is covered in blue blanketing that protects it during assembly and testing prior to launch. The bus, which includes components and systems developed by both ISRO and JPL, will provide power, navigation, pointing control, and communications for the mission.

Since the radar payload and bus were joined in a URSC clean room in mid-June, NASA and ISRO teams have been working together to route thousands of feet of cabling between them. Still to be attached: the satellite’s solar panels, as well as the drum-shaped, wire-mesh reflector that will unfold from the end of a 30-foot (9-meter) boom. At nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter, the reflector will be largest radar antenna of its kind ever launched into space.

The NISAR satellite is currently undergoing performance testing, to be followed by several rounds of environmental testing to ensure it can withstand the rigors of launch and meet all of its operational requirements once in orbit. Then it will be transported about 220 miles (350 kilometers) eastward to Satish Dhawan Space Centre, where it will be inserted into its launch fairing, mounted atop ISRO’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark II rocket, and sent into low Earth orbit.

More About the Mission

NISAR is an equal collaboration between NASA and ISRO and marks the first time the two agencies have cooperated on hardware development for an Earth-observing mission. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of the project and is providing the mission’s L-band SAR. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. URSC, which is leading the ISRO component of the mission, is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR electronics, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations.

To learn more about NISAR, visit:

https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/

News Media Contacts

Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307

[email protected] / [email protected]

The European Union continues to be exposed to thousands of invasive alien species — harmful species introduced by humans from outside of their natural habitat. The EU is particularly vulnerable because the region’s volume of economic activity via trade and the transportation of goods increases the risks of biological invasions, according to the study published in Environmental Sciences Europe.

Most invasive alien species are not adequately assessed for their actual and potential economic impacts therefore most cost estimates are grossly underestimated, say the researchers. To fill this gap, the team quantified the economic costs of biological invasions to the European Union, while estimating future invasion costs using predictive models.

Costs potentially 501% higher than previously recorded

Their findings are alarming — of the approximately 13,000 invasive alien species known to have established populations in the European Union, only 259 (around 1%) have reported costs, showing substantial knowledge gaps in cost assessments regionally. The researchers’ models projected unreported costs to be potentially 501% higher than currently recorded, reaching a staggering €26.64 billion (US$28.0 billion) in the European Union, led by countries such as Lithuania, Malta, and Czech Republic.

The study’s projections for future estimates revealed a substantial increase in costs, with estimates soaring to more than €142.73 billion (US$150 billion) by 2040 in the absence of effective management.

“Our study reveals a shocking underestimation of the economic costs of biological invasions in the European Union. These costs are not only a huge burden for the European Union’s economy, but also jeopardise the ecological balance and well-being of societies,” says lead author Morgane Henry, a PhD student under the supervision of McGill University Professor Brian Leung.

“It is imperative that we take immediate action to enhance cost reporting, identify the most concerning economic impacts, and work together on a global scale to address the threat posed by invasive alien species,” she adds.

The researchers warn that policymakers, scientists, and stakeholders should take heed of the implications of the study and collaborate to protect ecosystems, safeguard biodiversity, and ensure the well-being of communities. Otherwise, biological invasions will create an insurmountable financial burden unless the EU and its governments take swift action to address the devastating ecological impact that’s happening.

“The costs are potentially huge, but in most cases we just don’t know. Notably, our fivefold increase in cost estimates included only 1% of species with existing data, by extrapolating to other countries where they are known to have invaded, but where costs have not been estimated yet. We don’t know about the other 99% of the species,” says Professor Brian Leung of McGill University’s Department of Biology.

Few experiences in life are as carefree as a day at the beach. But carefreeness can cross the line into carelessness. And careless beachgoers can really hurt the seaside they enjoy so much. Taking care of the beach where you play doesn’t have to be a buzzkill. With a little bit of planning and basic respect, you can pull an environmental-themed beach read from your sustainable beach bag and relax into a better day at the beach.

Beach Ecosystems

Even if a beach looks like no more than a deserted stretch of sand, it is actually a living ecosystem. Beaches are liminal areas where multiple systems come together and can be incredibly rich with biodiversity. But crowded, heavily developed beaches can affect the water quality and sea life right offshore. Beaches are subject to degradation from erosion, which occurs primarily through development and storms. Heavy traffic and irresponsible behavior can contribute to erosion as well. Sand and water can become contaminated with chemical and plastic pollution released upstream or at the beach. Sea animals, as well as creatures living in the intertidal zone and on land near the water can also be harmed directly by the actions of people visiting the area.

Before You Go

Your actions at home – even if you live far inland – can affect coastal ecosystems. Chemical pollution washes down from inland watersheds, so reconsider your fertilizer and pesticide use. Wash your car at the car wash instead of in the driveway. If you change your own oil, collect and recycle it properly.

Plastic litter – including PPE and cigarette butts, as well as water bottles and other packaging – travels great distances to reach the sea. There it collects on beaches and washes into the ocean where it forms massive garbage gyres and harms wildlife. Try to eliminate single-use plastics from your home and pick up plastic litter wherever you see it.

Better at the Beach

Driving on the beach can cause erosion. In most places it is illegal, but even in the few places where it is allowed, don’t drive on the beach. Similarly, if a beach area has designated paths, stay on them – they are there for a reason and may be protecting nests or unstable soils. Don’t step on plants or pull grasses that grow on the beach, as their roots help stabilize the sand.

Unless your car is leaking oil in the parking lot, chemical sunscreen is the main chemical pollutant emitted by beachgoers. An estimated 14,000 tons of sunscreen enter the oceans every year.  Chemicals used in sunscreen include suspected carcinogens. Besides the potential harm to the person wearing sunscreen, chemicals in sunscreen are toxic to sea life and contribute to coral reef bleaching. Hawaii has banned the sale of sunscreen containing the coral-harming chemicals oxybenzone and octinoxate. Even if you don’t have a ticket to Hawaii, choosing a Hawaii-approved reef-safe sunscreen is a good idea.

Nothing beats a picnic on the beach, but windblown plastic packaging and abandoned take-out containers can really ruin the vibe. Pack your picnic in reusable containers and take all of your garbage home with you. Garbage cans at beaches are often filled to overflowing and picked over by seagulls. This results in garbage blowing around the beach and getting washed into the water, where it eventually contributes to giant garbage gyres with sometimes devastating results for wildlife. While you’re cleaning up your own garbage, spend a few minutes picking up plastic litter from the beach before you go.

Beach Creatures

It’s natural to want to get closer to sea creatures when you find them. But wildlife at the beach, as elsewhere, does not benefit from interacting with humans. Don’t feed, handle, or chase animals you see in the water or on the beach. Don’t touch or even get close to nests of any kind, even if they are not currently occupied because you can introduce pathogens. Try not to damage any tracks you see on the beach, especially turtle tracks, which provide information to researchers.

Follow all fishing and clamming regulations to avoid overharvesting. Don’t take home small animals like crabs for the same reason. And even though driftwood and seashells make great souvenirs, it’s better to leave all natural materials where you found them. They are part of the ecosystem, and even though a few seashells won’t be missed, beaches can be devastated by the loss of material when hundreds of visitors each take just a few.

If you follow these guidelines for better beach habits (and work to reduce your carbon footprint the rest of the year) you’ll be contributing to keeping the seashore beautiful for generations to come.