Plastics Crisis – Bring your own…

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One of the biggest ways to reduce single use plastics is to remember to ‘bring your own’ more frequently. The easy ones for me are:

Bring your own water bottle. I have three different reusable water/beverage containers – stainless (although – aargh! – with some plastic in their lids). It’s very easy to refill them; lots of places have water fountains that include a bottle filler above the fountain! I even use my water bottle when I brush my teeth in hotels – avoiding a single use plastic cup that they provide.

Bring your own bag/basket. I have a collection of bags that I use for my usual shopping (square bottoms, sturdy enough to handle heavy items, easy to keep clean). I keep a canvas bag in my car and a stuff bag in my purse for ad hoc shopping. I’ve recently added a basket to my collection but haven’t quite gotten used to it. Overall – I manage to avoid single use plastic shopping bags almost completely.

Bring your own eating utensil. I am reusing a gel pin tin for carrying silverware when I travel. If I buy a fast-food salad, I can avoid the plasticware – although I haven’t figured out how to avoid the plastic container it comes in. I generally put the used forks in the ice chest and then into the dishwasher when I get home.

Bring your own bowl. I pack a glass container when I travel to Lewisville since the hotel breakfast has Styrofoam plates (the hot items are in metal trays, and the serving utensils are metal). I get my scrambled eggs and bacon in my own bowl…and use my own silverware too…..making the breakfast plastic free!

Bring your own cup. When I travel in the wintertime, I bring my own ceramic cup to make hot tea (with my own tea) in the hotel microwave. The cups they provide are Styrofoam or plastic-coated paper….and more hotels have put in Keurig things which have a lot of single use plastic.

Bring your own snacks. I frequently cut up veggies or make my own chicken/egg salad and put it in my own reusable (glass) container for when I am away from home at mealtime. It does mean that I am taking an ice chest as well. During the summer – I always have an ice chest when I travel to keep food and toiletries from getting too hot!

These are just a few ideas of how ‘bring your own’ can reduce your contributions to the huge piles of single use plastics.

June Road Trip to Texas

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My road trip from Missouri to Texas (and back) in June was harder than usual. It rained for the first two hours on the way down and again when I left Lewisville the next morning!

I was looking forward to the last rest stop on the drive down at the Texas Welcome Center on US 75 – thought I would see the bluebonnet seed pods. It was not to be. They had taken out the non-woody plants to put down fresh mulch! The beautyberry was blooming and there was one clump of cone flowers. There was a large fungus growing on an old stump – an indication that the area was getting some rain.

The stand of red yuccas blooming and forming seed pods at my dad’s memory care center brightened my mood!

On the way home I stopped at a diner in McAlister for lunch – just as the rain began to move out. The piece of pie was a splurge. It looked luscious in the case….but it was frozen! Fortunately, it was a hot day so a frozen piece of pie that tasted great was OK.

On the way home I stopped at a diner in McAlister for lunch – just as the rain began to move out. The piece of pie was a splurge. It looked luscious in the case….but it was frozen! Fortunately, it was a hot day so a frozen piece of pie that tasted great was OK.

Ten Little Celebrations – June 2026

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The beginning of the month was very hectic….but I recovered in the later weeks. There was a lot to celebrate.

Violet leaves with spaghetti sauce. It’s such a joy to simply walk outside in the back yard and cut a few leaves to eat almost immediately!

Microplastics talk to Missouri Master Gardeners. The audience was not large, but they made up for it in enthusiasm. I celebrated that I’d gotten it done!

Clumps of mushrooms around native plant garden. The edges of the oak mulch are evidently perfect for mushrooms. I celebrated that they looked like a natural ‘edge’ to the bed.

Hummingbird and squirrels and chipmunk seen from my office window. Hurray! We finally have a chipmunk visiting our yard…the first time I’ve seen one here. The hummingbird is coming to our feeder regularly and the squirrels run along the fence tops and through the pine to get to the holly just out of my view.

New glasses. I celebrated new single vision glasses for distance….and really like them for driving.

Hellbender tour. The hellbender conservation lab at the St. Louis Zoo was a great opportunity to see an animal I’d heard about but never seen….and the two flamingos on nests were another sight to celebrate.

Audubon Center at Riverlands. It was too hot to truly enjoy Riverlands and confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers…but I celebrated that it will make a great birding trip for next winter.

Telecon about data centers in Missouri. I celebrated an interesting telephone conference on data centers in Missouri; I now feel more knowledgeable about the issue.

Yellow and white wildflowers between Missouri and Texas. The yellow and whites along the roadside are the colors of summer along my route…celebrating the season.

Glorious summer yard. There are so many good things happening in my yard – so many reasons to celebrate native plants!

Missouri Master Naturalist Conference Keynote

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The keynote speaker at the Missouri Master Naturalist state conference was Phil Valko – the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Sustainability at Washington University. He was an engaging speaker…starting his talk with a Missouri nature trivia quiz (number of springs and caves, etc.) and conservation history.

The major topic of the talk was sustainability at Washington University. I had already noticed the number of native plants in the areas of the campus I encountered during the conference. It was great news that they had successfully reduced the campus energy use and emissions while increasing the campus space! They have electrified their fleet and have solar panels on their charging facility.

The campus as its own thrift store to promote reuse – particularly during student move in and out at the university.

The campus also is an arboretum. It has 133 of the 153 trees native to Missouri and 63 of the 113 shrubs! The arboretum also has many non-natives….and the current logo for the arboretum features the ginkgo.

Washington University created a mobile app (Project Clean Grid) that displays a specific type of grid emissions data called marginal emissions that focus on the real-world impacts of using electricity – which power plants actually respond when you use more or less electricity and how much carbon they emit. By avoiding the dirtiest times (red and orange), high-carbon power plants run a little less. Shifting your usage to the cleanest times (green) makes use of lower-carbon power sources in your region and can even result in more renewable energy flowing onto the grid in regions with significant amounts of clean energy. I downloaded the app and have started to be more aware of the grid where I live.

Benefits of Riparian Corridor

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My second lecture session at the Missouri Master Naturalist state conference was Brian Waldrop’s Benefits of Riparian Corridor. Most of the material was not new to me,  but it was thought provoking.

There was a chart about different types of riparian corridors: forest, grassland, mixed, and wetland. I realized that the one I was most familiar with was forest (most of the time in an urban environment where the corridor was damaged by intermittent intrusion of heavy runoff that often undermined the trees. A stream in a tropical forest was shown with vegetation hanging well over the stream surface.

The wider the buffer, the greater the benefit - starting with bank stabilization and progressing to water quality, flood control, and wildlife habitat. In urban/suburban areas, we often think it is great if we can achieve bank stabilization!

It seemed logical that the type of plants found in riparian zones should be native, flood-tolerant, deep-rooted, and shade-providing. I realized that I don’t know these things about individual plant species. I tend to draw on memories of trees seen frequently along rivers in Maryland and in Missouri – like American sycamores!

The talk ended with some charts about good reverences. I am putting them on my list of books to browse online!

Conservation Planning Tools for Missouri Communities: A Reference Manual (from MDC)

Native Plants for Stormwater Management Projects (from Grow Native!)

Stormwater Smart Outreach Tools (US EPA)

Ecological Practices with Native Plants

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My first lecture associated with the Missouri Master Naturalist state conference was Jean Ponzi’s Ecological Practices with Native Plants. It followed my morning at the Zoo and Center for Hellbender Conservation tour. It was good to spend the afternoon indoors!

I remembered that I could use my phone to photograph some of the key charts. The first was to remind me that Grow Native! has a model ordinance about native plants and urban landscape design. It is unfortunate that is necessary – but modern urban/suburban yard ‘rules’ tend to skew toward shallow rooted turf and result in relatively sterile outdoor spaces….not what we want to sustain the planet. The second photograph was the definition of ‘green infrastructure.’

Doug Tallamy’s work was cited….and the https://homegrownnationalpark.org/ was talked about. I had heard of it before and, now that I am reducing the turf in my yard – maybe I should look into it more.

One of the quotes I liked from this speaker: “Turf is living concrete!”

Hellbender Conservation

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My third field trip associated with the Missouri Master Naturalist state conference was to the St. Louis Zoo to tour the Center for Hellbender Conservation. Pictures were not allowed so I am sharing the link to the center. There were bins of bleach to step in at every entry…trying to keep pathogens (like Chytrid fungi) away from the hellbenders. There were a lot of animals – from small to large. The smaller ones were in aquariums…the larger ones were in artificial streams mostly hidden under large rocks. There were two species: eastern hellbenders (dark skin) and Ozark hellbenders (mottled skin). The hellbender keeper conducted the hour-long tour….talking about the environmental requirements (water temp in the low 60s, rocks or tubes to hide in as the animals begin to grow, filtration of water, different kinds of food, and egg collection (both in the center and in the wild….and releasing the animals into the wild to shore up populations in stream clean and cool enough to support them.

The pictures I did take were from elsewhere in the zoo when I arrived early (not wanting to chance being late…or getting caught in heavy rain (it did rain a little but my umbrella was adequate)). There were pictures on the way into the zoo from the parking lot.

There were pelicans, wood ducks, and trees  to see along the walk looking out over the water.

The flamingos were very active…and two appeared to be sitting on a nest!

After the Hellbender tour, I headed back to the car and noticed some clumps of rattlesnake master. I hope eventually I have a clump in my garden since my current single plants seem to be challenged to keep their stalks upright!

It started raining as I headed back to the conference venue…I was glad I was in the same building for the rest of the day.

Donald Danforth Plant Science Center

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My second field trip associated with the Missouri Master Naturalist state conference was to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. The tour guide summed up the mission of the center was to ‘feed the world’ – more formally: improve the human condition through plant science. Photography is not allowed in the work areas of the building – so the only picture I took inside the building was in the entry area where there is a display of flags of countries around the world that the center has engaged.

The building is recent enough to have features that make it easy to reconfigure electrical equipment (outlets in the ceiling!) and appealing with lots of natural light. There are a lot of green houses and controlled plant growth environments.

Much of the research is focused on striving to address current plant growth issues plan for a hotter/drier future. One example was with the cassava plant; their research has created a plant that is more resist to viruses that often reduce production and it is on the cusp of being rolled out in African countries most dependent on the cassava as a food staple.

The organization is very conscious of preserving and renewing our environment as well.

Outside the building – they have recreated a native Missouri prairies….with a lot of plants I recognized!

Lake Springfield Boathouse Garden – June 2026

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I am learning to recognize weeds more easily as I’ve volunteered to help maintain the Lake Springfield Boathouse garden….and it is also a great way to observe the garden plants as they develop through the weeks. I walked around and took pictures last week before I started work.

The sloped garden has a wild look – but not as wild as a prairie. It becomes a background for special event pictures, and the Boathouse terrace looks over it to the lake. It needs to look good from every direction! There are rock paths through the slope to allow for easier maintenance.

It is a great place for some macro photography of native wildflowers.

Butterfly House Trees

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I decided to document the trees in the Roston Native Butterfly House during one of my recent shifts. All of them are there to provide food for certain caterpillars. So here is a tree tour of the house…starting on the right side as you enter the trees are

Wafer ash for Giant Swallowtail caterpillars

Hackberry for Hackberry Emperor caterpillars

Spicebush for Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillars

Pawpaw for Zebra Swallowtail caterpillars

False Indigo for Silver Spotted Skipper caterpillars

Black Walnut for Luna Moth, Polyphemus Moth, and Red Banded Hairstreak caterpillars

(turning back toward the front of the house…looking at the trees on your right)

Tulip poplar for Tiger Swallowtail caterpillars

Black Willow for Red Spotted Purple caterpillars

Of course, there were lots of butterflies and a just-emerged Cecropia Moth that I couldn’t resist photographing too!

Sophie M. Sachs Butterfly House

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The Sophie M. Sachs Butterfly House is a division of Missouri Botanical Garden located in Chesterfield MO. Our membership in the Springfield Botanical Gardens Friends group got us free admission to the Missouri Botanical Garden on our first day in St. Louis and then, the next morning, to the butterfly house! There is a large butterfly sculpture near the entrance. We arrived shortly after they opened because we were concerned that it might be a day when school groups would be there for a field trip later in the morning.

The conservatory was less crowded that my first visit over a year ago. It was warm enough that the butterflies were very active. Most of them are exotics (i.e. not native to North America) and I remembered most of them from visits to previous butterfly houses. Owls have one spot on their wing…blue morphs have lots of spots. The malachite is my favorite! I also liked seeing pitcher plants in the lush vegetation….and the insect themed benches.

The enclosed garden just outside the butterfly house, features a statue of a young girl with butterflies and lots of native plants…including some larger pitcher plants….more insect themed benches.

I recognized a plant in the garden that I have at home…and it had a sign: Virginia Sweetspire. My phone had identified it as Virginia Willow and I had thought it was wrong since it didn’t seem to be willow-like….but that is another common name for Virigina Sweetspire. I am thrilled that it is native to North American since I have two of them that came with my house! I also noticed stands of Missouri Evening Primrose – another great native in my gardens too.

On the way back to the car, I took pictures of the giant caterpillar and butterfly sculptures…along with milkweed in various stages of blooming.

Since my husband was driving, I took a few roadcut pictures on the way home.

At my daughter’s house, I noticed that her miniature roses were blooming next to her driveway….an opportunity for some last photos…savoring the day.  

Ten Little Celebrations – May 2026

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It seemed like a lot of my activities ramped up in May.

Volunteering

Roston Native Butterfly House. The butterfly house season started and I had 4 shifts….the first one on Mother’s Day. I celebrated that there were lots of butterflies….and people coming to see them!

Getting speakers for fall Missouri Master Naturalist core training. It was wonderful that virtually everyone I asked to speak or host a field trip said ‘yes.’ By the end of the month, I was celebrating that the plan for the training was looking more achievable.

Reconnoiter of a new field trip location. I celebrated a first visit to a new field trip location - rejoicing that is it such a rich place for Master Naturalist activities.

Soil field trip. The field trip to soil pits was one that I had arranged months ago. I celebrated that it finally happened….and how good it was.

My Yard

New native plant garden. Only one of the 30+ plants that I planted in my new bed looks like it won’t make it. I am celebrating that the rest are thriving and excited about how great the garden will begin to look as the warm weather continues. Next year it should look even better!

American Spikenard. Every time I look out my office window, I celebrate that one of the first native plants I bought and planted in my Missouri yard was an American Spikenard. The violets growing under it look great too!

Food

Salmon. I have discovered frozen salmon fillets and have been thrilled at how easy it is to thaw and then bake them at 325 degrees while I prepare the sides…..celebrating salmon at home rather than just in restaurants!

Chocolate cake. I stopped at a diner on the way back from my trip to Lewisville this month….and celebrated their version of chocolate cake!

Travel

Missouri Botanical Garden. It’s my favorite place in the St. Louis area. I like their art in the garden exhibits that have special lighting at night. This time I celebrated the garden with my husband and daughter.

Another butterfly house. We visited the Sophie M. Sachs Butterfly House on the morning after the Missouri Botanical Garden. It was only my second time to see it, and I celebrated being a visitor rather than a docent…and seeing some familiar exotic butterflies again.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 30, 2026

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

05/18/2026 Washington Post EPA wants to repeal limits on ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water - The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed repealing limits on four types of “forever chemicals” in drinking water, while delaying regulations on two others. Beyond the six compounds in question, there are hundreds of PFAS being used in manufacturing today that are also toxic and demand to be regulated together as a chemical class, an idea the EPA has so far resisted.

5/16/2026 Science Daily Scientists warn that the world’s rivers are running out of oxygen - Rivers around the world are quietly running out of oxygen — and climate change is emerging as the main culprit. A sweeping global analysis of more than 21,000 river systems found that nearly 80% have been steadily losing dissolved oxygen over the past four decades, threatening fish, biodiversity, and the overall health of freshwater ecosystems. Surprisingly, tropical rivers are being hit the hardest, even more than rivers in rapidly warming polar regions.

5/11/2026 Planetizen New Orleans sea level rise is at 'point of no return' - Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost 2,000 sq miles of land to coastal erosion, equivalent to the size of Delaware, with a further 3,000 sq miles set to vanish over the next 50 years. The rate of land loss is so rapid that a football pitch-sized area is wiped out every 100 minutes.

5/4/2026 BBC Food labels have far-reaching effects on our health - Many leading experts say the food environment – such as the way food is produced, marketed and sold – itself is "obesogenic" (creating the conditions for weight gain) and this influences consumers to make unhealthy choices. To combat the growing levels of obesity, we need to change what we eat – and emerging research shows that behavioural interventions as well as policy change could make a meaningful difference.

5/14/2026 NPR The MAHA movement is coming to school cafeterias. Here's what that means for kids - Exactly how the government's new dietary guidelines will impact schools is unclear. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) said it is still working to update the nutrition standards it requires of institutions taking part in the National School Lunch Program, which fed 30 million children last year, and the School Breakfast Program.

5/13/2026 Modern Met Haunting and Hopeful Images Win the 2026 Environmental Photography Award - Selected from roughly 10,000 submissions, this year’s winning images span five categories—Changemakers, Forests, Humanity vs Nature, Ocean, and Polar Regions. Together, they document everything from wildlife trafficking and climate disasters to moments of breathtaking beauty in the natural world.

5/15/2026 Archaeology Magazine Mysterious Ancient Tunnel Discovered Beneath Jerusalem Streets – “Usually we have explanations for the discoveries we uncover, but sometimes, as in this case, we stand astonished and amazed.”

5/14/2026 Yale Environment 360 Restoring the Flow: A Milestone in the Revival of the Everglades - In Picayune Strand State Forest, the state and federal governments have been working for more than two decades to undo the damage wrought by that failed development. It’s been a huge undertaking across 55,000 acres. Recently, though, the state and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers put the finishing touches on the most critical part of the work: restoring the natural flow of water across the land. How well this hydrological restoration leads to wider ecological recovery remains to be seen. But the transformation is already underway.

5/11/2026 NASA Color Off the Mid-Atlantic Coast - Starting in early April, NASA satellites began to detect a patch of brownish, blue-green water lingering off the coasts of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. The colors and patterns were most intense in the shallow coastal zone where the waters of Raritan Bay, Delaware Bay, and Chesapeake Bay merged with the Atlantic Ocean—an area known as the Mid-Atlantic Bight. 

5/14/2026 National Parks Traveler What to Expect on The Grand Canyon's North Rim This Summer -Visitors need to be self-sufficient as they encounter burned landscapes, limited services, no potable water, portable toilets and ongoing construction tied to rebuilding facilities, utilities and infrastructure destroyed by the wildfire that started last July 4 and exploded out of control under strong fanning winds. 

Missouri Botanical Garden – Part 2

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We checked into the hotel and had a light dinner before returning to the garden. We arrived while it was still light and was easy to get a parking spot close to the Visitor Center. My daughter had bought our tickets and had had them on her phone for the garden staff to scan for our entry. We visited some close gardens and smaller conservatories that we hadn’t seen earlier in the day.

And then it got dark enough for the lights to give the geometric sculptures a different look…with light coming from within.

I experimented with different angles and zoomed images…also noticing the patterns of light and shadow (or reflection) at the base of the sculptures. These were my favorite images:

Missouri Botanical Garden – Part 1

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We made a road trip to the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis to see the Patterns of Nature: Lightform exhibit….during an afternoon and then returned to see the forms at night. This post is about the daytime portion of our visit. The day was cloudy and stayed in the 60s. It was still bright enough for good photography. The first area we saw included a colorful sculpture and some native plants. We made our way around to see as many of the geometric shapes of the special exhibit as we could….even though I frequently was sidetracked by plants! I used my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) for the landscape pictures.

My phone (iPHone 15 Pro Max) does better with the close-up shots! I realized by the time we left to check into hotel that I would lighten my load for the evening and just bring my phone. It was good in the close confines of the conservatory for sure!

I took a picture of the wall in the visitor center that is a key for the leaf patterns in the flower of building. Most of them are natives!

Field Trip Reconnoiter

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I’ve been busy working on the curriculum of the core training to be offered next fall by my local Missouri Master Naturalist chapter. One of the field trips we had added to the curriculum was unfamiliar to everyone….but had been one the places featured in a 2025 Ozark Public Television production called Wild Ozarks. Four of us participated in a reconnoiter trip to the place last week.

Wow! It is a great place for a field trip.

Easy to get to from Springfield

Springs and sinkholes

Remediated riverbank…and ash trees (dead or dying) replaced with other tree species

Tree cavities

Some invasives but not overwhelming

Road or mowed trail for hiking

Pawpaw patch

And much more!

I loved the handmade tree signs!

We modified the plan to divide the students into 4 groups rather than 3 (so 6-7 students/group) and the topics will be: forest ecology, geology (karst), tree identification (using dichotomous key), and nature journaling/nature observation.

I am looking forward to seeing the place in the fall….and observing the students discovering this special place.

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 23, 2026

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

05/10/26 Poets.org Forever Plastics – A poem by Ronald Carson. He says “In this poem, I wanted plastics to speak in the first-person plural, tracing the path from postwar convenience to biological saturation, where the environment is no longer outside us but lodged within us.”

04/22/2026 The New York Times You Paid to Have Old Clothes Recycled. Here’s What That Really Means. - Collection services offer convenience, but most garments are shredded into low-grade stuffing or sent abroad to an uncertain fate. The most important thing, experts and environmental activists say, is to buy less in the first place. It’s easier to deal with clothes responsibly if there are fewer of them to begin with.

05/7/2026 Super Age Life Expectancy Gains Are Slowing. Your Choices Are More Important Than Ever - The future of longevity will most likely be shaped less by sweeping public health revolutions and more by targeted, personalized strategies: slowing biological aging, optimizing midlife health, and extending the years we remain active, engaged, and independent.

05/12/2026 Planetizen 16% of roads that received federal funds remain in poor condition - State DOTs are spending most of that money on highway expansions instead of repair and maintenance work. And "Because increasingly lax reporting standards conceal broken roads from public view, and DOTs routinely mis-categorize expensive expansion projects as simple 'maintenance' or lump them into a mysterious 'other' category, Transportation for America suspects the national highway network is actually even more drastically overbuilt than it appears on paper."

05/11/2026 I’m Plastic Free How to Reduce Microplastics Exposure: The Ultimate Guide & Checklist - This guide breaks down exactly how microplastics enter your system, and provides a practical, but very thorough, science-backed checklist to reduce your exposure across your home, diet, and daily habits.

05/12/2026 BBC 'Fatbergs' are taking over city sewers - scientists are fighting back - Reeking coagulations of grease and debris are clotting sewers around the world on a colossal scale. Cities are deploying new technologies to control this modern menace. New York City – where 40% of sewer backups are due to grease – spends around $18.8m annually degreasing and removing blockages from the sewers beneath its streets. 

5/12/2026 National Parks Traveler Musings About the Parks | Things I Worry About – A list from Kurt Rapanshek. He ends the post this way: “Without question, there are many, many things that are uplifting about exploring the National Park System. But if the Park Service truly is going to preserve these places and their natural resources for future generations, it really needs a lot more help from Congress and presidential administrations.”

5/11/2026 Smithsonian Magazine See 15 Stunning Images That Won the German Society for Nature Photography’s Annual Contest – Beautiful and thought-provoking images.

05/06/2026 YaleEnvironment360 Airborne Microplastics May Be Warming the Planet - Tiny particles of plastic amassing in the atmosphere may be intensifying warming. Darker bits of plastic are absorbing heat. And even though lighter particles are reflecting sunlight, with a cooling influence, in the aggregate microplastics are having a warming effect. The warming impact is tiny, far less than the impact of carbon dioxide emissions, and only a fraction of the impact of soot. The microplastic emissions produced globally each year have roughly the same warming effect as running 200 coal power plants for that year….but more study is needed

05/04/2026 CNN The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a plastic trash nightmare. It could also be part of a much bigger, hidden problem - The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a significant source of airborne microplastics and nanoplastics, but there are many other places where tiny plastic particles can be whipped up into the skies, including from landfills, roadside litter and car tires. Colored plastics, especially red, yellow, blue and black, absorbed around 75 times more light than pristine, non-pigmented plastics.

05/10/2026 Science Daily Antarctica is melting from below and scientists say it’s worse than expected - Deep beneath floating ice shelves, long channels carved into the ice appear to trap warmer ocean water, dramatically speeding up melting from below. Even regions of East Antarctica once considered relatively stable may be far more vulnerable than scientists realized. Researchers warn that current climate models may be missing this dangerous process entirely, meaning future sea level rise could be underestimated.

Soil Field Trip

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Last weekend, I participated in a Missouri Master Naturalist Field Trip to soil pits in a forested area maintained by a Springfield High School. A member of our chapter that is a soil scientist led the field trip.

We were concerned about ticks, so everyone was in protective clothing…and sprayed! The initial walk into the forest was full of low growing jumpseed.

At the first soil pit (surrounded by a wire fence), we got a tutorial on soil analysis – textures, structure and color. We passed around lumps of damp soil, so everyone learned to judge soil texture. This was not a ‘clean hands’ field trip!

Our group was subdivided into groups of 3-4 and we went through the process on our own for another pit. Ours had 4 horizons.

After that adventure, we hiked to other pits to see differences in pits that were dug to show soil differences based on terrain and orientation. One had bedrock and another had a lot of sediment (it was in the floodplain of a stream).

As we hiked, we crossed the dry stream; there was a lot of bedrock to see!

I was tired by the end of the field trip, but the adventure was worth it!