Biodiversity Stewardship: Virginia’s Machicomoco State Park

  Resources on Climate The information below represents a collection of resources useful in assessing climate in the area of Machicomoco State Park, which is in Gloucester County, Virginia. The first link is interactive - the user can easily change parameters and adjust time frames. As the study site is located within the coastal plain of Virginia, along the shores of the York River, hurricanes and sea level rise are of particular interest. The Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) is a premier regional research institute headquartered within Gloucester County. Their local sea level rise predictions are included. Climate change is a current and looming concern regarding biodiversity stewardship. General climate change predictions are offered by NOAA below along with more specific climate predictions as reported by the Chesapeake Bay Program. NOAA Gloucester Climate (Temp & Precipitation) https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cag/county/time-series/VA-073/tavg/12/12/1895-2022?base_prd=tru

      Google My Maps is a fairly intuitive GIS platform with limited, but useful tools. I have used this and other GIS platforms in the past. Still, the tutorial was able to show me some functions that I had not used before like setting the map default and custom-coloring the place markers. I found adding detail to the place markers to be easy yet very helpful in making the user experience much more robust.       The option of importing layer data is a very helpful option. However, the Arc GIS platform wins here with its option to browse and search Living Atlas Layers. Still, Google My Maps is a great choice for class projects that benefit from a GIS component. In the past, I've had students use the area function to assess land cover types on campus. Some student (high school level) were able to produce highly detailed maps while others struggled with the basics. Still, Google My Maps is a good choice as an introduction to GIS and is just robust enough to be worth the time for stra

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 While a sound argument could be made for the inherent value of nature, I like to introduce the importance of biodiversity from a utilitarian point of view. Many species, either directly or indirectly provide ecological services necessary for human wellbeing. Even if it is difficult to find the beneficial role a species plays, chances are it is part of an interconnected network that includes species that do provide services. As such, biodiversity is like a tool box. The more tools you have in that box, the better - even if some of those tools seem repetitive. Perhaps among similar looking tools, one works better in one situation than another. Repetition also ensures that nature can "get the job done" even if one species goes extinct. Let's take a closer look at biodiversity at different levels: Local - Biodiversity at a local level reflects thousands of years of intimate interactions between species. Often complex interdependencies develop between species. Therefore, a si

  I would like to choose Virginia’s Machicomoco State Park (MPS) as my study area. A Google Map link can be found here. MPS is a relatively new state park, and I hope that any fieldwork here could provide the park with novel data. At this point, I do not know if the park has baseline wildlife data, but I would like the opportunity to contribute truly useful, non-redundant information. The park has a deep, pre-European cultural history and is located on the waters of the tidal York river. It might be interesting to inventory the native and non-native fauna that make use of the park and the river. York River State Park is across the river and upstream from MPS. But that park is well-established and probably already has a good bit of data that could be used as a comparison. I’d like to research MPS because I admire the Virginia State Parks and because I enjoy field work. My family and I are in the middle of moving to West Point, Virginia, not far from MPS. I will continue my work as a pu

😺   Biodiversity is the extent to which niches exist within a habitat in combination with the extent to which different species occupy those niches. Biodiversity is expressed as variety in both genotype and phenotype and redundancy in species’ ability to participate in ecological functions.