Outdoors Maryland; Family Fieldtrip

Oh. Funding for the outdoors Maryland field trip is provided by generous grants from BGT committed to protecting the environment and conserving natural resources by Bell Atlantic. The heart of communication and by the Baltimore Community Foundation a permanent collection of individual family and corporate charitable funds working for a better Baltimore today and all are tomorrow's. Hearing. How can you tell what was left as a pass how do you determine what you're the boss. Or looking at the fossils in the deposits themselves. They just hire people.

Well mostly small insects. Outdoors Maryland presents. Hi. I'm Darryl Dillard and Mrs. Calvert Cliffs on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Looks pretty peaceful doesn't it. But in a way it's really not. There's a major competition going on here a competition between people and nature for the same resources. You see the cliffs constantly and naturally a road. This is great for people studying the Earth's past erosion reveals the wide variety of plant and animal fossils that are located and erosion is also great for the Puritan Tiger beetle and endangered insect that makes its home here and practically nowhere else on earth. These beetles must lay their eggs on a bare vertical surface like the cliffs here. If it

goes so might they. But erosion also spells trouble for people whose homes are located on the cliffs. The cliff face is marching backwards at a rate of three to five feet a year. This means that homes that were once far away from the edge of the cliff face are now in danger of falling into the bay. And you can understand why people want to stop that from happening. But anything they do will change the cliffs erosion patterns destroying the tiger beetle nurseries and stopping the constant exposure of fossils. The story of Calvert Cliffs might sound familiar. You see we just finished an electronic field trip here. Hundreds of kids traveled with us. Chances are your children were among them. And no you didn't forget signing any permission slip or paying for the bus because it was an electronic field trip. But electronic field trip students stay in their classroom. We travel to them. Now I know when I heard about electronic field trips it all sounded kind of weird to me too. But as the project developed I found out some pretty interesting stuff and I'd like to share that with you tonight. First of

all I found out that an electronic field trip people travel through a whole collection of the newest media available. Such as fiber optics satellite connections in general don't worry and stuff like that makes your head swim. It's really pretty simple. All right we show you how. To me the best part of any field trip is getting me deep in the sight seeing things for yourself and talking with the experts and in an electronic field trip that's easy to do. As more and more schools go online to the Internet establishing a project website is a natural for an electronic field trip. And our project site. Your kids could access background information about Calvert Cliffs and start thinking about their own place in Maryland's ecosystem. Some kids also started preparing for the field trip in their classrooms using activities and discussion questions suggested in the project teacher's guide. Naturally students came up with a bunch of questions about what they were learning and they took advantage of many electronic routes to send them to the project

including email fax machines and toll free phone lines and kids without access to these electronic groups could send their questions through the mail. New media also plays a great role in the electronic field trip broadcast itself. The field trip itself was broadcast throughout the state on MP two stations. So all students could participate. Some students travel from other electronic into the field. They were located in three classrooms that are linked together through a fiber optics network. This technology allowed them to span time and distance to see and talk with each other as if they were in the same room. As the day of the broadcast began Baltimore County science teacher Richard Anderson stood ready in any classroom in Owings Mills to coordinate these three groups and make sure others around the state had a chance to participate as well.

And so we began our investigation of the Calvert Cliffs story. But think about this what if you came back here in 10 years and all this had somehow changed. How would the state be different. How would your life be different. That's what we hope you'll find out today when our electronic field trip for Davao has got a paleontologist and longtime Calvert Cliffs resident. The answer to that question lies in the unique importance of Calvert Cliffs as a vast storehouse of fossils from the Miocene epoch. Some 15 million years ago. Tracking along with. Those back a long time. Here in Princeton Well some. Smaller shelf and why tell the story. Why don't you know it's. Just about. That. Wind and rain wind and the cycle freezing and thawing chunks of the cliff face to slide off into the

bed. This process exposes the fossilized remains of a wide variety of animals and plants. Grow into fossils if you have a good look at them and say these two are different. But are they different because our young one and the other ones all is one male one female. One is not. Just like with humans. No two people are alike. And if you were to describe what a person looks like you would want to pick just one person you look at a great number of people and see how how they are different on this trip to Calvert Cliffs. Bo Haskell makes only by. A tiny bone that belongs to an ancient bird. He carefully wraps it to protect it until it can be cleaned and examined in the laboratory. The advantage in the lab is that we can work on the smaller too.

We can use magnifying glasses or microscopes to get in and get a better look at it and you can do things much more slowly. So it really is a lot of work but there is a real thrill that sometimes you're looking at something no one's ever ever seen before. And again. We've done it and you gain it. It's just not on a matter of collecting them and throwing him in and forgetting them various questions are are asked about the fossil. Some of it is in fact what we call paleo ecology trying to get a picture. Right. Maryland looked like 15 million years ago. Fossil hunting encountered plants is not just for paleontologists.

Although you need special permission to go on the cliff face. You can find many fossils just walking along the beach but without the Rhodesian the adventure of finding a 15 million year old fossil would be a thing of the past. Personally I would like to see areas set aside where we could allow Roshan to occur that are areas where where there are no home. If erosion occurs there there would be no problem. As Bill has explained to the students he shares his passion for collecting fossils with many others through the ages including pre-colonial Native Americans before Europeans came to the new world. The American Indians also did some fossil collecting. Optically sharks teeth of have been found in archaeological sites. They seem to have been interested in the mud just like we are. OK thank you Dave. A question from Craig and Garrett County. His question is do you ever find dinosaur fossils like our class. Why or why not they.

Want to be able to find dinosaur fossils here and if so why not. OK. No no we don't find dinosaur fossils here. These deposits are about 15 million years old. Dinosaurs became extinct about sixty two million years. Ago. So they were already long gone before these deposits were. Formed. How do you determine what form. Good question. Usually it's done with looking at the fossils in the deposits and sell. Many of the fossils lived at certain time periods. So and typically the micro fossil. You'll compare them with fossils from other areas. You know their age. And a lot of it's done as a relative thing. Will say the following. Here. Older than one group of fossils younger than another. Now ultimately you'd like to be able to tie that into an absolute date but you can only get absolute dates on igneous rocks where you check the. Radioactive isotope. And you don't. Normally find those. Fossils.

Fossils under sediment. So you have to find a place where you can connect up but to her. For that but. OK we also have a question here from the tell Plax Frank Arlette has a question that he would like and I'm asking today what is the possibility of finding and discover species in the cliffs. It's actually pretty good. There are a number of things that we suspect are here where we found fragments. And we suspect that there are new species we just haven't found a good enough specimen. To name it yet. There are also cases where individuals we might find one specimen. And you really need more than one to get an idea of the variation rather. Than taught entire new species or just very into something we already know. And sometimes in fact we get surprised that somebody walks in our amateur collector will find something. Had no idea it was down here. So. Yes. Very good. Aside from their wealth of fossils the cliffs are also

important because of the role they play in the life of a tiny creature with a huge sounding name. The Puritan Tiger beetle Calvert Cliffs is one of its last remaining homes. The adults run around the beaches during the day. They feed on other insects of small creatures anything they can grab ahold of they pounce on them tiger like a father called Tiger Bill Adel Puritan Tiger beetles may find food on the beaches but they need this soft sandy soil near the top of the cliffs to lay their eggs. They find the right kind of soil that they have adapted to and they they stick their egg laying structure into the soil and place and egg there. After the eggs hatch into larvae. These baby beetles burrow deeper into the cliffs creating a long tunnel of. The larva wait at the entrance to the tunnel for any unsuspecting insects to happen by. When they do the larvae grab them with their strong jaws.

Putin Tiger beetles will only lay their eggs in a vertical surface that doesn't have any reeds or other plants on. Which is why they live here in the clips. You could come in here and destroy this cliff you could plant this in the script with vegetation completely eliminate the beetle and if that happened then that these large populations. The species would disappear. We have. Really only about five or six large populations with with over 500 individuals and you know. Very few of those are protected. So the beetles depend on these plants staying the way they are now and in a way the cliffs depend on the beetles to where they occur. For example you have a natural undisturbed the shore of natural on the planet. If we don't buy the beetles there we know there's some kind of disturbance. Or some human activity or chemical pollution or something disruptive that has eliminated those habitat.

I'd like to see those temporary preserve for. Posterity. And the beetles are helping us do that. Right now the Puritan Tiger beetle is on the state's list of endangered species. It's also considered to be threatened on a national level. We can protect five or six or seven or eight populations at several thousand individuals and we can reintroduce. Some new populations where they used to be then the species will be taken off the list. Tiger beetle experts very nicely and Kathy McCarthy were anxious to share more information with the students about the habits and future of this endangered insect. Thanks to our we have a couple questions right here the first one will come from the internet. Karen Ross poses Our first question which is what do Tiger beetles ate. Tiger beetles will eat mostly small insects particularly things that are small enough that they can grab ahold of. And. And consume generally something that's

smaller than them but mostly small insects. Thank you. Stephen stop also from Chesapeake Bay middle school has a question. Is the tiger the same size as the Japanese or smaller. And how are they different than other beetles. Tiger beetle is about the same length of a Japanese beetle only it's a little slimmer. But it's that's pretty much the same size. They're different because they have big holes. And there are some certain. Small characteristics that distinguish them but but most Tiger beetles are active predators. They feed on other things. And they had these big jaws that they used that. We have another question also from the internet. Mr. Robinson's fourth grade class asked at what point does an animal go on the endangered species list. It's we don't have exact figures we can't give you exact numbers because what constitutes

a healthy population for Tiger who also stars numbers of. Are going to be very different for example from what would constitute a healthy population of beer. There's no exact numbers but those are the criteria we use to evaluate the stats. Thank you Cathy. I have a question from a fourth grade class at fields Road Elementary School. The question is what will happen if these animals become extinct. That's that's really the toughest question to answer but like many species although they're small and not as significant as say a bald eagle they're important part of the ecosystem and they're a thing of natural beauty and I think many of us would like to see most species preserved and certainly their habitat. And everything that's associated with them. The story of Calvert Cliffs comes down to this issue. People and nature often compete for the same resources and when they do you've got to take a step back and think about what we do today compromise our future and the future of those resources

that concern is part of the daily lives of many of the people who live in covered cliffs including Jon Lane and Ellen Berg. Where we are right now is going to be down in the bay whether it's a million years and ten years from now and I don't know. I don't think everything here we have it figured out by the time the crypt reaches the house will be gone and my daughter can handle the situation. But. Paradise is slipping away for the Bergen family. Their house will one day be pulled down by the eroding cliffs on which it stands. Why do they stay on so hard. It's not a house that we were going through your home. People like the Gherkins have lived in homes on the shoreline cliffs of Calvert County for many decades. But in a Roge in lead that averages about three feet per year takes its toll. I've seen like in the backyards just. They're not there anymore like places I used to pray or like now underwater. It's

weird. We had to put up fences to right kids from going to close to the edge of Camilla Bergen has lived on a cliff overlooking the Chesapeake Bay for almost her entire life. She's not impressed when people say she lives in paradise. I learned to swim when I would like to from living down here. That's the rather is usually pretty mild. We don't get like super hot. We don't even have air conditioning there's no need for it this summer I didn't put the down comforter off my bed because I would have been called that instead you know it's not like. I get to live by the water and see the sunrise over the bay every day and stuff like that so yeah you know I think that the view may be grand but residents are concerned about the ever eroding cliff face. Some have built bulkheads were revetments to slow the process. Others like the Bergen's encourage a thick covering of plants to grow on the

cliff face. Those who were interested in doing the grasses and the plants that we have around the perimeter. Those plants put down a room pattern that holds the bank together in this and we're very interested in doing that. Whatever the plan these barriers disturb the cliff face in limited in the places the tiger beetles need to lay their eggs. We're changing the erosion and wave patterns that expose fossils. And yet. If people don't do something their homes might fall into the bay. How do the Bergen's live with this uncertainty. I don't really think about it and I don't think about it like a whole gosh you know let's go measure are we any closer to our natural after flower and encroaches very tiny amount for the Bergen's sharing their environment with the tiger beetles in the fossil collectors as a natural part of their lives. So is the cliff's beauty.

Theory right here at Park Middle School has a question for them Carrie. What do you like about Calvert Cliffs. Let's not have a. Testing. Thing right beside the bank and not. Seeing the waves of water it's always changing. That's really nice it's always peaceful here. H from Rockville Maryland also has a question from the internet. His question is why haven't you build bulkheads to stop erosion near your house. Well they do a lot of research about a religion and they haven't really proven that both kids would be affected. The. Two main problems are the toe of the cliff eroding you know the bottom of it. Coming out now in the water seeping into the soil making it fall in and out this place so I'm not sure boneheads would do it but they're still investigating the best possibilities. I have a question from the internet or from fourth and fifth grade students sat west from Ford elementary. It's a somewhat long question so our school in our town had a lot of erosion from the flood caused by Hurricane Fran. Some houses were destroyed when

George's creek flooded. People now are using boaters to fix a road places. Is there any way to stop the erosion and to help both the people who live in the class and the people who visit our park. Well like I said there I know Johns Hopkins is doing a study about the Roshan on u boat and it's pretty much shown. You know a natural act you can't really stop erosion completely you can slow it down. And people who live like we do on the cliffs just have to be careful. Oh how they treat the man. One of the reasons that we visited Calvert Cliffs in our electronic field trip to set the story here parallel so many other stories throughout the state with a balance between people and nature is in jeopardy and that's why we also pause to look at some of them including the story of belt woods an old growth forest near Bowie where development threatened its harmonious ecosystem of ancient trees and spectacular wildlife. The story of the Red Foxes of Druid Hill Park in Baltimore where development has completely changed this

animal's natural life cycle. And the story of homeowners in western Maryland who have found out what can happen when their development encroaches on the natural habitat of the black bear. We know that you and your kids will have to deal with situations like these through out your logs and faced with that responsibility. It's important to know that what you do can make a difference to your environment. That's why we took a look at an extremely effective program at Sparrows Point middle and high schools to see how kids there are helping to ensure that the ecological balance is maintained. And are endangered endangered important state and listed as threatened in Maryland one of the nesting areas they require and sandy beaches in heavily areas and on the coast. Course that's where all the condos and all the developments going but they're losing a lot of their mother. We're going to do is we're going to take you to Mays El supports. And place them probably So it's about toll of about five feet away from the edge of the roof.

And try to put them about every 12 feet. As the turns move inland. They have taken a liking to flat white gravel roofs like those here at Sparrows Point middle and high schools. These students are making sure the turns new home is safe. Maryland's Department of Natural Resources provides the materials the students provide the labor. Least terns like to nest in colonies. And they need a lot of land for that. And normally they nest on oyster shell beaches or sandy beaches and wide open and generally isolated barren areas. Over the past 10 15 years they have discovered tar and gravel roofs. And it turns out that a lot of tar and gravel roofs and in Maryland and around the bay happen to be just ideal for them and they as they fly over we assume that they look down and they see this wide open expanse of white. Looks kind of like a beach and so

they they end up nesting here. These little fences which are constructed of two by fours and sandbags and the chicken wire fencing. They are designed to keep the chicks from running all the way off the roof. I've been involved in the least object is very important because they're a threatened species where there's other animals out there that are threatened but this is one that's in our vicinity and sour can help them out. Now we have to take that away. Maybe they remember all the animals out here never we need a house. We don't yet know how successful this project has been there are no numbers that show a strong increase in the number of least turns. But thanks to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and students like these the least terns are holding their own and that is a success in anyone's

eyes. Students from the lease term project were justifiably proud to share their story with our audience. Amy Holden from Chesapeake Bay middle school asked the next question Amy. Have any Nationals have your school and when did you notice and the first time. We last year we had one hundred twenty eggs and we look weak as it was I mean mess. We had 120 met and as I said before there was about 1988. And she just discovered them and they called the DNR and we took the necessary precautions for. The next question. How have your teachers reacted to the birds being present on your. Teachers have. Reacted positively I would. I would say. They've used the information that out that we collected from the project in their past when activities. And students took it upon themselves to use information. And their projects.

Certain signs. Question that I have from Internet Francis T asked if I wanted to have my school to be a home for lease terms what should I do. Nothing you can really do to draw all the turns to this site. Apparently it turns just to use the site. When they look at rooftops they find something real similar to their natural habitat like. Darnell roof. So they can choose lighter cells we can't really track them. And the best we can do is one. Turns do occur on the roof. Just the man for the best. And. The best part about an electronic field trip like this is that they don't have to end when the broadcast is over. You and your kids can continue to explore the story of Calvert Cliffs electronically. You can start with a visit to the field trip website at w w w m p t dot org to venture down some of the trails there or follow its links to other ecological Internet sites or you can start up the car for a little traveling of the regular variety to the library for books and magazine

articles about how our lives are fossils or endangered animals and plants. Or you could plan a visit to the coast themselves and do a little beach combing for. Silvermex electronic filter.