Author Archives: Schuylkill Center

Something Special in our Nature Gift Shop

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There’s a special joy in giving someone just the right gift, one that makes their eyes light up with excitement. But finding that something can be tricky—so we’re here to make it easy for you. Nestled in a corner of our Visitor Center, our Nature Gift Shop is replete with eco-friendly, locally-made, and nature-themed items, from books to bird houses, earrings to mugs, puzzles to (recycled!) plushies.

FOR THE EXPLORER: The Nature Connection: An Outdoor Workbook

This family-friendly book offers numerous delightful outdoor activities, explorations, and crafts. It’s great for injecting new life into tired pandemic routines (has anyone else done the same walk hundreds of times by now?) and for when you need that extra push outside in the cold weather.

FOR THE WRITER: Decomposition Notebooks

The perfect eco-friendly replacements for your classic composition books, these are made with 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper and printed with soy ink. Plus they feature gorgeous nature-inspired designs and spiral binding. Win-win-win-win-win.

FOR THE FOODIE: World O’ Honey’s Raw Local Chunk Honey

Honey doesn’t get better than the raw, local (Silverdale, PA in this case) variety, and the honeycomb adds a delicious crunch. If smooth is more your thing, never fear—we stock a number of other varieties such as creamed, blueberry, orange blossom…yum.

 

FOR THE CHEF: Bee’s Wrap Food Wraps

Bid farewell to plastic wrap forever and invest in a few Bee’s Wraps reusable food wraps. They come in a variety of sizes and patterns and are made with four simple ingredients: organic cotton, Beeswax, organic jojoba oil, and tree resin. A beautiful eco-friendly kitchen swap.

FOR THE NEWBIE-NATURALIST: Tree Finder

This pocket-sized guide is convenient for walks in the woods, and its clear illustrations of leaves provide just enough detail to identify a whole host of trees. There’s also a Winter Tree edition, great for when leaves are, well, a little harder to find.

FOR THE BIRDER: Birdseed

Our Nature Gift Shop is a birder’s paradise, bursting with houses, feeders and guides. But it’s our birdseed that gets folks coming back over and over, so a nice big bag would be perfect for any birder in your life.

FOR THE WELLNESS GEEK: The Nature Principle

In his second book, Richard Louv shifts his focus from kids to adults and furthers his passionate argument for nature as the key to wellness, productivity, creativity, and community. It’s sure to convince even the most dedicated indoors person to venture outside, and to reinspire outdoors enthusiasts.

FOR THE PERSON WHO JUST DOESN’T WANT ANY MORE STUFF: A Schuylkill Center Membership

Not only do memberships help sustain the Schuylkill Center’s programming, they also create and connect an enthusiastic community. There are some great perks, too: discounted tickets to our public events, a subscription to our quarterly newsletter, and 20% off Gift Shop purchases among them.

 

For more gift ideas, follow us on Instagram, or stop by the shop yourself (just wear a mask!), open Monday–Saturday, 9 am. – 4:30 pm. Our Gift Shop manager, Michelle, is also assiduously working to get all of our stock listed online; keep checking back for more. Call 215-482-7300 with any questions, and order online and conveniently arrange for curbside pickup. Happy holidays!

 

— By Emily Sorensen, Communications Intern 

 

TreeVitalizing Our Forests

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By Drew Rinaldi Subits, Land Stewardship Coordinator

You may have recently noticed a large clearing across the trail from Pine Grove, which has been steadily cleared and then mowed and maintained throughout the Spring and Summer months. If you have been there more recently, you may have noticed fencing and a young grove of trees and shrubs.

This newest planting effort was possible through the collaboration of our Land and Facilities team, a state-funded tree planting grant initiative from TreeVitalize, and a RJ Carbone, a local young man looking to complete his Eagle Scout project.

For the past five years, the Schuylkill Center has been the recipient of one these TreeVitalize grants which is intended to promote and develop sustainable urban forestry programs within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  We have planting sites all over the property, typically marked by black plastic deer fencing, that helps protect the young, relatively fragile trees.  The Land and Facilities team was certainly excited for this particular location as it is one of the most visible and popular sites on the property, just down the trail from the Hagy’s Mill parking lot and across from the well-known Pine Grove.  

Previously this planting site had been a grove of the equally infamous Devil’s Walking Stick (Aralia elata), one of the more common, pesky, and aggressive invasive tree stands in our region.  These ecosystem dominators thrive by using rhizome root structures which means the roots continually spread and rapidly create new tree shoots underground in all directions.  In areas such as this, they quickly become the only species left standing, and totally outgrow, outcompete, and out-resource all other species, especially eco-precious natives.

These tree planting efforts came together on a beautiful September morning when Boy Scout Troop 177 of Wyndmoor, PA supported RJ in completing his Eagle Scout project.  There were a total of 51 people throughout the day, logging a total of 221 volunteer hours, to plant and mulch 100 native trees and 40 shrubs.  The team also constructed a deer fence around the perimeter of the entire planting site to give the young trees a fighting chance in this disrupted urban forest environment.

The planting was a great success, thanks to the efforts of all those involved, the Land and Facilities team, RJ’s planning, execution, and general leadership of a large group of eager helpers from Troop 177, and of course the crucial financial support of the TreeVitalize program.  It is these continued efforts that will make the difference and go a long way to ensure the slow and steady reforestation and next generation of forest canopy and native local ecosystems.  Many thanks to all involved, and here’s to the future forest!

 

Natural Selections: Manayunk and Manatawna: Our Lenape Place Names

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By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director

5e544c255ef38.imageOne of the pleasures of teaching and talking about our Roxborough land are our historic place names, so many of them Lenape in origin: Wissahickon, Conshohocken, Manatawna, Cinnaminson, Manayunk. Widen the lens a bit, and Philadelphia maps burst with Lenape words: Shackamaxon, Wingohocking, Kingsessing, Tulpehocken, Tioga.

Sadly, Phildelphians are taught too little, if anything, about the Lenape, the original people here, our First People, and too much that is taught is at best misleading and too often wrong. That statue of a Lenape chief that guards a bluff above the Wissahickon? He is carelessly outfitted as a Western Plains Indian, and historians agree there were no councils on Council Rock.

Deborah Del Collo, an archivist for the Roxborough, Manayunk, and Wissahickon Historical Society, and author of the excellent “Images of America: Roxborough,” wrote in its introduction, “The words manatawney and manaiung,” the latter her transliteration of Manayunk, “are intertwined with the beginning of Roxborough.” Manatawna is, of course, the name of a narrow street that connects Ridge Avenue just past Cathedral Avenue with Hagy’s Mill Road; you can see the road in the 1926 aerial photo of Upper Roxborough included here – it’s on the far right; that’s Ridge Avenue slicing through the foreground.

But an 1895 railroad atlas in my office curiously shows the word “Manatawna” used to mark the small village of homes near where that narrow street connects to the Ridge, as if Manatawna was a small town just outside the larger Roxborough. Readers, could this be true?

Del Collo wrote that “the Manatawney, which is currently Ridge Avenue in Roxborough, is a path from the native plantations of upper Roxborough to the Falls of the Schuylkill in the current East Falls section of Roxborough.” So she indicates that perhaps Manatawney was the original name of the Ridge. A tawney, she writes, is an open road and mana could mean “raging” or “god,” so she translates Manatawney as “an open road from our creator.”

While I love this, Wikipedia – I know, don’t believe everything you read online – includes a long list of Lenape place names under the entry “Lenapehoking,” the Lenape word for this land where we all live. They include Manatawny on this list, here with no “e” before the “y,” and use it to refer to a creek just outside Pottstown, and say the name means “place where we drink.”

Which is ironic, as many people know the derivation of Manayunk, which is usually said to be “place where we drink,” everyone ironically chuckling at modern Manayunk’s collection of bars and restaurants. Del Collo writes, “The addition of iung (water or stream) to mana in manaiung translates to a ‘raging river,’ which makes perfect sense since the waters of the Schuylkill bordering Roxborough were raging waters in Lenape days.” To make it navigable, the famous Falls of the Schuylkill of course were buried under water from the Flat Rock dam.

Wikipedia hews to the more traditional translation of Manayunk, “place where we go to drink.” I like Del Collo’s translations on both counts, but I’d love for Lenape scholars and native speakers to weigh in.

“Schuylkill,” of course, is a Dutch place name, translating to “hidden river.” But what did the Lenape call this important river? Pennsylvania Heritage published a 2013 piece by historian Joan Wenner, “A River Runs Through Penn’s Woods: Tracing the Mighty Schuylkill,” where she writes, “Once the grand watercourse was home to the Delaware Indians who called it the manaiunk meaning ‘rushing and roaring waters.’”

Apart from all the different spellings of the word, Benner indicates that the Lenape called the river itself Manayunk, and she backs up Del Collo on the “roaring” part. Manayunk: roaring water. Great name.

Nobody disagrees on Wissahickon; I’ve always heard it translated as “catfish stream.” But Del Collo writes that “Wisa can mean ‘catfish’ or ‘yellow,’ and hickon means ‘mouth of a large stream or tide;’ therefore Wissahickon literally means ‘a large catch of catfish found at the mouth of the creek.’” This makes way more sense to me: the catfish would have been in the Schuylkill – pardon me, the Manayunk – so the Lenape caught fish congregating in the Manayunk where the Wissahickon enters it, today where the Canoe Club sits.

Conshohocken translates to “pleasant valley” or “elegant land.” And Cinnaminson, that street that falls off the Ridge at the 5th District building, could either mean “rock island” or “sweet water.”

And my favorite place name? By translation, it’s Tulpehocken, the name of a creek and both street and train station in Germantown. That translates as “land of turtles,” as the turtle was sacred to the Lenape, all of us riding on the back of a giant turtle, the image that Roxborough often uses to describe itself, a la that mural above the 7-Eleven on Ridge. We all live on Tulpehocken.

And we all live in Lenapehoking, the ancestral lands of the Lenape, a people wrongly renamed the Delaware. The Schuylkill Center acknowledges that our 340-acre forest was once the haunts of the Lenape, and we would like to weave that story back into our landscape, and find more ways to connect more of us to that untold story.

I’ll continue to share what I discover with you all.

 

 

Year of Action: Join us in Taking Action

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By Mike Weilbacher

contratsting planet (1)The New Year 2020 promises to be pivotal on a number of fronts, but especially the environment. The increasing urgency of the climate crisis has sparked higher levels of activism by new, youth-led groups like the Sunrise Movement. Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg’s lonely 2018 climates strike in front of the Swedish parliament have blossomed into climate strikes of millions of kids skipping school across the world.

The presidential election near the year’s end promises to be not only loud, but will have an out sized impact on environmental policy, with major implications for how America, and thus the world, responds to climate change.

But 2020 also marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Philadelphia was center stage for Earth Days in 1970 and 1990, and the global holiday is now credited with launching the environmental movement. Celebrated by over a billion people each year, this April’s Earth Day promises to be huge.

In recognition of all of the above, the Schuylkill Center declares 2020 as our Year of Action and will flavor much of our programming– including our own Earth Day festival– around this concept. Nature Preschoolers will take relevant actions; our Art Department will join in the fun too. So will Land and Facilities, and many programs coming from our Education team.

We’re also asking you to take personal actions at home and in your workplace. 

How can you personally assist in cooling the climate and preserving species?

We assume as a member and friend of our Center, you likely recycle and conserve water and electricity, probably try to create less waste. So what next? Say you’d like to step up in our Year of Action– thank you! What might you do?

Share your plans at scee@schuylkillcenter.org

 

 

Natural Selections: New Year’s resolutions from the Roxborough community

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By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director

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2020 will see my continued fight for redistricting reform and to continue to work in a bipartisan manner to get good policy in place.” State Rep. Pamela A. DeLissio, D-194

With the calendar pages turning over to a new year – and a new decade to boot – it’s time for our annual roundup of New Year’s resolutions from community leaders across Roxborough.

Celeste Hardeseter, president of the Central Roxborough Civic Association, said that, “A century and more ago, people planted trees in their yards that, 100 years later, became magnificent mature specimens. Now, as these are becoming geriatric, we are seeing more and more of them cut down. I would like to persuade property owners to plant new trees, not the pretty little things that flower and mature in 20 years, but trees that are gifts to future generations of people and wildlife who live in Roxborough.

“So my ‘dream resolution’ for 2020 would be to see 100 large canopy hardwood trees planted throughout the community – oak, beech, elm, hackberry, horse chestnut, linden and Kentucky coffeetree, etc. – plus 50 large evergreens, which provide visual screening and year-round shade, like white pine, arborvitae, spruce, etc. I would love if people let the CRCA know what they have planted. Write to us at info@crca.us. Planting trees is such an important contribution to the entire community.”

Rich Giordano heads the Upper Roxborough Civic Association, and told me, “As a relative newcomer to the neighborhood (here ‘only’ 20 years) but also someone who has a genuine reverence for the unique history of our area, I’m focused on ensuring that what is important and vital is not lost and hopefully is in fact strengthened in the face of the very real changes that we are undergoing.”

Their compatriot Jamie Wyper is president of the Residents of the Shawmont Valley Association, and echoes Rich’s comments when he chimed in, “My resolution for the year is to keep reminding our community why we live in this corner for Philadelphia – for the beautiful landscape, the wildlife, the peace and quiet, the uniqueness – and why the only way to preserve it is to forego a small amount of personal benefit for the sake of the greater and lasting community benefit of preservation. This means sticking to the zoning code and not seeking variances to build larger, more, or inappropriately. Once we allow that, it is a short leap to maximal development and the permanent loss of this special place.”

Tom Landsmann, president of the new Roxborough-Manayunk Conservancy, offered that, “My goal for 2020 is clarity and balance. Clarity to determine what’s important and a better work-life balance. Nature will be my tool to help me realize these simple goals. Last year our RMC had a very productive year. We engaged many new community park stewards, and introduced them to like-minded people and new green pocket parks in the area. This year, we’d like to continue to expand our community stewardship network, continue to improve our little green spaces, and continue to promote the benefits of native plantings with high wildlife value. Every member of our community should be exposed to nature. Nature brings clarity, mindfulness and balance to a busy modern life.”

According to James Harry Calamia, the executive director of the Roxborough Development Corp., good things are literally brewing here.

“As our Roxborough 2020 Plan’s life cycle comes to a close,” he said, “the beginning of this year welcomes an opportunity for reflection and analysis before new planning efforts unfold. The new decade also presents a fresh start for new business partnerships. The completion and opening of New Ridge Brewing Co., Night Shift Brewing, Vault Coworking as well as Ichiban Asian Restaurant are some of the most anticipated for the year.” His comments remind me that I need to have lunch at the White Yak soon, and I look forward to toasting the new breweries when they open!

Aaliyah Green Ross directs the education program of the Schuylkill Center and when I asked her what her New Year’s resolution was, she laughed. “I already broke my resolution! I resolved to eliminate single-use plastics from my life, and just bought grapes. I realized they come wrapped in plastic bags, and when I went to the Wawa, they wrapped my sandwich in plastic. So I’m going to redouble my efforts to reduce plastics – I’ve got my metal straws and my reusable produce bags, so I’m going to get better!”

Rebecca Michelin runs the Wildlife Clinic at the Schuylkill Center, the only clinic of its kind in the city, and she was philosophical about her resolution. She wanted to “recognize and be understanding of our personal and professional limitations. Understanding that, as caregivers and humans, we can only do so much, and whether big or small, positive or negative, everything we do has an impact on those around us.”

State Rep. Pamela A. DeLissio, D-194 said, “My goal is to continue to fulfill my commitment to my constituents to have an ongoing dialogue with them regarding state-related policy. It is the best way I know to truly ‘represent’ the 194th. Town halls (90 to date) and new in 2019, my book club gathering, are just two of the ways I fulfill this commitment.

Councilman Curtis Jones, our representative in City Hall, told me his “resolution is short and simple: talking less; fixing more!” We agree, at least with the fixing part.

And Autumn Goin, the kindergartner whose father directs the Land & Facilities Department at the Schuylkill Center, told her dad that her “revolution” is to “listen to more music.”

Which is also what we need in 2020: more revolutions! Amen to all of the above, and thanks to our community leaders for their extraordinary work on our behalf.

Nature Preschool meets our pileated woodpecker

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By Leigh Ashbrook

Editor’s note: one of the largest– and rarest– birds in the Schuylkill Center forest is the pileated woodpecker, our largest woodpecker with a wood chipper for a beak. We’ve seen them here this winter, and Nature Preschool has become enchanted by them. One of our teachers, Leigh Ashbrook, also a great birder, teaches about birds in the school, and writes about her students meeting them recently.

pileated chris petrakPhoto: Chris Petrak

Sixteen Nature Preschoolers are meandering along the Widener Trail toward the bird blind, flanked by trees of the second growth forest. Out of the woods on their left an emphatic Kukukukukukukukuk rings through the woods. One of the teachers calls out, “What do you think made that sound?” As the children turn their ears toward the source of the raucous call, the teacher then calls out, “We hear you, pileated woodpecker! Where are you?” Some of the preschoolers laugh, some repeat the question. The class is treated to the sight of a pileated woodpecker flying through the woods, long, slow wingbeats and its great size making it easy to find and follow until it disappears past Founders Grove. 

Along the Widener Trail is one of the locations here at the Schuylkill Center where hikers and birders can often find these marvelous woodpeckers.

Some of the locations that the pileateds tend to frequent are some of the very tall trees beside Fire Pond, and they will announce their presence with their kukukuk call, or perhaps their irregular, sonorous drumming on a dead tree. We have also heard the pileateds in the woods surrounding the Butterfly Meadow, working the loop of trees by the maintenance shed, the lower section of the upper fields trail leading to the ravine loop, and as far down the slope as Polliwog Pond. The most delightful sightings of this striking crow-sized woodpecker for our Nature Preschoolers, however, where they have been most visible and accessible to the young feeder watchers, has been at the suet feeders just outside the Sweet Gum classroom on the back side of the building. There the preschoolers are participating in Project FeederWatch, and both the male and female pileated woodpeckers have made appearances at eye level and even on the ground at times, amazing the children and adults. One cannot remain unimpressed by the sight of these marvelous birds! 

ExtremeTerrain makes gift to Schuylkill Center

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ExtremeTerrain’s Clean Trail Initiative program was launched in 2015.  This program seeks to reward local clubs and organizations with small, project-specific, grants to be used for trail maintenance and restoration. In the approximately 4 years since it started, the program has given out $21,650 in trail project grant funds.  The Schuylkill Center is very grateful to ExtremTerrain for their support.  Click here to learn more about their initiative. 5XWMuX-A

Helping an injured bird

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By Rebecca Michelin, Director of Wildlife Rehabilitation

WEB-WarblerYou may have heard the devastating news- a study published this month in the journal Science reports that the total breeding bird population in the continental U.S. and Canada has dropped by 29 percent since 1970.

While there are numerous factors contributing to this decline, human-made alterations to the landscape have certainly played a significant role, and we see the results of this clearly at the Wildlife Clinic at the Schuylkill Center. Since mid-August, the wildlife clinic has treated nearly two dozen birds, from mourning doves and woodpeckers to warblers and vireos, all suffering injuries as a result of collisions with buildings and windows.

The number of window collisions increases drastically in late summer and early fall as many migratory birds make their way down the East coast from their summer breeding grounds.

Exhausted from long miles of travel, birds looking for a safe place to roost can become confused and disoriented by brightly lit buildings, complex city skylines, and clear glass windows. Fledgling and juvenile birds who are just learning to fly are also susceptible to striking windows as they have no prior experience with the many dangers they face.

Glass is just as invisible to humans as it is to birds, but humans have learned to recognize visual cues indicating the presence of glass such as certain shapes, frames, and even dirt or smudges. This is why young children can often be seen bumping into pane glass doors they haven’t yet recognized those cues. These symbols aren’t helpful to birds, however, who don’t recognize glass as a barrier – for many birds, their first encounter with glass is often fatal as they collide head first at full flight speed. If the impact is not immediately deadly, birds will often suffer severe head and spinal trauma or fractures of the neck and shoulders, injuries which they may not be able to recover from, even with treatment.

To help limit bird collisions with windows at your home or business, there are a variety of options available:

• Panels of fine mesh or screen placed over the window helps increase visibility and acts as a cushion to prevent birds hitting the glass.

• Creating patterns on the outside of glass ensures they are visible even with highly reflective windows. Reflective tape or glass paint markers can be used to create horizontal lines no more than 2” apart, or vertical lines a maximum of 4” apart

• UV films and decals can be applied to windows or reflective surfaces which are nearly invisible to humans but are clearly seen by birds

If you see an adult bird sitting on the ground or sidewalk and they do not move when approached, they may have struck a window and be stunned or injured. If the bird appears to be having trouble breathing (gasping, visible chest movement), has a wing or leg held out from the body, is squinting their eyes, or has other visible signs of injury, that bird should be brought to a rehabilitation facility immediately. You can use a small towel or t-shirt to drop over the bird and gently place them in a cardboard box or other secure container. Do not offer food or water, just keep the bird warm, covered, and away from loud noises or other stressors until they can be brought to the nearest rehabber.

Many times, injuries from a window collision may not be immediately visible. In some cases, the bird may appear fine and even be able to flutter a short distance. If in doubt, call the wildlife clinic hotline (215-482-7300 x option 2) or contain the bird as instructed above and bring them to the clinic. Rehabilitators are trained to look for signs of injury that may not be obvious, and we can help ensure that the birds are fully recovered before continuing on their migration journey.

LandLab Dream Journal

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LandLab Dream Journal 

Guest post by LandLab Artist Kate Farquhar

 

Editor’s Note: LandLab is the Schuylkill Center’s environmental art residency program. Kate Farquhar was named a resident artist in 2017 and recently wrapped up her project, titled Synestates. She installed a series of three sculptures on the Schuylkill Center’s trails – come visit us to see them. This blog post is Kate’s reflection on time at the Schuylkill Center and a peek into her creative process.

 

I’m currently wrapping up my LandLab residency at the Schuylkill Center: a chapter in my relationship to a place that I will always treasure. Ten years ago I visited the Schuylkill Center when I was deciding whether or not to move to Philadelphia. Six years ago I helped with the Schuylkill Center master planning design effort led by Salt Design Studio. I’m excited to begin my next chapter and explore the woods, meadows, water bodies and trails with fresh eyes. Looking for … medicinal plants, bird calls, old friends? Time will tell. 

 

Reflecting on my LandLab residency, there remains a small corner that I’d like to share with you. To guide my work throughout the residency, I’ve filled a watercolor journal with notes and ideas. In my pursuit of habitat, infrastructure and myth, most of the mythical connections seem to live in those pages. The sculptures I built include vine trellis sculptures by the Pine Grove, floating forms in Wind Dance Pond, and pollinator habitat at the River Connector trail. While I built in solitude, I often imagined fictional rituals that could connect people to the sculptures, accessories to environmental play and novel ways to spend the day at the Schuylkill Center. Take a peek at a few pages recording the associations and fantasies that came to me throughout the process, and persist in the dream-lives of these sculptures. 

 

 

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About LandLab
LandLab is a unique artist residency program that operates on multiple platforms: artistic creation, ecological restoration and education. A joint project of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education and the Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), LandLab offers resources and space on our 340-acre wooded property for visual artists to engage audiences in the processes of ecological stewardship through scientific investigation and artistic creation.

Kate Farquhar’s Synestates: Art, Nature, and Humans

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by Communications Intern Charlotte Roach 
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As you wander the trails of the Schuylkill Center, you may notice some objects that look a little out-of-place. What are those chains doing hanging from those tree branches? What are those white geometric shapes on the surface of Wind Dance Pond? Those objects are art installations, part of our LandLab environmental art residency, created by resident artist Kate Farquhar. Kate is a Philadelphia-based environmental artist and landscape architect with a passion for green design. Her series is called Synestates, and its purpose it to explore how human-made building materials can interact with nature.

pvines, located on Pine Grove Loop, is the first of two works Kate has installed so far. The piece is made out of steel chains, intertwined with capillary fabric and sunbursts of plastic straws, draped over the branches of an Amur cork tree. The purpose of pvines is to encourage a native vine, Virginia creeper, to climb up the chains. Capillary fabric has the special property of being able to wick water upwards against gravity. Thus, the fabric provides the vines with a source of water. 

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In landscape design, rain chains are often used as alternatives to downspouts. Capillary fabric can be used in the building of a plant-covered green wall, which can help insulate a building. Green walls and rain chains are functional, decorative, and artistic, and Kate has brought these materials unexpectedly into nature to help create new habitat. The plastic straws in pvines are arranged in an aesthetically appealing way, and have even become homes for various types of insects like spiders and earwigs. 

The second of Kate’s installations is called dolmbale, located on Wind Dance Pond. It is comprised of dense white foam cut into geometric cubes and pyramids. These shapes parallel the molecular structure of nitrogen, phosphorus, and salt. These three substances cause some of the most significant water pollution issues that Pennsylvania faces. An excess of nutrients in the water causes a huge spike in growth for bacteria and algae in a phenomenon known as an algal bloom. The bacteria and algae consume a lot of oxygen, leading to the water becoming depleted of oxygen for other organisms to use. This is known as hypoxia, and it’s lethal for aquatic life. dolmbale’s goal is to raise awareness of nutrient pollution in waterways. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and salt molecules are far, far too tiny to see, but their effects are massive, and clearly visible to the naked eye. Kate’s work imagines if we could see nutrient molecules themselves in a size that’s proportionate to their impact: huge. 

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To accompany the Styrofoam shapes, Kate collected water quality data on Smith Run (one of two streams on the Schuylkill Center property) as part of a larger citizen science initiative to gather information about water pollution in Pennsylvania. Under smaller versions of her floating cubes, Kate installed leaf packs, which gathered a community of aquatic macroinvertebrates over time. (Aquatic macroinvertebrates = little critters living in the water that you can see unaided, without a microscope). Then, Kate observed, counted, and identified the organisms she caught in the leaf packs. The basis of the method is that some little bugs are more pollution-tolerant than others. For example, leeches can handle just about anything. You may find leeches in filthy, heavily-polluted water, but also in clean water, so the presence of leeches doesn’t definitively indicate clean or dirty water. On the other side of the spectrum, mayflies are delicate little guys, and they need pure, clean water to survive. If you find mayfly larvae in your water, that’s a sure sign the water is relatively free of pollutants. This method is practically universal and can be used to compare pollution levels across regions. It’s not precise, but it’s far more accessible to citizen scientists than expensive machinery. All you need is a body of water, a net, and a key to identify critters. 

The data Kate gathered at the Schuylkill Center can be seen here if you zoom into Philadelphia on the interactive map: https://leafpacknetwork.org/data/ Happily, Smith Run received Good or Excellent scores at all three of her sample sites. Check out Stroud Water Research Center’s Leaf Pack Network to learn more about how you can set up your own leaf pack experiment.

Kate’s third Synestates piece, called urlog, will be installed in late summer 2019. urlog will be “a heap of undead wood manipulated to host new seedlings and native pollinators side-by-side”, in Kate’s words. Look forward to seeing urlog in a few weeks, and in the meantime, come observe pvines on Pine Grove Loop and dolmbale on Wind Dance Pond! Ponder the significance of humans and our by-products in the natural world as you enjoy lovely art and scenery. Also, check out this post for some concept art and behind-the-scenes of Synestates as well as some of Kate’s past work, including a spectacular green roof for Urban Outfitters’ Philly HQ!