Samuel Kelsey, Inke Forbich, and I loaded into the boat at the Plum Island Ecosystem Long Term Ecological Research site (PIE-LTER) dock. The tide was high, water lapping against the mud banks of the marsh creek. Smooth cordgrass waved slightly in the ocean breezes above the shoreline, showing off their early summer emerald hues. Where…
Author: Erika Zambello
Erika Zambello is a writer, birder, and photographer living and working along the Emerald Coast of Florida. She has a master’s degree in environmental management, where she specialized in ecosystem science and conservation. Her love of the outdoors was inspired by a childhood in Maine, where she returned for her National Geographic Young Explorer grant. In addition to Maine, she has lived in New York, France, Washington, DC, and North Carolina. Erika believes in the power of communicating conservation and exploration, which was the inspiration for One World, Two Feet.
LTER Road Trip: Science and Education on the Water
Every month, Field Technician Tim Montgomery loads his equipment onto a center console motorboat and heads off into the marshes surrounding Sapelo Island, Georgia. Over the course of several hours, he stops at multiple sites to check on the Georgia Coastal Ecosystem LTER network of data loggers continually collecting water quality parameters as they gently…
CBA: May Field Trips
CBA organized and facilitated 20 field trips for 18 elementary schools in Okaloosa and Walton Counties to bring 3rd and 5th graders to the shores of the Choctawhatchee Bay. A culmination of the year-long Grasses in Classes curriculum, the students planted smooth cordgrass they have raised since October of 2017 to create brand new living shorelines that both reduce…
E. Zambello Writing and Art 