The Chickahominy lived there thousands of years ago. Europeans settled there hundreds of years ago. During the Civil War, soldiers hung out there. YMCA campers learned important outdoor skills there during the 1950s and his 1960s.
The land in Charles City, Virginia, now known as the VCU Rice Rivers Center, was home to many people until it was donated to VCU in 2000 by local philanthropist Inger M. Rice AM. VCU students and faculty are currently departing from campus to conduct field research. , yielding discoveries that inform environmental policy, ensure wetland quality, provide insight into the impacts of climate change, and promote wildlife conservation.
Curious about how the Rice Rivers Center prepares students for careers in the earth sciences? Several faculty members and one student share their insights.
Dr. Catherine Viverette, assistant professor in the Center for Environmental Studies, studied fisheries and fish-eating birds at the Rice Rivers Center when she was a graduate student at VCU. Ms. Viverette, who earned both her master’s and doctoral degrees at VCU, is currently assisting with the center’s internship program, bringing her students to the Rice Rivers Center, and working in the field. skills are taught. She also works with her colleague Leslie Brooke, who is an associate professor at the Center, in her environmental research on migratory birds whose behavior can provide insight into environmental change. I am researching warblers.
What makes Rice Rivers Center special?
The Rice Rivers Center is like a gateway to the James River. We can study this gradient from very urban to very rural and see how things change. The river changes from tidal to tidal. Being able to observe changes in salinity, habitat, and population, and their gradients is a really big opportunity.
What value is field research at the Rice Rivers Center for students?
Like all experiential learning in the world, [learning at Rice Rivers Center] It can be life-changing for students. It helps them decide what they want to do. Sometimes it helps them decide what they don’t want to do. By working with the Rice Rivers Center, you will learn all kinds of field skills, how to use equipment, how to ensure safety, how to design field experiments, how to collect and interpret data, and other insights that cannot be replicated in a traditional classroom. I can.
Dr. Chris Gough is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, where he researches forest ecology, ecosystem ecology, and plant physiological ecology. His research investigates how disturbance and climate shape ecosystem structure and function.
What value does Rice Rivers Center provide you and your students?
The Rice Rivers Center is unique in that it features three distinct ecosystem types representing a wide range of regions. That includes wetlands that are in some kind of restoration mode and the James River, which is a wetland that has suffered minimal destruction. Landscapes like this, especially pristine wetlands, are extremely rare. My class spends a lot of time in highland forests. Upland means 20 feet or 10 feet above the wetland. Seeing all of these on the same landscape is a great opportunity to learn about the ecology of different species.
What skills will students gain?
The Rice Rivers Center has state-of-the-art research equipment. The equipment we use to measure methane and CO2 is very high-tech equipment that measures the gas concentration 20 times per second. So there’s the challenge of crunching these numbers. How can these very large data sets (which run 24 hours a day, over multiple years) be extracted and useful not only to ecologists and scientists, but also to stakeholders and people in the field? How can we manage ecosystems more effectively for carbon sequestration? All of this is important for researchers, land-use managers, conservationists, forest ecologists, and forest managers to use in the field. These are concrete skills that can be applied.
Daniel Albrecht Mullinger, a lecturer in the Center for Environmental Studies and a master’s degree graduate from VCU, works with Viverette and Bruck on bird research and teaches courses to undergraduate students. He works with faculty to deliver undergraduate courses focused on applied environmental studies and career skills.
What can you do at Rice Rivers Center that you can’t do anywhere else?
When we do a unit on fungal diversity, there are many things that cannot be identified in the field. In reality, you have to take the sample back to the lab, make a spore print on white and black paper, and then scrape it off.The fact that you can do it all at Rice [Rivers Center] — Collect samples, bring them to an on-site laboratory, and prepare equipment for testing. This is a unique opportunity.
How does Rice Rivers Center prepare students for their careers?
Some of our students want to become environmental educators. In some of our classes, we actually have students not only design a project, but also design a version that can be taught at the high school level. Some students want to do more outdoor recreation and adventure, so we have a unit on orienteering. How do you plan for safety, especially when it comes to biosafety? What are dangerous plants? What dangerous animals are in the area?
rice [Rivers Center] It also provides a very manageable open entry point for students to think about research. When you teach something to students in the lab, they learn really valuable skills. I don’t think there’s any substitute for spending time on a benchtop in a lab coat, slowly inputting research results into Excel. At an outdoor research campus, no two moments in nature are the same. But we can ask other very important and globally relevant questions, such as how do we capture carbon? Does this happen more often in wetlands than in upland habitats? Are some tree species more susceptible to summer heat waves? The separation is much smaller in an outdoor environment.
Sage Lockett, a senior environmental studies major, studied the abundance and diversity of brown spiders this summer at the Rice Rivers Center. He wanted to determine how human maintenance of lawns affects ecological processes.
How has your work at Rice Rivers Center influenced you?
My time as an undergraduate at VCU was greatly enriched by River Campus. It fostered my passion for the field of ecology and helped solidify my career aspirations. It’s one thing to discuss the natural environment with your peers in a lecture environment, but learning surrounded by lived experiences is unforgettable. There’s nothing like it, especially when there’s so much to see that you might miss if you were alone in the field.
What did you learn from your research experience?
I use Garmin GPS software, macroscopes and field guides for species identification, establishment and maintenance of fixed and temporary belt transects, specimen collection/specimen preservation/card/photo documentation for museum science practices, and I learned the skills to utilize data entry and photographic records. organization. Throughout the remainder of this project, I hope to develop further skills in formal speaking, R coding/data analysis, specimen dissection, and potential genetic analysis. The most valuable knowledge I have gained through this process is the first-hand experience of working with other professionals and students in an active research environment.
For more information about the Rice Rivers Center, visit ricerivers.vcu.edu. Visit igniter.vcu.edu/o/virginia-commonwealth-university/i/central-igniter/s/rice to transform today’s students into tomorrow’s geoscience leaders.
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