Blog

Reflection and Next Steps

August 8, 2024

I am happy to share that Blue Water Baltimore has us slated for a restoration project in the fall of 2025. They have sent the draft plan for the planting of 39 native understory and overstory trees to Baltimore County for review in order to acquire a restoration grant. Once that is finalized, they will work with our Facilities Director and myself to select tree species and provide more specifics about funding and planting.

Today we also welcomed an environmental project manager with Blue Water Baltimore for a site visit to look at our student-created rain garden. He will be working with me over the next several months to create an RFP for environmental engineering of the site and a formidable grant to complete that space. While this is more related to watershed stewardship, the final project will likely support the overall biodiversity of the site and surrounding streams.

In addition, our leadership team is looking into the feasibility of a capital campaign to fund the remaining aspects of our outdoor restoration, land stewardship education, regenerative agriculture, and natural play spaces.

Throughout the year I will continue to look into grants and funding for our Outdoor Restoration Plan.

Classification and Taxonomy of the Virigina Opposum

August 6, 2024

While I have not seen an opposum at my site, I have seen a family living within two miles of the site. I find these animals particularly interesting because they are the only marsupial native to Maryland. They have very unique characteristics compared to many of the other mammals native to this region.

Classification and Taxonomy of the Opposum

Non-Profit Summary: Blue Water Baltimore

August 6, 2024

Blue Water Baltimore is a non-profit organization that is currently supporting the restoration efforts at Greenspring Montessori School. They provide resources to protect and restore waterways surrounding the Jones Falls Watershed in Baltimore, Maryland.

Blue Water Baltimore

Species Identification Apps

July 30, 2024

I reviewed two of the most popular apps for species identification - Google Lens and Seek by iNaturalist. I chose these because I would like to offer our stakeholders an easy solution for learning more about our campus.

Overall Review

Both apps were effective in identifying most of the species on campus. Seek provided more functionality in saving the identified species and logging them for the site. Google Lens provided more versatility for harder to identify species, although some of the similar results were not the same species. Both Seek and Google Lens had some drawbacks and glitches, but for a stakeholder with little to no knowledge of native species, I would recommend starting with Seek.

Seek

Seek was quick to identify the notable species on campus such as our Southern Magnolia and Praire Blazing Star, but it struggled with non-flowering plants. For our pollinator gardens, it had a vague identification, classifying all plants as "Sunflowers, Daisies, Asters, and Allies".

Aside from the actual identification, the recordkeeping, app notifications, and gamification of Seek makes it very easy to use for students, staff, and families.

Google Lens

I have more experience using Google Lens for plant identifications, so there was no learning curve. When uploading a few of the photographs from our campus, I found mostly inaccurate results. For each identification, only 1/4 results were close to the actual species in the photograph. For instance, with the Elderberry, the results showed a Japanese Maple, Virginia Creeper, and Greek Strawberry Tree, in addition to one Elderberry image.

Dendrology of Greenspring

July 30, 2024

There are over 3,000 species of plants in Maryland. This report is a review of 15 tree and shrub species on the Greenspring Montessori School campus.

Dendrology of Greenspring

Invasive Plants and Animals

July 14, 2024

There are a number of nuisance invasive plant and animal species at Greenspring Montessori School. For this project, I chose a format that can be printed and shared with our facilities team for easy day-to-day use. We plan to use this as a working document and continue to edit/add as needed.

Invasive Plants and Animals

Soil Survey

Graphs courtesy of the Web Soil Survey
Monthly total precipitation (top panel) and its anomaly with respect to the 1991-2020 climatology (bottom panel) for May 2024.

July 12, 2024

Using the Web Soil Survey (WSS), I was able to determine that the main soil type on my site is Hollinger Silt Loam at 3 to 15% slopes1. This soil type is deemed ideal for farmland according to the farmland classification under the Soil Data Explorer. This makes sense with the historical context of the site, formerly used as a dairy farm.

The Web Soil Survey was easy to use once I familiarized myself with the tools. It was helpful to see the neighboring areas and the makeup of those soils. However, I was surprised to see that this soil was considered a silt loam. In the video, they did recommend getting a physical soil sample if you'd like to see a smaller, more specific area. I think that would be a good next step for the school as we consider areas of restoration.

See below to view the full report.

1 Nrcs. (n.d.-b). Web Soil Survey - home. https://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/HomePage.htm

Soil Survey - Greenspring Montessori School.pdf

Weather and Climate Data

Graph courtesy of Maryland Climate Bulletin
Monthly total precipitation (top panel) and its anomaly with respect to the 1991-2020 climatology (bottom panel) for May 2024.

July 4, 2024

When studying the climate and weather for my site, I found that I needed to expand my search to include Baltimore County or City or beyond to include all of the state of Maryland in order to find quality data.

The most impactful data source I found was the Maryland Climate Bulletin from the Maryland State Climatologist Office1. This PDF report offered a summary of the trends throughout the state, including the overall warming of temperatures and decrease in precipitation in Baltimore County. This will impact which plant species we decide to plant on site. Based on this data, we should steer toward heat and drought-tolerant native plants.

I also decided to take a look at the national snowfall in the area, and how it has changed over the years. This may also impact which species thrive in the area. The NOAA PDF of Baltimore snowfall from 1883 to 2024 gives a good overview of how snowfall has been decreasing in recent years.

Finally, I took a look at the new Plant Hardiness Zones from the USDA3. The site is now considered 7A for plant hardiness.

All of these factors together will help us to select species to introduce at the school that will be most likely to thrive in the changing climate. I am also interested to learn how this changing climate will impact the animal species that call this area home.

1 Maryland State Climatologist Office. (n.d.). https://www2.atmos.umd.edu/~climate/

2 Baltimore MD snowfall. (2024). In National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved July 4, 2024, from https://www.weather.gov/media/lwx/climate/bwisnow.pdf

3 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone MAP | USDA Plant Hardiness Zone MAP. (n.d.). https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/

Google My Maps

July 3, 2024

For my mapping project, I used Google My Maps. I have used this service before and it seems like Google hasn't updated it at all in the past eight years. It is very simple and easy to use, but it is limited in the visual display options.

Within the map, I've included the outline of the area of focus, a rain garden, natural playspace, woodland area, roadways through the campus, and the nearby stream.

I included the three areas of focus to outline what restoration we have accomplished and what else we are looking to do. These three areas have the most potential for biodiversity on the site.

I included the roadways because they will affect the biodiversity by segmenting the site. We do have wildlife on campus to account for with these roadways. There is a very low speed limit, but it still poses a challenge for our local wildlife and runoff is also an area of concern.

Deep Run is the stream adjacent to the school. Although not included in the area of focus, I included it because I would like to research where water was initially diverted from in this area. Students at Greenspring also visit Deep Run to research the quality of the water leading into the Jones Falls.

BONUS: My contact at Blue Water Baltimore got back to me with a plan he developed in ArcGIS as a preliminary plan for the installation of 39 overstory and understory trees on our campus. (He did preface that the Arc plan is not very beautifully rendered, but I did include it here because it shows another GIS software and I am very excited about this partnership!)

July 3, 2024

For my mapping project, I used Google My Maps. I have used this service before and it seems like Google hasn't updated it at all in the past eight years. It is very simple and easy to use, but it is limited in the visual display options.

Within the map, I've included the outline of the area of focus, a rain garden, natural playspace, woodland area, roadways through the campus, and the nearby stream.

I included the three areas of focus to outline what restoration we have accomplished and what else we are looking to do. These three areas have the most potential for biodiversity on the site.

I included the roadways because they will affect the biodiversity by segmenting the site. We do have wildlife on campus to account for with these roadways. There is a very low speed limit, but it still poses a challenge for our local wildlife and runoff is also an area of concern.

Deep Run is the stream adjacent to the school. Although not included in the area of focus, I included it because I would like to research where water was initially diverted from in this area. Students at Greenspring also visit Deep Run to research the quality of the water leading into the Jones Falls.

BONUS: My contact at Blue Water Baltimore got back to me with a plan he developed in ArcGIS as a preliminary plan for the installation of 39 overstory and understory trees on our campus. (He did preface that the Arc plan is not very beautifully rendered, but I did include it here because it shows another GIS software and I am very excited about this partnership!)

ArcGIS plan from Blue Water Baltimore

Site Visit

June 13, 2024

For the past few months, I have been working to build a relationship with Blue Water Baltimore, a local organization that supports tree plantings, student education, and grants for projects related to the local watershed. Fortunately, this week they offered to come out for a site visit.

I walked the property with Darin from Blue Water and our school Facilities Director. Together we identified areas that can benefit from additional native plants to support runoff and increase biodiversity on campus.

While the main focus for Blue Water Baltimore is to restore water quality1 , their practices will also support the overall biodiversity at Greenspring. Darin recommended planting additional native overstory and understory trees, flowers, and shrubs that will do well in our rocky clay soils. We will continue to work with him to develop the plan, have a water specialist come out to survey the runoff areas, and work toward a grant for this project.

1 About. (n.d.). Blue Water Baltimore. Retrieved June 14, 2024, from https://bluewaterbaltimore.org/water-nonprofits-baltimore/

Mapping

June 6, 2024

I used Google Earth Pro to map the history of the site, in hopes of learning more about the land use. The satellite images from 1985 - 2015 are very low resolution, however, they do give some insight into the site. Images from 1985 to 2005 show fewer buildings - major renovations and expansions took place in 2005 to 2022. However, the land is also predominately monoculture grass until 2008. There are a few mature trees at the site that predate the first satellite image in 1985, but most of the trees and diverse plant life were introduced within the past 20 years.

Preliminary Thoughts

June 6, 2024

Biodiversity is a complex field and I am only beginning to scratch the surface in understanding its importance locally, regionally, and globally. As I've mentioned, I am really interested in how the history of the land has shaped the modern biodiversity.

On a small scale, I can see how the biodiversity of my site has been affected by agriculture over the last 120+ years. Like so many areas throughout the United States, the land was clear cut in the early 1900's to make way for a dairy farm, ice cream parlor, and theatre. Then after the property was sold, there were multiple building projects on site that resulted in further compacting the soil. The current soil is still highly degraded - a compacted clay atop granite slabs. This results in decreased biodiversity overall on the site.

This is a good case study for what is happening regionally, nationally, and internationally with current farming practices. By further looking at this site and suggesting improvements to the biodiversity, I hope to learn how to begin to restore other lands on a greater scale.