Assignments for Class 4: Virginia, Naturally

Objectives for Class

1) Climate, Storms, and Floods

• Climate of Virginia
• early settlers at Jamestown thought they could grow oranges in Virginia because the colony was located at the latitude of orange-growing regions on the Iberian Peninsula in Europe... but more than latitude shapes the climate
• use the Historical Climate Summaries for Virginia to compare the average annual snowfall of Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge with the average annual snowfall of Big Meadows 2 in Shenandoah National Park
• compare temperature, rainfall, and snow statistics for HOT SPRINGS and RICHMOND WSO AIRPORT (practice now finding the links on Historical Climate Summaries for Virginia, before the quiz...)

Big Meadows is over 4,000 feet higher in elevation than Back Bay, and over two degrees in latitude (>140 miles) further north
Source: ESRI, ArcGIS Online

• Fall Color in Virginia
  • Can you find Petersburg National Battlefield Park, Frederick County, Halifax County, and all those other places? Use the Index in the Atlas and Gazetteer, or search with an online mapping tool.)
• Drought and Rain in Virginia

average annual snowfall in Virginia varies by elevation, latittude, and distance from the Atlantic Ocean
Source: Historical Climate Summaries for Virginia, Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge

• Rain Shadows - The Orographic Effect
• Storms in Virginia
• 100-Year Storms in Virginia

excessive sediment load in Bull Run, flowing past Stone Bridge at Manassas Battlefield National Park
on the way to the Chesapeake Bay (after Tropical Storm Lee - September 10, 2011)

• Lightning in Virginia
• Tornadoes and Derechos in Virginia
• Floods and Floodplains
• one Buchanan County town minimized flood threats by... moving the town - see the story of Grundy
• Hurricanes in Virginia
• Hurricane Tracks in Virginia 1851-2003 (note how many came up through North Carolina/Tennessee and crossed the Blue Ridge)
• Encyclopedia Virginia: Hurricane Camille (August 1969)

track of Hurricane Camille in 1969, from the Gulf Coast through Virginia
(note that Nelson County is credited with 27 inches of rain in one night.... other estimates were as high as 33 inches)
Source: National Weather Service, Hurricane Camille - August 16-21, 1969

• Will Norfolk (and the Rest of Hampton Roads) Drown?
• Hurricane Evacuation Routes in Hampton Roads
• If you live north of I-264 in Virginia Beach or in Norfolk, take I-64 through the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel. Once you get to the Peninsula, all lanes of I-64 will carry you west towards Richmond. In a worst-case evacuation, the State Fair facilities near Kings Dominion on I-95 will serve as emergency shelters.
• No one should try to drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Everyone in Northampton County should go north on Route 13, up the Eastern Shore.
• Residents of Portsmouth should drive west via US 10 and US 460, or cross the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel and take US 60 west.
• But... what if you don't have a car? Thousands in Hampton Roads couldn't evacuate (The Virginian-Pilot, September 8, 2005)
• In 2014, Virginia's emergency management officials started modifying evacuation plans. The plan now is to provide an earlier warning up to 72 hours in advance, and to evacuate smaller areas based on projected flooding levels. The original idea that everyone in South Hampton Roads will escape up US 460, while everyone in North Hampton Roads will flee up I-64 (together with everyone in Norfolk and those living north of I-264 in Virginia Beach), is unrealistic.

how would the predicted storm surge from a Category 2 hurricane affect Willoughby Spit and travel on I-64 through the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel? Source: Hampton Roads Emergency Management Committee

Ecosystems, Communities, and Species

• Habitats and Species of Virginia
• Threatened, Endangered, Sensitive, and Other "Species of Concern" in Virginia
• Vegetation of Virginia

look in wetlands for cardinal flowers, which bloom in August/September and are a clear sign that Summer is ending

• Wetlands in Virginia
• Map of Level IV Ecoregions of EPA Region 3 (any relationship to the physiographic province boundaries?)
• Natural resource management agencies used to manage the different natural resopurces - trees, animals, water, minerals - independently from each other. Virginia has a Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy (DMME), plus a Department of Forestry, plus a Department of Game and Inlant Fisheries (DGIF), plus a Virginia Marine Resources Commission... but the plants and animals pay no attention to those bureaucratic boundaries.
• The current focus is to manage all resources located at one place in a coordinated way. A mining project could create a new environment that could benefit an endangered species restoration project and a water quality improvement project - assuming project managers and scientists with a different perspective coordinate different initiatives and share an ecosystem approach.
• The Clinch River Valley is a biological "hotspot," with a wide variety of habitats and 250 million years without disruption by glaciers.
• Aquatic diversity in the Tennessee River watershed is especially unique. The freshwater mussels depend upon fish for reproduction; the fish carry a microscopic larval stage (glochidia) to repopulate upstream regions. The last Ice Age drowned the predecessor to the New River (the Teays River) and redirected water flow away from the St. Lawrence/Hudson Bay to create the Ohio River. The last ice sheet isolated the Tennessee River's headwater streams - the Powell, Clinch, and Holston rivers - from each other long enough for mussels to evolve into different species. The first rule of ecology is to "save all the species," so efforts to preserve threatened and endangered species are focused on the rare and unique species of mussels in southwestern Virginia.
• Landscope America: Clinch River Valley
• The Nature Conservancy: Clinch River Valley program

the Holston, Clinch, and Powell rivers are biological hotspots and land prices are relatively low, so The Nature Conservancy has made the area a priority for acquiring/expanding preserves
Source: The Nature Conservancy, Clinch Valley brochure

• The Ecology of Virginia Caves
• "obligate" cave species live only in cave habitats, as opposed to raccoons that might just visit a cave occasionally.
• There's a relationship between the location of limestone and the location of caves in Virginia. The Virginia Karst Trail has only one location east of the Blue Ridge, an artificial cave set up in a museum.
• Read Ten Questions About Caves and the Virginia Cave Board (Think you might find obligate cave species in the Piedmont/Coastal Plain physiographic provinces?)
  • As raindrops percolate through the decaying organic litter (leaves, grass...) on the ground, the water becomes naturally-acidic. Limestone dissolves relatively easily in acidic water, etching out holes in the ground. Within the sinkholes and especially within the caves, micro-habitats offer a unique setting and caves often support rare species. The unusual habitat of a cave is sensitive to disturbance - blasting a highway 100 yards away and dumping stormwater into the sinkhole will have a dramatic impact on the specialized environmental setting. Caves have specialized communities of animals that can be forced out when the cave's micro-habitats are disrupted... and obligate cave-dwelling species (troglodytes) do not have the option of just migrating to a nearby field or forest.
• Virginia Natural Heritage Program: Lee County Cave Isopod
• The Lee County Cave Isopod is an obligate cave dweller, so why bother to grow eyes? In the dark, it will never see anything.
• Food deep inside a cave is scarce, so random genetic mutations that redirected metabolic energy away from growing eyes were beneficial. Over eons, the species became blind and then completely eyeless.
• This animal could not survive elsewhere if its cave habitat was destroyed. Isopods are not charismatic megafauna like polar bears, but their genetic adaptations may offer key information for fighting disease... if we don't eliminate the species before we discver its genetic patterns. The first rule of ecology-based management is "Don't lose any of the pieces." Under the Threatened and Endangered Species Act administed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, plant and animal species are protected - even ugly, bug-like critters that live completely in the dark.
• why would rotting sawdust be a threat to a small crustacean living in a cave? how is that similar to rotting algae on the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay?

the Virginia Karst Trail highlights sinkholes, sinking streams, springs, and caves - all west of the Blue Ridge except for the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News, with its walk-through simulated cave exhibit including calcite formations and cave-dwelling animals
Source: Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, The Virginia Cave and Karst Trail

karst is common in the Vally and Ridge physiographic province, but the Piedmont has significant karst acreage in only Loudoun County (how about the Appalachian Plateau?) Source: Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, Sinkholes and Karst Terrain

karst (area colored blue) is rare in the national parks in Virginia, but Cumberland Gap has a public cave tour Source: National Park Service, Cave and Karst in the U.S. National Park Service

• Oysters in Virginia
• ...native oyster populations in Chesapeake Bay are at less than 1% of historic levels - in part because we dredged the oyster reefs and removed the hard surfaces required for oyster larvae to "set" so they can start growing. So, what should we do about it? Is there a simple match between who should pay for oyster restoration projects and who will benefit from such initiatives? Should taxpayers far from the oyster reefs, say in Loudoun County or California, contribute to restoration?
• Oyster Aquaculture in Virginia
• Oyster Restoration in Virginia
• Oysters and Salt

Watch oysters filtering water:

Unfortunately, filtering by a fully-restored oyster population would not "save" the Chesapeake Bay. The only way to clean up the excessive population of algae in the Chesapeake Bay (which creates "dead zones" on the bottom where nothing can live, when the algae dies and decomposes) is to reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous dumped into the bay from upstream sources. Oysters are tiny little wastewater treatment plants, but even a zillion oysters in the bay could not compensate for excessive upstream pollution.

• Bats of Virginia
• Where would you expect to find bats that live in caves - Tazewell County ot Brunswick County?
• Managing Geese in Virginia
• Fairfax County: Geese Information and Management

non-migratory geese (which do not migrate north in the Summer) have become pests in Fairfax County
Source: Fairfax County Police

• Deer in Virginia
• Elk in Virginia
• Bugling in Buchanan
• Chestnuts in Virginia
• Invasive Species of Virginia
• Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries - Millbrook Quarry Zebra Mussel Eradication (in Prince William County)

Eeek! It's a Crisis! The Invasive Snakeheads Are Here and Threatening Life and Limb!

Or maybe not:

Snakeheads are here, but they are not devastating our creeks.
A plant out of place is a "weed" - but most of the plants in our gardens, both food plants and flowers, are not native.
Anglers recognize snakeheads as a good challenge to catch, and a delicious fish to eat.
So... is it "bad" that this non-native species has adapted to Virginia?

the southern Appalachians (including the Clinch River watershed and Great Smoky Mountains National Park further south) is a biological hot spot
Source: Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, Virginia Hydrologic Unit Explorer

Map Exercise
In the Atlas and Gazetteer, find Burke's Garden in Tazewell County (see sandstone ridges surrounding the valley). Note the name of the ridge on the southwest corner, west of Garden Mountain. Will the rainfall that flows down the ridges into Burke's Garden end up in the New River?

raindrops that reach the valley floor at Burke's Garden flow through the same gap used by Route 623 - and end up in which Virginia river?
Source: US Geological Survey (USGS), The National Map - Hydrography

Video
Watch "Conway Robinson" video:

The Con Rob from GMU-TV Courses on Vimeo

Site Visit
How did your site look in 1607, when the Enlish colonists arrived at settled at Jamestown? Think you had chestnut trees? Would the forest have been undisturbed, or would there have been scattered openings from Native Americans planting corn fields? (Corn was planted on fertile soil, typically on flood plains - "bottomland" - next to a creek rather than on slopes/uplands with less-fertile soil.) How large are the trunks of the trees today, compared to 400 years ago?

Mammoths and mastodons were extinct by 1607, but would you have seen elk in your neighborhood then? What predators would have kept the elk population in balance with the "carrying capacity" of the habitat to provide food? Are deer in your neighborhood now? If so, are there more deer than the habitat can support, and how do people cope with excessive grazing on near-the-house plants and gardens?

Where is the nearest natural, undisturbed area at (or close to) to your site? Who owns it - is it private land, or public? How is the site protected from inappropriate development or activity? Do the signs add any value, either explaining the natural resources or the rules of behavior... or are the signs just visual clutter and a target for vandalism? How would you revise the signs to make them more useful? Can you pick flowers there, or walk a dog (on a leash, perhaps)? Is there an admission fee? How is management of the location funded - through admission fees, local taxes, state agency budget, Federal agency budget - or a community group, perhaps a Home Owners Association (HOA) or a non-government organization (NGO)?

Web Exercises
- use the Virginia Department of Emergency Management Virginia Hurricane Storm Surge Tool and see what the storm surge from a "normal" Category 2 hurricane would do to Hampton Roads. - Check out the areas of Norfolk that will flood, especially the Willoughby Spit area through which half the residents were supposed to evacuate on I-64 through the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.
- use the Critical Habitat Mapper of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Is Burke's Garden in Tazewell County "critical habitat"?

search for Burke's Garden in the Critical Habitat Mapper