environment.arlingtonva.us

There are over 200,000 species of pollinators worldwide that include diverse animals such as bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles and hummingbirds. In fact, three-quarters of all plants, regardless of whether we eat them or not, depend on animal pollinators in order to reproduce. When thinking about what to plant to benefit our pollinators (who benefit us so often), a critical factor to consider is the use of native plants. About one out of every five of our 450 native bees in the Mid-Atlantic area need the specific pollen of certain native plants or they cannot reproduce.

You may notice an oily sheen along the edges of a stream, or along the sidewalk if groundwater or water from a sump pump discharges to that area. To distinguish between iron oxidizing bacteria and petroleum, break up the oily sheen on the water with a stick. If the sheen stays broken up in pieces, then it is most likely iron oxidizing bacteria. Iron oxidizing bacteria is not harmful and may accumulate for several months until it is dislodged by high water flows.

This year’s friendly global citizen science competition, the City Nature Challenge, ended up with 159 cities competing! These cities tried to get people out making nature observations using the free iNaturalist application to take photos that were uploaded during a 4 day competition to see who could get the most people involved, make the most observations and identify (through crowd sourcing) the most species. This year the Greater Washington DC Region once again did very well, despite there being more cities competing from the 68 that participated last year. Reporting 29,976 observations, the DC Region came in 10th overall.

A friendly global challenge was issued this year: Which cities could engage the most people to record the most observations of wildlife and plants, and find the most species over 4 days, April 26-29? In last year’s global event, 68 cities participated and tallied 441,888 observations by 17,329 people. The first City Nature Challenge started as Citizen Science Day, with citizen science teams at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and California Academy of Sciences challenging one another into what turned out to be an eight-day friendly competition in April of 2016 between Los Angeles and San Francisco, engaging residents and visitors in documenting nature to better understand urban biodiversity. The free iNaturalist app (https://www.inaturalist.org/) is now the standard way for bioblitzes and other citizen science (the involvement of the general public in scientific research and data collection) projects to record information and is what most cities will use for recording City Nature Challenge observations, including the team here in the Washington, DC Metro area.