Holston Rivers VMN Chapter

For up-to-the-minute information about Volunteer and Advanced Training opportunities, class and meeting schedules, and Master Naturalist news and events, visit the Holston Rivers Chapter weblog: HRCVMN Field Journal.

Keep up with what's going on at the Meadowview Research facility for the American Chestnut Restoration effort. The American Chestnut was one of the principle trees in our area in the early part of the 20th Century, comprising about 30 % of local forests and providing an important source of revenue for local residents and a valuable food crop for animals. For over twenty years the Dr. Fred Hebard and his assistants have been working to restore the American Chestnut at the Meadowview Research facility. Using back-crossing the have been working to develop blight resistant stock with some success. Mila Wilmoth and Monica Appleby, both members of the HRCVMN, are both involved in this effort and they have developed a calendar of work events at the facility for anyone interested in becoming a part of this extremely worthwhile effort. Click here for the calendar. They encourage you to call the facility at 276.944.4631 for more detailed information as our tasks constantly change due to weather and the condition of the trees. Also, be sure and visit their website: http://www.acf.org/meadowview.php to find out more about the history and the work being done at the facility.

Plants and biodiversity

• National Biological Information Infrastructure Southern Appalachian Information Node, your gateway to regional biodiversity information.
• Digital Atlas of Virginia Flora,Virginia Botanical Associates
• NatureServe: A Network Connecting Science with Conservation.
• Bioimages: To provide educational information to the public on biologically related topics, as well as to be a source of biological images for personal and non-commercial use. Dept. of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt Univ.
• Macroinvertebrate Identification Key, from: Stream Study, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia
• USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service Plant Database
• Tree of Life: a collaborative effort of biologists from around the world. On more than 9000 World Wide Web pages, the project provides information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their evolutionary history (phylogeny), and characteristics.

Invasives

• Invasive Plants and their Native Look-alikes: Courtesy: NY Botanical Garden. (Claiborne Woodall recommendation)
• Invasive Plants in Southwest Virginia Natural Areas, Nancy Hagen's Invasive Plant blog

Mammology and Herpetology

• Big Cat (cougar) sightings in Virginia and elsewhere
• Bears, from the Dept. of Game & Inland Fisheries. Includes "Living with Black Bears in Virginia."
• The VA Hepetological Society has an excellent web site with lots of information on various reptiles.
• The Hellbenders Homepage: promoting the conservation of North American giant salamanders.

Trees

• Virginia Big Tree Program, featured in Richard Davis' Dendrology presentation on 3/19/09
• Virginia DOF Virginia DOF Tree Identification
• Dendrology: Virginia Tech's Forest Biology and Dendrology website
• Virginia Chapter American Chestnut Foundation, Chestnut Science Resources
• "The Natural and Economic History of the American Chestnt": Robert Strasser, Chestnut Restoration Biologist.

Birds & Butterflies

• About Birds from Cornell University
• Birds & Science from the Audubon Society
• Virginia Society of Ornithology
• Important Bird Areas (IBA's) in Virginia
• Birding listservs in Virginia, includes Bristol Birders listserv
• Butterflies and Moths of North America
• Mountain Empire Butterfly Club Nature Calendar, includes birding and butterfly events for NE Tn. and SW Va.
  Contact: Larry McDaniel: 423-773-9234. Listserv: mebc-butterfly@freelists.org
• See Larry McDaniel's amazing bird, insect, butterfly and moth photos from Steele Creek Park
• Nova: The Incredible Journey of the Butterflies
  requires Quick Time or Windows Media

Fish

• Mike Pinder's 2008 lecture on Aquatics: slow to load but worth the wait.

Water and stream ecology

• Virginia Stream Restoration & Stabilization Best Management Practices: Virginia Department od Conservation & Recreation.
• Pesticides in the Upper Tennessee River Basin, USGS, last modified: 10/1/05.
• Center for TMDL and Watershed Studies, The Center for TMDL and Watershed Studies at Virginia Tech was chartered in May 2004. As a part of a Land-Grant university the Center is committed to education, research, and outreach. The Center has developed programming and resources to serve various audiences including local stakeholders in a specific watershed, state and federal agency staff, TMDL developers, and extension and research professionals. Much of the Center�s activity deals with improving the watershed simulation models.

Fossils and geology

• Virginia Museum of Natural History, Martinsville, Va.
• ETSU and General Shale Brick Natural History Museum, Grey, TN
• Museum of the Middle Appalachians, Saltville, Va.
• "A Description of the Geology of Virginia", James Madison University, Dept. of Geology & Environmental Science
• College of William And Mary, Dept. of Geology
• Resource Management—Geology, U.S. Forest Service. Includes "Glimpses of the Ice Age from I-81," "Silent Reminders," and "Volcanic Fire and Glacial Ice", two in a series of brochures published by the USGS titled "Geologic Wonders of the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests."

Download Project proposal form.

Brian Schmidt, Chair of the Projects ("Purple Sheet") Committee has updated and revised the list of Approved Volunteer Service Projects. for more information visit the Advanced Training & Projects page
For a list of all Approved "Purple Sheet" projects see the Approved Projects list page (updated 5/29/09).

One of the main missions of the Virginia Master Naturalist program is education. In Southwest Virginia we enjoy a varied and abundant ecological bounty. It is a duty and a pleasure to preserve and educate others about our natural heritage. Visit our newly designed Education page to learn about educational opportunities available in our area.

• New—and totally amazing!!: Encyclopedia of Earth
• Sugar Hill and Scenic Clinch River Trails:Enjoy eight miles of maintained trails along the Scenic Clinch River, the Sugar Hill Loop Trail and Oxbow Lake that start at the Oxbow Dam in St. Paul, Virginia. Dozens of tree species are identified along the trails. The Sugar Hill and Clinch River Trails have been nominated as state birding and wildlife viewing trails because of the wide variety of flora and fauna found along the way
• Virginia Citizen's for Water Quality
• Canaan Valley Institute: a nonprofit, non-advocacy organization committed to helping communities improve the quality of life in their watersheds by restoring aquatic resources using cost-effective, locally determined solutions.
• Holston River Soil & Water Conservation District
• Native plants for conservation, restoration and landscaping
• Bringing Nature Home, author and lecturer Doug Tallamy makes his case for Native Gardening.
• Virginia Outdoors Foundation—Abingdon Office
• Abingdon's Go Green Initiative
• Earth 911
• Google Earth

Food for thought

One change is in the composition of floras and faunas. The larger predators are lopped off the apex of the pyramid; food chains, for the first time in history, become shorter rather than longer. Domesticated species from other lands are substituted for wild ones, and wild ones are moved to new habitats. In this world-wide pooling of faunas and floras, some species get out of bounds as pests and diseases, others are extinguished. Such effects are seldom intended or foreseen; they represent unpredicted and often untraceable readjustments in the structure. Agricultural science is largely a race between the emergence of new pests and the emergence of new techniques for their control.

Observations on the effects of man-made change on the environment, from The Land Ethic, by Aldo Leopold.