[upbeat music] [waves crashing]
Kevin Skerl: Sleeping Bear Dunes is a special place
because of the glacial features that are here.
They’re very dramatic sand dune systems.
You know, many natural features like rivers and streams.
Research in national parks is important to us,
because these lands are the people’s lands,
and we look at the park as kind of the nation’s laboratory.
And it’s important to us as resource managers
to understand our resources better,
so that we can better protect them.
[birds chirping, water flowing]
Kevin Skerl: So Dr. DeWalt’s research is important,
because often invertebrate species are
kind of left out of the picture.
You know, we learn a lot about birds and mammals.
But it’s also important
to understand those parts of the food web,
because we’re really looking to manage
ecosystems as a whole,
and we want to see healthy ecosystems and, you know,
native species thrive and diversity expand.
[eagle chirping]
R. Edward DeWalt, PhD: This is the Crystal River
at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
And I study aquatic insects.
The ones I’m interested in are stoneflies,
mayflies, and caddisflies.
Because these are three orders of insects
that the national parks are interested in,
because they’re indicators of water quality.
And they also indicate how well the habitat is doing.
By the way, this has great insects in it.
And I’m interested in knowing whether or not
parks protect aquatic insects at a greater rate
than, say, the surrounding area. We’d hope so.
That’s one of the objectives of national parks.
And so what I’m looking for when I come here
is habitat that’s intact.
[background chatter] Male Speaker: Look at that!
Go ahead and put him in there.
R. Edward DeWalt, PhD: So I want to go to streams
that have lots of natural wood in the bottom, lots of cobble,
that flow pretty fast, that are clear and clean.
And the national park helps provide
those sorts of streams, because they protect them.
In lots of places where I’ve worked
that have had volunteers helping me.
Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore set up this volunteer network
who would set my traps out at night
and at night go back out
and find them and bring them back to me
and then set up a day where we’d have volunteers come in
and help sort that material.
The benefit for a volunteer helping scientists
conduct science is one— they get to learn
about this great natural laboratory that we have.
Most people would not have any idea what occurs
below the level of the water.
They also will learn what it takes to conduct science
that’s useful.
[background chatter]
R. Edward DeWalt, PhD: They might also
decide that they like it.
And I’ve had volunteers decide to change their majors
because of some of the work they’ve done for me.
It gives them some guidance on what they
might want to do with their lives,
doing something that’s really useful to the scientists
and the society in general.
[background chatter]
Female speaker: ...kind of like caterpillars.
Victoria H. Brinson: When I went to volunteer, I’m like—
I’m thinking, oh, maybe a nice office gig,
not really going outside.
But when they said “insects”
I was like, “Really? Insects?”
And this was night collection. It wasn’t daytime collection.
So you have to go out at night
in the middle of the forest and collect insects,
and I’m like, “What did I get myself in to?!” [laughing]
But I think that was like a turning point in my life,
I think, because being here
and doing the citizen science program
actually opened up my eyes to other ways
that I could help out.
And I really liked the environment after that,
and I’m like, “You know what?
"Let me just go into environmental science.
I think this is really what I want to do.”
Joy Marburger, PhD: The Great Lakes
Research and Education Center facilitates
research and better monitoring in the Park Service,
because the national parks are important
for enjoyment of the public, and we have to manage them
in order to protect the resource.
One of the ways you protect the resource
is to have better research done on that resource.
Then that research can be conveyed to the public
through citizen science.
[background chatter]
Joy Marburger, PhD: The public actually gains a lot
of knowledge from working with the researcher directly.
We combine all the various research components.
[background chatter]
Joy Marburger, PhD: What the tools are for the research,
how it applies to management,
and how to further better science
to try to do a better job at managing our park resources.
[upbeat music]