Category: Land Stewardship
Just how small is a toadlet?
June 9, 2014By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
Just what size are these tiny toad babies that make their way, by the thousands, from the Upper Roxborough Reservoir Preserve to the Schuylkill Center each June?
[gallery type="slideshow" ids="39142,39144,39143,39145,39146"]
What’s the bbuzzz?
June 6, 2014By LandLab Resident Artists Maggie Mills, B.H. Mills, and Marguerita Hagan
Colony Collapse Disorder
The LandLab installation by Marguerita Hagan, B.H. Mills, and Maggie Mills addresses colony collapse disorder and the devastating global loss of honeybees. At present in the United States alone, 1/3 of the honeybee population has been lost to this disorder. These mini, mighty pollinators make every third bite of food we take possible. Ironically, it is human behavior that is responsible for the honeybees’ catastrophic disappearance. Our installation provides a chemical free, native pollinator garden for the bee population on the grounds of the Schuylkill Center.…
The Sixth Extinction, Book Review
April 3, 2014By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Book review for the Philadelphia Inquirer, a print version of this review appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday, March 30, 2014.
We inhabit an extraordinary planet overflowing with an abundance of life: massive coral reefs built by billions of tiny invertebrates, rain forests teeming with uncountable plants and animals, frogs and toads singing in vernal ponds, bats flitting over summer meadows.
But we also live at an extraordinary moment when all of the creatures named above, and millions more, might disappear in our lifetime. And while climate change gets all the attention as an environmental…
Winter in the Forest
January 15, 2014By Melissa Nase, Manager of Land Stewardship
Winter provides a simplified, yet inspiring version of the forest we know so well in other seasons. I welcome its cool, calm colors after many weeks of the unrelenting holiday glitz and chaotic pace. In many ways, it is so much easier to proverbially, “see the forest for the trees” in this season. Uncovering the beauty and details of this place during winter is magical. Especially after a snow, the silence paired with the subdued greys and whites removes the sensory overload that can distract in other seasons. Texture, pattern, and form come…
Making Room for Rain – Stacy Levy
January 22, 2013
The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education is working to investigate the intersection of nature and the city. The role of rain in the landscape is being actively explored in programs and planning around its buildings. As a nature center, SCEE is at the forefront of solving site issues through art based intervention. On May 31, 2013 a conference on New Environmental Art will be held at SCEE to look at ways that art and science can collaborate to solve ecological problems in urban nature, and enlighten citizens to find new solutions in their own lives.
Rain is usually given a…
The Race is on: Flowers vs. Trees!
March 24, 2012[caption id="attachment_160" align="alignright" width="300"] The delicately pink-striped Spring Beauty[/caption]
It’s springtime in a forest: an ancient race between trees and flowers.
Here’s the deal: as spring comes to a forest, the trees are still naked and bare-branched, allowing streaming sunlight to strike—and warm!—the forest floor. Warmed by the sun’s rays, underground roots send up this year’s shoots and flowers, the fresh flowers giving pollinators like native bees, also waking up just now, their first taste of nectar in the new season.
[caption id="attachment_163" align="alignleft" width="200"] Virginia Bluebells, three colors in one flower![/caption]And as the flower is pollinated, it makes the…
A ‘Grate’ Day: Steel & The Schuylkill Center
August 2, 2011Last week, I got to do something few people are given the opportunity to do. I got to see the guts of a steel plant up close and personal! Our friends at ArcelorMittal provided us with a guided tour of the international corporation's Conshohocken facility - just down river from our own organization. I was there with two similarly giddy co-workers, our Director of Land & Facilities and his Assistant, to pick up a custom machined well cover from the plant’s fabrication shop.
What in the world, you ask, does ArcelorMittal and the international steel industry have to do with the Schuylkill Center? As it turns…
