For two weeks in June, 2021, Frank Pascoe and Nanci Toltschin Pascoe, from Corvallis, Oregon visited the BirdHouse to assist us in taking baseline measurements for five parcels, which The BirdHouse is currently stewarding.
We dug dozens of holes, counted earthworms, measured evapotranspiration rates using mason jars and old DVDs, buried tea bags, and devised methods to deter raccoons from interfering with our experiments. All this, in the name of science, and local cooperation for a global cause.
This scientific fieldwork—mostly concerned with soil quality, biodiversity, and water dynamics—is part of the Monitoring & Evaluation framework established by the Ecosystem Restoration Camps (ERC) movement. The BirdHouse is the first urban ecosystem restoration camp within the global network of nearly 50 camps, all of whom are taking direct action to repair degraded landscapes and activate citizens in planetary healing. The ERC encourages camps to gather data at their sites & contribute these figures to a growing pool of evidence which demonstrates the effectiveness of restoration.
With data at hand, advocates for restoration efforts—at the nonprofit, academic, and grassroots levels—can draw on this body of evidence, in order to gather support from governments, foundations, and funding agencies.
One goal is to show that the work of ecosystem restoration is not just a pleasant aspiration toward green altruism, but a viable strategy which can meaningfully alter our ecosystems toward health and natural prosperity. Perhaps the ultimate goal is to enroll as many people as possible into participating in this work, in whatever way they are able.
Generating this data is no small feat, and we were beyond lucky to have the experienced hands and minds of Frank & Nanci to help us throughout our first year of monitoring work.
Nanci brings decades of experience studying soil. With a master’s degree in Plant & Soil Biology from UC Berkeley, she previously worked in the Soil Lab at Oregon State University, as well as the EPA lab in Corvallis. She is currently a student of Dr. Elaine Ingham’s renowned Soil Food Web school, and will soon complete her training to operate a certified Soil Lab under Dr. Ingham’s tutelage.
Frank, a former forester in Arkansas, holds a BS in Forestry, a Master’s in Soil Science, and a PhD in Psychology. Beyond pure study, both Frank and Nanci are practitioners of healthy soil practices, collaborating on a soil health and tree planting project at their home site in Oregon.
For all their lettered accomplishments and fine academic pedigrees, they are two of the kindest and most generous individuals we’ve ever hosted at The BirdHouse. Driven by a passion for restoration, they reached out to Ecosystem Restoration Camps (ERC) to offer their expert services as volunteers. After we connected over email, they drove from Oregon to LA, and set up a makeshift lab in our workshop!
Parcels / Zones / Tests
Over the first two weeks of June 2021, the trio of Frank, Nanci, and I traveled from parcel to parcel, assessing our sites and gathering samples.
Across five parcels, we established 10 zones for observation. Within the ERC monitoring framework, zones are understood as areas with distinct characteristics, such as slope, sun exposure, and extent of soil improvement to date.
During our time together, we completed 105 of these tests across the parcels and zones. As of the writing of this article, we are still working to complete the last of the tests which require sending soils away to a lab to measure soil carbon levels.
As one example of our tests, Frank and Nanci fashioned a set of devices called ‘atmometers’, which measure the rate of evapotranspiration (that is, the total amount of water that moves from plants and soils into the air via evaporation and transpiration). Evapotranspiration (ET) rates tend to be high in low-humidity and hot sun environments like ours. We establish the ET rates by placing an atmometer in a location, then allowing it to stay in place for around 72 hrs. We then subtract the amount of remaining water in a jar from the amount of water we started with, to measure the amount of water lost in that time interval.
Over time, we hope to see lower ET rates as our soils become better at holding moisture and canopy from trees helps create shade.
To create the atmometers, Frank and Nanci super glued DVD’s to the top of quart-sized mason jars filled with water (see photos). Affixed to the lid and suspended in the water were strips of cotton cloth, which wicked moisture up from the jar and out the hole at the center of the DVD, allowing it to vaporize in simulation of the evaporation a plant would experience in the same location.
After setting out the first batch of tests, we came back the next morning to find the DVDs removed from the tops of jars, and the water appeared murky and disturbed. Frank, an astute naturalist with an interest in animal tracking, suspected the culprits were raccoons – these creatures have a habit of washing their food before eating it, and the access to a clean jar of water like we’d left out proved to be the perfect wash basin for their nocturnal meal preparations.
After resetting the atmometers, we armored them with a thick outer hedge of short & spiky bamboo sections. An animal who wanted to remove the lid and dip their paws into the atmometers would now have to contend with this unpleasant obstacle. Fortunately, it was enough to safeguard our experiments! During this process, I learned that there are often experiments within experiments, efforts made to ensure that outside influences do not disrupt the measurement one is attempting.
Upon completion of our tests, Frank and Nanci compiled and uploaded the data from these tests into spreadsheets. It is a head-spinning, multi-tabbed behemoth of figures and charts. When I look at the sharing permissions for the spreadsheets within Google, I can see the others who have access to these figures—there are ERC board members in The Netherlands, other restoration Camps in California, ERC administrators in the UK, and fundraisers in Italy—an international cohort of concerned citizens.
I know as well that other motivated communities are simultaneously establishing new restoration camps in many countries around the globe. We, along with other participating camps around the globe, will conduct many of these tests annually, during the same time of year, in order to measure the changes in soil quality and water dynamics. Over time, the data sets will tell the story of thousands—perhaps millions—of people who acknowledge that their moment in history is one filled with perils and possibility, and that taking action to restore our one living Planet Earth, is a precious responsibility.
I am stunned by Frank & Nanci’s kindness and grateful to know them both, as we walk along the path of restoration.
