InSites is a quarterly newsletter that highlights the personalities and projects of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI) of The University of Tennessee. WMREI is an affiliate of the EERC.
WMREI was created in 1985 as a state-funded Center of Excellence. Research areas include solid-, hazardous-, and nuclear-waste management; waste minimization; and pollution prevention.
Biotechnology is the focal point of the institute's technical research, while issues involving public attitudes and federal/state policies related to waste-management issues are the primary concerns of the institute's policy research.
For additional information about InSites, or to be added to our mailing list, please write InSites, WMREI, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-1156, or fax 865-974-1838. Or, if you prefer, e-mail Constance Griffith cbgriffith@utk.edu.
Table of Contents
Natural
Intelligence Forging
a Path to Alternative Fuels National
“Clean City” Stars Field
and Stream
Summit to Draw Wide
Array of Environmental Managers
Correction
In
the brave new world of biocomputing, researchers are finding that science can be
stranger than science fiction.
By Elise LeQuire
Imagine you’re a U.S. soldier who’s just been struck by a piece of shrapnel. You’re lying exhausted in a fetid swamp miles from a command post, medic unit, or helicopter pad. If this were Vietnam in the last century, you could be facing a slow, painful death.
Fast forward several decades. As consciousness ebbs, the suit you’re wearing springs into action. Sensors detect an incipient bacterial infection and relay that information to a computer chip that tells your white blood cells to get to work immediately. A silicon chip also relays information about your physiological condition, and pinpoints your precise location, to a computer at a central command post, which launches a rescue mission. You live to tell the story.
Sound like an episode out of Star Trek? Perhaps, but a team of researchers at the University of Tennessee (UT) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are about to take the fiction out of science fiction. To that end, they’re exploring the frontiers of biological computing that will allow the silicon chip to communicate with biological systems. These hybrid biological-silicon computing systems will open a new window on the world of computing.
“Despite the growing applications for digital technology, we have not seen the end of silicon-based systems,” says Chris D. Cox, an associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UT. “The digital systems have an advantage for accuracy and number-crunching, but for recognition of spatial information such as facial characteristics or navigating a complex environment, silicon-based biological systems are superior.” Such biological computing systems may one day allow commanders at a central command post to alter the circadian rhythms of soldiers on the battlefield. On the home front, biological computing systems may be used in face-recognition technologies useful for identifying criminals or missing persons.
The project is funded by a three-year, million-dollar grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Science Foundation’s Biological Information Technology and Systems (BITS) program. According to its Web site, DARPA was created as an independent research arm of the DoD in 1958 in response to the threat of Russian superiority in space. DARPA is meant to be antithetical to the conventional military research and development structure. By investing in high-risk research with the potential for high returns, the agency fosters programs that are potentially revolutionary.
You may never have heard of DARPA, but your life has been radically altered on the civilian front by its research: It’s the agency that launched the Internet. The BITS program likewise sponsors high-risk, high-payoff investments in basic research on biological information systems.
Shout it Out
From the portable laptop to high-end supercomputers, current digital technology relies on the communication of bits of information, chip to chip. But biological organisms have their own computing systems, cell to cell, that allow simple organisms to perform complex tasks. The relative simplicity of prokaryotic organisms such as Escherichia coli makes them good candidates for study. “Prokaryotes are cells in which most of the DNA floats around as a single strand within the cell. Eukaryotes have multiple strands,” says Cox, the principal investigator on this interdisciplinary project. His job is to collect and analyze the existing data about cell-to-cell communication and create computer models that will mimic the ways these systems work.
The prokaryotic community sometimes gets a bad rap, thanks in part to the ability of some of them, such as certain notorious strains of E. coli, to wreak havoc in the human body. But these organisms have to be smart to perform such complex tasks as hacking into the human immune system, glowing in the dark, or forming the gunk you find in your refrigerator.
Part of their intelligence lies in their ability to cooperate with each other in a process called quorum sensing.
“To determine whether a quorum exists, individual cells send out extra-cellular signaling molecules. When the concentration of signaling molecules becomes high enough, it turns on genes that initiate bioluminescence, virulence factors, or biofilm formation. In addition, the cell starts sending out signaling molecules at a much higher rate, in effect shouting out the message that a quorum has formed so that all cells in the neighborhood get the message,” Cox says.
By creating computer models that mimic this biological process, Cox hopes to increase our understanding of cell-to-cell communication and pave the way for chip-to-cell communication. “Our goal is to establish communication between computer chips and the cell through genes that respond to electrical impulses. Ultimately, we aim to test the model by replacing the genetic quorum-sensing circuit with our computer-based model. If our model can control the cells and make them behave as they do in a natural state, this will provide strong evidence that our model is correct.
A Few Good Genes
While E. coli may be a relatively simple organism, it contains more than 4,000 genes, all of which have been mapped through techniques developed by the Human Genome Project. CEB researchers will screen all these genes looking for the best candidates to respond to electrical stimulation.
“The idea is to find genes in E. coli that are induced by a level of electric current that will not prohibitively damage cells,” says James T. Fleming, research assistant professor at UT’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB).
These genes will then be fused with a luminescent gene from another prokaryote, Vibrio fischeri, which glows when exposed to certain external stimuli. Indeed, CEB researchers have already patented a cell-to-chip technology using genetically engineered luminescent reporter genes to signal a silicon chip in the presence of environmental contaminants such as naphthalene or biological organisms such as bacteria. (See “Critters on a Chip,” InSites, Winter 1997.)
“If we can take an electrical generator and zap this
construct with electricity, this will demonstrate the feasibility of interfacing
a living organism with a computer. The chip will send a message to the cell, and
the cell will pick up that response and emit light. The computer will pick up
that signal and analyze the data. This will harness the power and complexity of
simple biological cells to the speed and accuracy of silicon computer
technology,” Fleming says. Eventually, the communication system would be able
to both detect and respond to stimuli.
Probing Questions
The final step in this chip-to-cell communication system is to construct minuscule carbon nanofiber-based devices that will allow direct interaction between silicon-based computing elements and the genetic pathways of the microorganisms. Once the electrically inducible E. coli genes are fused with the bioluminescent reporter gene, the engineered organism can be integrated with networks of carbon fiber electrodes and encouraged to multiply into colonies or to grow as biofilms.
Integrated carbon nanofiber technology, developed by researchers at ORNL, represents an unprecedented advance in nanotechnology. These tiny fibers are even smaller than individual cellular organisms, with tip diameters of about 20 nanometers.
“Their size scale provides the ability to integrate these tiny carbon electrodes throughout cellular matrices, such as polysaccharide biofilms, and potentially within individual cells,” says Timothy McKnight, a staff engineer with the Molecular-Scale Engineering and Nanoscale Technologies Research Group (MENT) at ORNL.
“As electrical conductors, they may be used to electrically stimulate local regions of these matrices, or as electrochemical probes to detect a variety of cellular compounds, such as those involved with quorum sensing.” The number of these carbon nanofiber probes can be quite large, and large arrays can be used to electrically stimulate regions of cells or to help detect a number of compounds at multiple sites without moving the probe. The ability to fabricate arrays of electrodes provides the ability to measure multiple points within the same cell and to potentially evaluate multiple chemical species with one measurement array.
Using standard semiconductor processing techniques, the MENT group has developed approaches to synthesize these arrays in a highly deterministic fashion, with control over fiber size, shape, location, and chemical composition. “The ability to grow these nanoscale electrodes in such a highly deterministic manner enables them to be directly integrated with silicon-based processing devices and to provide truly nanoscale functionality for these systems,” McKnight says.
It’s this very functionality that will allow researchers to create complex experiments involving multiple variables in complicated biological environments, and the eventual deployment of technological devices in real life, and real time.
* * *
For more information contact Chris Cox, Civil and Environmental Engineering, 73F Perkins Hall, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, call 865-974-7729, or email ccox9@utk.edu.
Forging a Path to
Alternative Fuels
East
Tennessee may one day wear a “Clean Cities” moniker if EERC researcher
Jonathan Overly and the East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition (ETCFC) have their
way.
By Kris Christen
Before long, scattered roadside billboards in East Tennessee could read something like this: “The East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition is looking out for you by using alternative fuels. Would you like to get involved?”
The recently born coalition is East Tennessee’s player in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Clean Cities Program. The DOE program seeks to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, improve air quality, and enhance local economic activity by supporting public-private partnerships that deploy alternative fuel vehicles and build supporting infrastructure. Obtaining official designation also puts coalitions in line for federal grant money toward alternative-fuel transportation-related projects.
DOE has already designated some 80 communities in 41 states as participants, “But there’s a big hole where the Southeast is concerned,” [see map] says coalition coordinator Jonathan Overly, a research associate with the University of Tennessee’s Energy, Environment and Resources Center. Air quality problems in the region make East Tennessee’s designation elusive and challenging.
“All these coalitions have found a way to become involved with this program, leveraging federal funding to reduce foreign oil dependence and improve air quality in their regions,” Overly notes. “But Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina have either failed in attempts to join this group or have basically done nothing.” Eventually, he says he hopes all 32 counties of East Tennessee join the coalition.
On the Road to Clean Cities
The DOE Clean Cities Program is an outgrowth of the Energy Policy Act (EPACT) of 1992, which came about as a result of the Gulf War, says David Dunagan, program manager for DOE’s Southeast regional office in Atlanta. Although EPACT requires that a certain percentage of new vehicles purchased for federal, state, and private fleets be alternatively fueled vehicles capable of operating on nonpetroleum fuels, a region’s participation in the program is voluntary.
To obtain designation, cities or regions must build a coalition of interested stakeholders, assess the current state of local or regional alternative fuels markets, identify existing and potential alternative fuel vehicle fleets and refueling stations, work to ensure a strong market foundation by building stakeholder commitments, and create an overall plan that details how they will expand their alternative fuel market. DOE then reviews the plan and either approves it or provides guidance to the coalition on necessary changes.
“It’s not really complex, but it takes quite a lot of collaboration between local governments, planning organizations, universities, and other stakeholders because each has different bureaucracies, priorities, and interests,” Dunagan says. Stakeholders typically include federal, state, and municipal vehicle fleets; utilities; fuel providers; equipment manufacturers; environmental groups; private and public fleet managers; and local government officials.
Building Momentum
So far, Overly has pulled together 52 participants from 32 area organizations, including the Tennessee Valley Authority; Knoxville Utilities Board; Knoxville Area Transit; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; UT; Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation; the cities of Knoxville, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville; two propane distributors; five environmental organizations; and one area car dealership. The only type of stakeholder missing today is a private fleet representative.
The next step involves developing the coalition’s goals and objectives, finding ways to cover core funding costs, and forming a steering committee to determine which projects the coalition will focus on, as well as who will do what and how, Overly says. Additionally, the group will form working committees to concentrate on alternative fuel vehicles and infrastructure, education and marketing, and legislative initiatives.
“We’ll be staying in touch with both state and federal legislators, keeping them abreast of what’s going on,” Overly says. “We’ll also be researching what other cities have done, in terms of legislative initiatives, to uncover ideas already out there for bringing in money for issues the coalition wants to work on.”
Alternative Fuel Options
Two alternative fuels are renewable—namely ethanol, which is produced primarily from corn, but can also be made from potatoes, scrap wood, and other biomass materials, and biodiesel, which is typically produced from soybeans or waste cooking oils.
The other alternative fuel options—biodiesel, electricity, propane, natural gas, and hydrogen—are much cleaner than regular gasoline, as is hydrogen, depending on how it’s produced. What all the alternative fuels have in common is that they can be produced domestically.
Overly says he would like to see the coalition focus primarily on natural gas and propane, two of the cleanest burning of all the fuels from an air emissions aspect. Both are also some of the least expensive alternatives from a fuel cost perspective. In terms of infrastructure costs, however, natural gas is more on the expensive side.
Going after Niche Markets
Alternative fuel vehicles already exist in East Tennessee, thanks primarily to the Energy Policy Act requirements—an estimated 500 owned by the state, 200 by UT, and 200 by the U.S. Postal Service in East Tennessee, according to Overly. Very few are running on alternative fuels, however, because of a loophole.
“The act said that fleets meeting certain criteria had to purchase a certain percentage of alternative fuel vehicles every year, but it didn’t say anything about having to put alternative fuels in them,” he notes. The Bush administration’s new Energy Policy Act is likely to work toward closing this loophole.
Barriers that alternative fuel vehicles must typically overcome include a limited refueling infrastructure, increased cost, and limited range, according to DOE. Hence centrally fueled fleets such as grocery store delivery trucks or campus shuttles are the best places to start, Overly says.
Along these lines, some of the project ideas the East Tennessee coalition is currently bandying about include moving public bus transit systems and school buses from diesel fuel to natural gas, propane, or hybrid electric—a cost likely to run into the millions of dollars for each project, Overly notes.
“We might start with a small bus district that could refuel at a central location and help develop the infrastructure,” Overly explains. And to pay for the effort, the coalition’s legislative working committee might propose, for example, to have one cent added to the state fuel tax.
Another potential project involves support services for the area’s main airport. “On the tarmac you have a whole fleet of vehicles that don’t go very far at all and run on a flat surface, so there are several opportunities for alternative fuels there,” Overly says.
Vision for the Future
“Alternative fuel vehicles are so much cleaner than traditional petroleum-based fuels, especially diesel,” Dunagan says. “So anytime you can replace gasoline or diesel with compressed natural gas, propane, or other alternative fuels, you get public health benefits, image benefits, and financial benefits.”
Over the long-term, however, DOE’s goal is a hydrogen-based economy, and the Freedom CAR Initiative announced earlier this year is a major thrust by the Bush administration in this direction, according to Dunagan. “It’s a federal collaboration with major automakers and national labs to produce an economically viable fuel-cell vehicle that would run on hydrogen,” he explains. Although the fuel cell, by using hydrogen, would emit nothing more hazardous than water vapor, the process is still years away from overcoming technological barriers to using hydrogen efficiently and storing, producing, and transporting it safely.
In the meantime, Overly says he hopes that once the coalition is off and running, East Tennessee will see some much needed improvements in air quality, as well as secure more federal grant money for transportation-related projects that are currently out of reach.•
* * *
For more information contact Jonathan
Overly, EERC, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Center Building,
Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-3625, or email <jgoverly@utk.edu>
National “Clean
City” Stars
Some 80 communities in 41 states have already been designated as Clean Cities program participants by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Coalitions in Chicago; Denver; Kansas City; Las Vegas; the Red River Valley region of North Dakota, Minnesota, and Winnipeg and Manitoba, Canada; Sacramento; Tucson; Minnesota’s Twin Cities; and Vermont were recognized by DOE as some of the most successful in 2001.
The Twin Cities program in particular earned extra kudos for adding the most alternative fuel vehicles, the bulk of them designed for E85—fuel with an 85 percent ethanol content.
“We don’t have any of our own fossil fuel resources in Minnesota, so we’re looking at ways to capitalize on our strong agricultural base,” says Tim Gerlach, coordinator of the Twin Cities coalition. They now have 75 E85 fueling stations in the area and 75,000-85,000 E85 compatible vehicles registered in the state.
One way the Twin Cities program differs from those of other locations is that it is aimed specifically at the general public, Gerlach says. “It’s not that we don’t consider government and corporate fleets to be very important; we just really believe that if you can’t bring these fuels to the general consumers and get them to buy into these fuels and new technologies, you’re never going to overcome these hurdles.” Virtually all of Minnesota’s gasoline is now blended with up to 10 percent ethanol content.
—Kris Christen
Cades
Cove’s unique history and ecology make it home for an unusual variety of
plants and animals.
By Lisa Byerly Gary
Editor’s
Note: Each issue of InSites features an article from Sightline, a semiannual
In Great Smoky Mountains, the most-visited of all national parks, Cades Cove offers a special attraction all its own. Of the 9 million or so visitors who make their way to the Park in a given year, fully 2 million of them take the meandering 11-mile loop through the Cove.
One of only a handful of open spots in the vast and heavily wooded Smoky Mountains, Cades Cove has been home to humans for hundreds of years and was claimed as a hospitable niche in the mountains by European settlers in the 1820s. Here, nestled into the bosom of the hills, they prospered as farmers of fertile soils and hunters of abundant game, despite the wild and rugged terrain around them.
The settlers and their descendants are gone now, but the Cove is still a hospitable abode for many species of flora and fauna. An array of wildlife in the open fields along the Cove road is one reason so many human visitors drive, bike, or hike through the Cove each year. And plants abound here that are found virtually nowhere else in these mountains—some, in fact, that are found nowhere else for hundreds of miles. Such plants seem to thrive on the limestone of the Cove’s soil.
Back to Nature
Managing this fertile and historic valley in the Smokies is a challenge. When the Park was established in 1934, modern management techniques involved human-made “improvements” such as the introduction of exotic plant life, the building of ditches, and the draining of wetlands. This strategy continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Today, some of the Park’s management of Cove lands involves undoing some of those old remedies and reverting to native species and natural landscapes.
But knowing what is “natural” and “native” involves evaluating what is there and watching for trends among animal and plant species. To that end, Park scientists undertake formal and informal counts of plants and animals.
UT wildlife scientist Michael Pelton counted deer in the 1970s and 1980s using a technique called spotlighting, which the National Park Service’s Bill Stiver and co-workers continue to use today. Every second week throughout the year, they drive along the Cove’s loop road about 30 minutes after sunset shining a spotlight on both sides of the road. They count and record the number of deer they see, then compare the data with that of previous years. A modification to this technique will help translate a simple head count to a more precise deer-per-acre or deer-per-square-mile density analysis.
“Not many people go out in the Cove at night,” Stiver says. “But there is a lot going on at night that people never get to see.”
Park wildlife biologists note other sightings on their nighttime forays as well. Raccoons, skunks, wild hogs, barn owls, and bears are frequently on the list. The Cove is home to many more species, including river otter, groundhog, gray squirrel, Eastern cottontail rabbit, chipmunk, bobcat, copperhead, and timber rattlesnake.
“The Cove is a very diverse area,” Stiver explains. “A lot of edge-type species can exist there. The old field-type settings offer a variety of habitat that lends itself to a variety of animals. Most of the land in the Park is forested, so these open habitats provide unique space you don’t see otherwise. There are species of hawks and birds you don’t see in other areas of the Park. And the deer population is much higher than anywhere else in the Park.”
Deer on Decline
The deer like to graze in the Cove’s open spaces and are prolific there, but the current population is markedly smaller than in previous years.
“Spotlight counts in the 1970s routinely produced 300 deer,” says Stiver. “We’re lucky to get 100 now.”
That is not necessarily a bad thing, he says, because the Cove’s smaller population of deer is now stable and healthy. He knows this because, in addition to the spotlight counts, five deer are harvested every second year to evaluate the herd from a health standpoint. Weight checks and parasite counts indicate the level of stress on deer in the Cove. Recent evaluations indicate that the deer herd is within the Cove’s carrying capacity.
While it’s hard to be sure why the deer herd has declined in the last few years, scientists have their suspicions, says Joe Clark, research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Southern Appalachian Field Laboratory. “For one thing, you see a pretty definite browse line in the woods where deer have eaten all the foliage. You can see through the woods really well, which is unusual for the Park.”
That, says Clark, means there is not a lot of cover in the trees, and that may affect deer densities. The deer give birth to fawns in May and June, he says, and they count on camouflage for defense.
“The lack of an understory leaves the fawns vulnerable to coyotes, black bears, and bobcats,” Clark says. “So fawns don’t make it to adulthood very well. Enough make it for the population to be stable, but there are less deer than there would be with heavier cover.”
Another impact on the deer population is the lack of major predators for adult deer, Clark says. There are no wolves or mountain lions in the area now, and hunting is not allowed in the Park. While other predators would gladly eat an adult deer, they don’t often get the opportunity. So the adult deer thrive, and heavy populations of adults consume the vegetation needed to sustain a herd. Lack of food triggers a decline in the adult population.
Coyotes As Predators
In the past, the red wolf was the dominant canine in the Smokies, Clark says. Today the coyote, which moved into the area in the 1980s after migrating from the western United States, has largely occupied the ecological niche once held by the red wolf. “There are some differences, of course. The coyote has a somewhat smaller body size, but there is a lot of dietary overlap. They play some of the same roles.”
The black bear, too, is a carnivore and will prey on fawns and other small mammals at times. Clark, a noted bear researcher, says that many bear sightings in the Cove come in the spring when bears are searching for fawns. Still, the black bear is predominantly a fruit-and-nut eater. “The bears do benefit from clearings in the Cove. There are black cherry trees adjacent to large cleared openings that bear fruit pretty well,” he says. “August and September are good times to see bears in trees eating fruit.”
Bears come to the Cove not because they can’t find cherry trees elsewhere, Clark says, but because the trees in the Cove may bear more fruit because they get more sunlight.
Plant Species
The Cove used to be a fertile home for farmers largely because of its unique limestone soil composition. Cades Cove and White Oak Sinks, a much smaller area, are the only two zones in the Park that feature that type of soil. As a result, the Cove boasts a mix of plant species uncommon to the larger Park area, says botanist Janet Rock. There are some two-dozen species found only within the Cove. Part are there because of the limestone, but there are other anomalies no one has really studied, Rock says.
One fascinating aspect of Cove flora is the coastal plain disjuncts found there. These species are unique not only to the Park, but to the entire region. “You’d have to travel to the coastal area of Virginia or the Carolinas to find plants like those,” Rock says.
Why coastal plain species reside in the Cove and how they got there are questions no one can answer, Rock says, but they are considered native plants and were not introduced by settlers. The Cove’s coastal-plain plants include Virginia chain fern, weak-stemmed buttercup, and campanulate (bell-shaped) sabatia, a colorful pink flower.
Other unusual flora in the Cove include yellow-eyed grass, which is a marsh plant, and hyssop and bladdernut, which are limestone-tolerant plants.
Rock monitors populations of rare and unusual plants in the Cove. “That can mean as little as checking on them to make sure they’re still there or as much as actually counting plants specifically,” she says. “We put the numbers in a database and eventually graph and analyze the data to keep track of increase or decline. If there is decline, we consider management action.”
Natural Processes
The Park Service’s management plan includes restoring not only natural plants but natural processes as well. Fire can be used as a tool to accomplish this, as can taking action to allow wet areas to continue to be wet, a reversal of former management schemes that sought to drain wetlands.
Until a couple of years ago, the Park leased land in the Cove to farmers for pasture or hay crops to discourage growth of trees and keep open areas open. But when a major lessee decided not to continue a 600-acre grazing lease, Park biologists decided to re-evaluate, says Jenny Beeler, a biological science technician with the Park’s Vegetation Management Division.
“What we proposed was to make smaller fields, which present a patchwork appearance like aerial photos we have of the Cove from 1936. Now, we have 60- to 100-acre fields that have become consolidated. Since there isn’t a patchwork pattern today, we proposed to try and break it up a little bit,” Beeler says.
That doesn’t mean fields will be allowed to grow over or that the Cove will lose its distinctive open spaces, she says. The Park will keep open areas but will do so in ways that are more natural and/or better for the native plants and animals.
“Some fields may be burned on a rotational basis to keep them clear, while others will be mown,” Beeler says. “But we will mow only once a year, in October, which would be better for ground-nesting birds and for fawns than doing it twice a year.”
Natural Grass
Eventually, Park biologists hope to re-establish native grasses in fields now growing fescue, a non-native grass. Cove farmers introduced not only fescue, but Timothy grass, Johnson grass, velvet grass, and foxtail grass, as well as red and white clover. Other exotics, such as horse nettle, dandelions, and wild onions, were probably introduced accidentally.
But even a worthy idea like bringing back the grasses that once grew in the Cove must be executed carefully, Beeler explains. “We have a mandate not to bring in plant and seed material from outside the Park, so I can’t go to Missouri and buy plants that were once native to the Cove. We want to protect the genetic integrity of our own species. If we want to restore natives, we have to collect seed from the Cove itself.”
That is a painstaking and time-consuming process.
In the west end of the Cove is an old field that hasn’t been cultivated in 15 to 20 years, Beeler says. “There are pretty good populations of native meadow grass in this field. We have big blue stem, little blue stem, and Indian grass.”
Starting in 1995, volunteers began to collect seeds from these grasses by hand. The seeds were then replanted in small fields for cultivation. Once the single-species fields were established, a tractor-drawn harvester could be used to harvest seed.
“Now we can get in an hour what it would take 10 people two weeks to collect by hand,” Beeler says.
She hopes to start restoring fields using the Cove’s own
native grass and wildflower mix in the next year or two. That will be done with
a no-till seed drill that won’t require disturbing the soil for planting.
Beeler has established a demonstration plot that is open to the public about 100
yards or so from the Loop Road Cades Cove overlook.
Native Superiority
The native grasses will be good for diversity and for Park wildlife, Beeler says. Exotic grasses like fescue tend to mat as they grow, which isn’t good for small mammals or ground-nesting birds like quail because they can’t maneuver through it, she says. Native warm-season grasses, however, are bunch grasses; small openings between the bunches facilitate wildlife movement through the field and provide nesting places.
Other natives found in the Park include purple top, beaked panicum, broom sedge, and eastern gamma grass.
Even though the Cove’s farming communities have disappeared, humans are still very much a factor in Cades Cove’s ecological balance because of the large number of visitors. Plant specialists like Rock don’t disclose the exact locations of rare plant life, fearing trampling and collectors. And animal specialists like Stiver are concerned about human impact on wildlife in the Cove environment, where people and animals often come too close to one another.
“Our problem is how to enforce rules on wildlife harassment,” Stiver says. “Even defining what harassment is can be difficult. We’re trying to define it in terms of distance.
“It’s a difficult thing for rangers to control human-animal interactions. They can go and stand there and force everyone back from the animal being observed, but as soon as the ranger leaves, the next group will come right up. The ranger almost has to stand there until the animal is gone.”
Stiver wants people to realize that if animals change their behavior in the presence of humans, the humans are far too close.
Cades Cove and its open areas, fertile limestone soil, and water sources have been attracting animals and humans for hundreds of years. In fact, archeologists have discovered plentiful evidence that early American Indians lived and hunted in the Cove long before the first European settlers arrived.
“The people who settled the Cove recognized the area’s unique qualities,” Clark says. Today, some 2 million visitors per year do as well.•
* * *
For more information call Janet Rock at 865-430-4743, Jenny Beeler at 865-436-1707, or Bill Stiver at 865-436-1251; or write to them at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 107 Park Headquarters Road, Gatlinburg, TN 37738.
Summit to Draw
Wide Array of Environmental Managers
Forcing performance standards down companies throats can go only so far in terms of improving the environment. In a move toward more sustainable development and improved environmental performance, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other state and local government officials, industry, and the nonprofit sector are jumping on the bandwagon to develop innovative technologies and strategies that will improve environmental management and energy efficiency.
Programs such as Performance Track and Project XL “have been EPA’s attempt to move away from simple command-and-control tactics—which foster distrust between EPA and industry—to more cooperative efforts toward solving environmental problems,” says William Chen, director of the Environmental Performance Institute, a private think tank.
To encourage such efforts, the upcoming Environmental Innovations Summit 2002 will showcase a number of advances in environmental management, protection, and performance, Chen says.
The summit, to be held September 18th and 19th in Arlington, Va., will convene a coalition of trade groups and major national environmental policy organizations, including the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Energy, Environment, and Resources Center (EERC), an affiliate of UT’s Waste Management Research and Education Institute. Other co-sponsors include EPA, the Environmental Council of the States, Environmental Performance Institute, National Association of Manufacturers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Reason Public Policy Institute, and the Soil and Water Conservation Society.
“The United States needs new methods for addressing environmental issues,” says EERC Executive Director Jack Barkenbus. “This conference looks at ways to marshal information, market-based systems, and new voluntary efforts to deal with some of our most serious environmental problems.”
Presentations covering the gamut of environmental and energy-efficiency issues are aligned along five tracks, including innovative environmental management systems, measurement and process redesign, communication and reporting techniques, environmental regulations and permitting, and new technologies. EPA will also provide updates on the agency’s latest regulations and initiatives.
Keynote speakers include Christine Todd Whitman, EPA administrator; Spencer Abraham, secretary of the Department of Energy; Senator Bob Smith, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee; and Representative Sherwood Boehlert, chairman of the House Science Committee.
—Kris Christen
* * *
For more information or to register, go to www.performanceweb.org/EIS2002.html, or contact William Chen at Environmental Performance Institute, 311 N. Washington St., Alexandria, VA 22314; phone 703-519-6270, or email <chen@performanceweb.org>.
