Local Ecologist

Last week I shared behavior maps created by School of Visual Arts (SVA) students who observed the behaviors of people and non-human animals in Washington Square Park . I am so excited to share another set of four maps with you. These maps were also created by SVA students. Sneha, Nga, Hanna, and Dami designed sensory maps of the park. A sensory map is a vehicle to "show how people use their different senses to navigate a city," writes Duncan Greere in his article about Kate McLean's incredible  sensory maps . The SVA student maps of Washington Square Park illustrates how they sensed the park in mostly auditory terms but also emotionally. The first map captures three types of sound and their temporal states. The second map uses nine emotional states to describe the park. The third map also represents sound but focuses specifically on performances and the density of the audience. The fourth map resembles a traditional behavior map in that it categorizes how people are usi

As long-time readers of this blog might know, I direct Washington Square Park Eco Projects . As part of my social media work for the organization, I often post a map of the park to Instagram on Mondays. About a month ago while researching maps of the park, I came across the work of students in Public Interfaces, a course taught by Michael Luck Schneider at the School of Visual Arts. I reached out to Michael who in turn reached out to his students who granted permission to feature their work on this blog. In Fall 2014, three students Amy Wu, Melody Quintana, and Sunnie Sang, engaged in behavior mapping of people and animals in Washington Square Park to create four maps: (1) the location of the park's benches and what visitors were doing while they sat on the benches; (2) the colors of the park's plants (and thus) trees vs small trees and shrubs vs herbaceous perennials); (3) the location of musicians, and (4) dog and pigeon activity in the park. (A screenshot of the "Plan

This Thanksgiving was unique for several reasons. I celebrated a big birthday. We didn't host Thanksgiving dinner. And I made my first visit to Mount Vernon . I have a family connection to George Washington's estate through my spouse's family. His grandmother was a regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. We were a large group to Mount Vernon and multigenerational group: five children and nine adults ranging in age from 20 months to 70 years old. Despite this diversity in age and thus interest, the outing was a success! After purchasing our tickets we wandered through the orientation center and admired the decorated Christmas trees and Mount Vernon in Miniature, a large-scale replica of the mansion gifted by the State of Washington. From there we walked to the 12-acre field. The layout and view from the mansion across the Bowling Green and the field is of the 18th-century English landscape garden style. George Washington was a skilled  gardener and landscape

Image: Beehive fence designs in Beehive Fence Construction Manual ( source ) In a series of experiments using the recordings of disturbed bees, Dr. Lucy King observed that African elephants (the research was conducted in Kenya) were repelled by bee alarm calls in contrast to the playback of white noise. Dr. King was interested in this response because of increasing human-elephant conflicts in Africa (and Asia) as human settlements and farmland encroach on and fragment elephant ranges, intersect with migratory routes, and provide alternate food sources. Using the African elephants memory of negative interactions with bees, Dr. King has designed and is field testing beehive fences in several African countries (Kenya, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda) and in Sri Lanka. The beehive fence is one of many strategies and research under the umbrella of the Elephant and Bee Project . Image: Screenshot of beekeeping on Elephants and Bees Project website ( source ) In add