The summer 2024 issue of Sound Update highlights some of Long Island Sound Study’s projects and achievements from 2023. This issue includes stories about the removal of Dana Dam in Connecticut, the new Long Island Garden Rewards Program, a region-wide Environmental Justice Needs Assessment, and more.
The Long Island Sound Environmental Justice Needs Assessment Report covers a year-long needs assessment conducted in the Long Island Sound region to identify the needs of underserved communities. The report includes findings per region, methods, lessons learned, recommendations, and more.
The project was led by New York Sea Grant and contractor Responsive Management, in close partnership with Connecticut Sea Grant, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, and Restore America’s Estuaries. Additionally, community meetings for this effort would not have been possible without the following partners: Save the Sound, Junta for Progressive Action, Environmental Leaders of Color, and Dare to Dream Community Outreach. Thank you!
Are you looking for ways to make your yard eco-friendly? If so, join LISS partners this summer to learn more about what steps homeowners can take in their own yards to protect and improve Long Island waters! Focus topics will include smart fertilizer practices, water conservation, and native plantings.
Attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions and learn from featured experts from New York Sea Grant, NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, Long Island Commission for Aquifer Protection, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, and ReWild Long Island.
Register HERE or by clicking the flyer below. For more information email Jimena Perez-Viscasillas at jbp255@cornell.edu.
The summer 2023 issue of Sound Update focuses on Long Island Sound Study’s Year in Review of 2022. It includes information on the latest round of Long Island Sound Futures Fund projects, and stories on some of the work advanced in 2022, including the expansion of the Sound Stewards educational program into NYC, the restoration of the Great Meadows Marsh in Connecticut, and the ongoing work to protect and restore eelgrass populations in the Sound. The publication also includes some words from LISS program director Mark Tedesco, who shares information on the first round of projects supported by Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds.
Contact: Jimena Perez-Viscasillas, jbp255@cornell.edu
Stony Brook, NY (April 13, 2023): The Long Island Sound Study (LISS) national estuary program is working with the social science research firm Responsive Management to assess the needs, concerns, and challenges facing underserved populations and vulnerable communities related to their coastal environments. The project is being led by New York Sea Grant on behalf of the LISS, in partnership with Connecticut Sea Grant and the CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP).
The project team will be holding a series of conversations with community leaders across Connecticut, and Long Island Sound-adjacent counties in New York State (the Bronx, Queens, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester). The exchanges will inform the development of a survey to be administered widely across the region and will focus on local challenges and needs concerning Long Island Sound and its surrounding environment.
The conversations and survey results will identify opportunities for the LISS to adapt its implementation strategies to meet local needs. The results will also help guide the development of the Long Island Sound Community Impact Fund (LISCIF), a new grants program run by Restore America’s Estuaries that will provide financial and technical support to community groups working on local environmental health projects and capacity-building.
In 2019, a small group of LISS partners began exploring and outlining steps to better apply environmental justice principles in the program’s implementation, and an official Environmental Justice Work Group was formed in 2020. One of the necessary steps identified by the team was to determine how the program could better serve its constituents who are members of underserved communities. The work group further identified a need to engage more with smaller community-based groups to better respond to their coastal-related needs and objectives.
The EJ needs assessment is part of a greater ongoing effort from the LISS program and its partners to better connect with the communities in their region, make its programming more relevant and accessible to underserved populations, and enable easier participation in the program’s decision-making process. The project began its exploratory phase in late winter 2023 and is set to begin with community conversations through the spring and summer months and conclude sometime in the fall.
For more information on Long Island Sound Study, visit https://longislandsoundstudy.net/
For more information on New York Sea Grant, visit https://seagrant.sunysb.edu/
Estuaries are bodies of water at the intersection of rivers and the ocean – where freshwater and saltwater meet and mix. Because of their unique chemistry and characteristics, they are hugely important ecosystems that provide food, shelter, and nursery grounds for countless species of plants and animals. Many, like the Long Island Sound estuary, are also close to major cities and help support local economies through tourism, transportation of goods, and more.
National Estuaries Week (September 17 -24, 2022) celebrates these unique ecosystems, brings awareness to their importance, and encourages their conservation.
This year, Long Island’s estuary programs – the Long Island Sound Study national estuary program, the Peconic Estuary Partnership (PEP), and the South Shore Estuary Reserve – are celebrating by sharing a National Estuaries Week 2022 Map. The interactive map highlightings upcoming September opportunities to head outside and engage in coastal cleanups, educational events, and more.
National Estuaries Week kicks off Saturday, September 17 with International Coastal Cleanup Day. Hosted in New York by the American Littoral Society and by Save the Sound in Connecticut, the cleanups bring thousands of volunteers to the shore annually to help pick up debris and collect valuable data on the types of trash found on beaches. Interested volunteers can access the map to find a cleanup near them, or even organize their own beach clean-up anytime from September through to December.
In addition to the events map, the local estuary programs will also be attending several of the upcoming highlighted events to share information about their respective estuaries. Find Long Island Sound Study’s booth at Setauket Harbor Day, the Women’s Fishing Expo, Family Fun Day, the Oyster Festival, Viva la Sound, and more.
This Google Earth map was created to promote environmental education and stewardship events around our local estuaries. Yellow pins mark events, blue pins mark beach clean-ups. Click on the pins to learn more about events happening near you!
Happy National Estuaries Week!
There are seven subspecies of diamondback terrapin; the one that calls Long Island Sound home is the Northern diamondback terrapin which can be found all the way from Cape Cod in Massachusetts down to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. Other subspecies can be found all along the eastern coast south to Florida and around the Gulf Coast through Texas.
Diamondback terrapins owe their name to the diamond-like rings on the scutes (plates) of their shell. Their scutes are made of keratin (like our fingernails) and each terrapin’s ring pattern is unique to them (like our fingerprints are to us). Females tend to be larger and have shorter tails than males, with a male’s carapace (shell) growing up to 5 1/2 inches long and a female’s up to 9 inches.
Terrapins can live 25 to 40 years in the wild, making them one of the longest-living animals in our region. They live most of their life in water, only leaving it to bask or to nest. They can be spotted poking their heads out of the water in tidal marshes or basking in the sun near mud flats and creek banks.
Diamondback terrapins mate during the early spring months and females come ashore to lay their eggs in sandy areas like beaches and dunes between May and July. They can travel quite a way inland in search for the perfect location to dig their nest, crossing streets in coastal areas (so remember to drive especially carefully around coastal zones during the summer months).
Once a terrapin has found a location for its nest, it will dig a hole around 4 to 8 inches deep using its hind legs, lay its eggs (4-15) and cover the nest with debris and pebbles.
Like in most turtle species, a diamondback terrapin’s sex is determined by the temperature of its nest. Cooler nests tend to have more males while warmer nests produce more females.
Back in the day, these turtles were plentiful and a common item in everyday diet for many people in the East and South Coast of the US. Around the 18th and 19th century, their popularity boomed as terrapin soup became a widespread culinary delicacy, and their numbers plummeted. Fortunately, because sherry was one of the main ingredients in terrapin soup, people mostly stopped eating it during the Prohibition in 1920 – 1933, which helped terrapin populations bounce back. Check out this article from NPR to learn more.
Harvesting terrapins is no longer legal in most of the US, including New York and Connecticut, and many protections are in place to protect them. However, terrapins still face threats.
Highly developed coastlines mean terrapins have less nesting habitat, forcing females to cross dangerous roads in their search. Nests are also predated on by raccoons, foxes, and skunks, and hatchlings are often predated by birds on their way to the water. Diamondback terrapins are also threatened by collisions with boats and by getting trapped in crab cages and drowning.
The spring 2022 issue of Sound Update focuses on Long Island Sound Study’s Year in Review of 2021. Various clean water, habitat restoration, education, and science projects from Connecticut and New York are highlighted, including the new Long Island Sound Marine Debris Action Plan, Community Science Long Island 2021, and the latest findings on hypoxia in the Sound.
CONTACTS:
Jimena B. Perez-ViscasillasLong Island Sound Study NY Outreach CoordinatorNew York Sea Grant jbp255@cornell.edu Lillit GenovesiLong Island Sound Study NYC and Western Basin Outreach Coordinator New York Sea Grantlg543@cornell.edu
STONY BROOK AND QUEENS, NY (March 7, 2022): On a chilly October morning in 2019, teachers Amy Olander and Veronica Morabito-Weeks excitedly set up oyster tanks and put model-making materials like aluminum trays and sponges over tables at the Cedar Beach Nature Center in Mount Sinai. They were getting ready to host their very first Mentor Teacher Workshop on nitrogen pollution, where they would later share with fellow teachers some of the interactive activities, games, and lessons they used in their own classrooms to teach their students about Long Island Sound. The weekend after that, educators Hildur Palsdottir and Leah Master held their workshop on plot studies at the Sands Point Nature Preserve, where they led fellow teachers on a walking tour of the grounds, tested the sand for microplastics, and tried out different kinds of portable microscopes together. These fun workshops would be the last of their kind in a while for the Long Island Sound (LIS) Mentor Teacher Program, which like many other in-person programs had to take a hiatus during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
This year, the LIS Mentor Teacher Program is back and accepting applications from 5th to 12th-grade educators interested in leading workshops for 2022! — see our “Call for Mentor Teachers” (pdf).
Hosted by New York Sea Grant and the Long Island Sound Study national estuary program, the LIS Mentor Teacher Program provides technical and financial support to selected pairs of teachers to organize professional development workshops for their peers. The hands-on interdisciplinary workshops include a field component and center around Long Island Sound topics, with past workshops covering geology, water quality, marine debris, and more.
The 2022 LIS Mentor Teacher Program is encouraging topics centered around climate change adaptations, sea-level rise, and ecological health. Three pairs of educators will be selected to conduct one workshop per team and will be given a $1,200 stipend per teacher, a travel budget, and a workshop budget to cover materials, location, etc. New York teachers across Queens, the Bronx, Westchester, and Long Island are encouraged to apply!
Teachers can look forward to joining these workshops in the Fall. Ultimately, the lessons, activities, and programs shared during these workshops will help inspire students throughout New York to explore, understand, and take care of the amazing resources Long Island Sound has to offer.
For more information on the LIS Mentor Teacher Program, contact Outreach Coordinators Jimena Perez-Viscasillas (jbp255@cornell.edu) and Lillit Genovesi (lg543@cornell.edu), or visit https://longislandsoundstudy.net/get-involved/educational-resources/mentor-teacher-program/
CONTACT:Emily HallConservation Policy AdvocateSeatuck Environmental Associationehall@seatuck.org(631) 581-6908
Islip, NY (June 15, 2021)- The Long Island Coastal Bioblitz is an event to engage the Long Island community in exploring all of the island’s incredible habitats and species diversity. Hosted in partnership with Seatuck Environmental Association, Long Island Sound Study, Peconic Estuary Partnership, South Shore Estuary Reserve, New York Sea Grant, and the Long Island Invasive Species Management Area, one of the main goals of the bioblitz is to better understand the ecological community and biodiversity around Long Island. This information can guide environmental groups in better preserving important habitats and wildlife.
A bioblitz is a community science effort to record as many species as possible within a designated location and time period. The Long Island Coastal Bioblitz will be held “virtually,” allowing participants to record their observations using the iNaturalist app. All a participant would need to do is take a picture of any species they are looking at, plant or animal, load it into the iNaturalist app, and the species will automatically be added to the Long Island Coastal Bioblitz!
A training webinar will be provided on June 23rd at 7:00 pm to introduce participants to the iNaturalist app and the bioblitz format. Attendance is not mandatory to participate in the bioblitz but it is highly recommended. Registration for this webinar is required, and participants can register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_McuA6dGjRWe3q0YV0SIPcA. The Long Island Coastal Bioblitz will then take place from June 26th to July 3rd. Anyone can participate using the iNaturalist app and by logging into the Long Island Coastal Bioblitz iNaturalist project page (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/li-coastal-bioblitz). A map of suggested locations to observe wildlife, as well as a list of habitats and species you may observe in those locations, will be provided to bioblitz participants. There will also be prizes for participants who log the most observations over the week-long event!
For more information on this project, please visit our LI Coastal Bioblitz webpage https://seatuck.org/li-coastal-bioblitz/ or email ehall@seatuck.org.
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