Sssselebrities to follow on Twitter

Follow Skeate, Arwen, Hermione and Mr. Darcy, among others — radiotagged timber rattlesnakes living in southeast Ohio woods — on the @TimberTweets Twitter feed by CFAES’s Peterman Lab. Lab staff are tracking the secretive snakes, an Ohio endangered species, to see how forest management affects them. Venomous but shy, with a taste for eating small rodents (including ones spreading Lyme disease), timber rattlers help ecosystems and, quietly, people.

Lab head Bill Peterman, assistant professor in CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, says, “I’ve had a passion for amphibians and reptiles since I was a kid catching frogs and snakes.” He’s in the video above.

March 2: How Cleveland’s vacant lots can help pollinators, stormwater retention and local food production

You’ve read about CFAES insect scientist Mary Gardiner’s research on Cleveland’s vacant lots here, for example, and here. Now you can hear her in person. She presents “Managing Vacant Land to Support Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services” in the Department of Horticulture and Crop Sciences’ spring seminar series from 11:30 a.m. to 12:25 p.m. Wednesday at Ohio State in Columbus. You can watch by video link, too, at CFAES’s research arm, OARDC in Wooster. Find out more. Gardiner is also the author of last year’s Good Garden Bugs: Everything You Need To Know About Beneficial Predatory Insects (Quarry Books).

Just watch where you put your hands

Does whatever a spider canColumbus’s “Main Street bridge is crawling with spiders” — especially, it seems, its handrails. And in terms of the growing health of a restored section of the Scioto River, that’s good. CFAES’s Dave Shetlar is quoted. Mark Somerson of the Columbus Dispatch has the story. (Photo: Nathan Lovegrove, iStock.)

8 ways a city’s vacant lots can be good for the environment

Greening vacant lotsIn Cleveland, CFAES’s Mary Gardiner and her team are doing a large-scale, never-tried-before study. They’re evaluating eight different landscape treatments on 64 vacant lots in eight Cleveland neighborhoods. Why: To see how the treatments affect biodiversity and ecosystem function in the lots — and hopefully to come up with cheaper, greener options to just planting the lots with grass. Read more. (Find a New York Times story on the work here.)

Ohio State tree planting team beats the Ducks, now it’s on to football

Ohio State tree planting winnersSent by Mary Maloney, director of CFAES’s Chadwick Arboretum, late this afternoon:

“I just received a text from the Chadwick Arboretum Tree Planting Team in Arlington, Texas, near the site of the pending College Football National Championship game, and our team placed first in the tree planting competition! Team member and Chadwick GIS Specialist Christine Voise said it was by a landslide. I thought that this might happen when our team was featured planting a tree in under 60 seconds with Channel 10’s Jeff Hogan [Columbus TV] on the noon-day report earlier today!

“I have attached a photo of the plaque and the tree planting team. From the left: Mike Boren (father of the three Boren brothers who all play/played on the Ohio State football team); Christine Voise (Chadwick Arboretum GIS and accessions specialist); Mitch Gatewood (Ohio State alumnus from the Dallas-Fort Worth area); Mike Pfeiffer (Chadwick Arboretum horticulturist); Ray Kreutzfeld (Ohio State alumnus from the Dallas-Fort Worth area); Christy Dudgeon (Ohio State alumna and vice president of Grass Groomers Inc.); Steve Schneider (Ohio State landscape planner and ISA-certified arborist); and Dan Struve (emeritus professor of horticulture and Chadwick Arboretum volunteer).

“Thanks to the Texas A&M Forest Service in College Station, Texas, and the Texas Tree Foundation for coordinating this tree-rific event! Thanks too to our donors: The Ohio State University Office of Administration and Planning, Chadwick Arboretum, and a special Friend of Chadwick Arboretum.

“Now, it’s up to the Football Buckeyes to seal the deal on national championships by winning part 2 of the competition next Monday!”

Read an earlier post.

Buckeyes to face Oregon — in tree planting — Thursday

Ohio buckeye leaves for GB

A team from CFAES’s Chadwick Arboretum competes in a tree-planting competition at noon Thursday (Jan. 8) in Arlington, Texas. Among the opponents: The Oregon Ducks (hiss!) (must be Muscovies). The event is part of the Playoff Green sustainability program surrounding the College Football Playoff National Championship. Details. (Photo: Leaves of the Ohio buckeye tree, Hemera Technologies.)