According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, the endometrium is the layer of tissue inside the uterus. The endometrium grows during each menstrual cycle to prepare for a fertilized egg. If no eggs are fertilized during the menstrual cycle, the endometrium is shed during what is commonly known as a period, according to Cleveland Clinic.
Wetland restoration was the theme of World Wetlands Day 2023, as nearly 90 percent of wetlands worldwide have been damaged by human activity. Photo by Emma Quirk ‘26.
By Yuyang Wang ’24
Staff Writer
On Feb. 2, people from all around the world joined to celebrate the twenty-seventh World Wetlands Day. According to the official World Wetlands Day website, the theme of this year’s festival was “wetlands restoration.” This site contains statements from officials representing various institutions, such as the Convention on Wetlands, The International Union for Conservation of Nature and The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.
World Wetlands Day was first celebrated in 1997, with the aim to increase people’s awareness of the importance of wetlands and encourage actions to protect them, notes the official website. Compared to other natural ecosystems such as forests and oceans, wetlands are often seen as less familiar and are unappreciated for their ecological value, an article from ClimateXChange said. As a result, World Wetlands Day plays an important role in making knowledge about wetlands more widespread as the ecosystems face extreme degradation, the official website said.
According to the EPA, wetlands can be categorized as either inland or coastal, as well as seasonal or permanent. Wetlands have many different forms including rivers, marshes, bogs, mangroves, mudflats, ponds, swamps, lagoons, lakes and floodplains. The Nature Conservancy explains that as an ecosystem, wetlands provide habitats for animals such as black-crowned night heron, Hine’s emerald dragonfly and American mink, as well as plants including purple pitcher plant and eastern skunk cabbage. Species living in wetlands play key roles in the world’s water, nitrogen and sulfur cycles. Moreover, current scientific research shows that because of its carbon storage function, wetlands can help ameliorate climate change.
Statistics from the World Wildlife Fund revealed that “[b]etween 300 million and 400 million people live close to and depend on wetlands.” For humans, wetlands can improve water quality, offer protection from floods and shoreline erosion and offer opportunities for recreation and aesthetic appreciation. However, human effects on wetlands have historically been destructive, the WWF article said. According to National Geographic, overfishing has caused the biodiversity of wetlands to drop dramatically. Additionally, with industry development, factories built near wetlands cause pollution and harm plant and animal species by dumping toxic wastewater into the wetland.
Wetland conservation programs provide hope for restoring the health of wetlands around the world. For example, mangrove restoration programs have been created in seven biospheres of Latin America and the Caribbean led by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. These programs aim to recover mangrove forests by bringing together scientific experts with local communities while creating new economic and educational opportunities. This collaborative method is one of the most effective ways to restore mangrove forests, the UNESCO website reported.
In addition to direct conservation actions, scientific literature on wetlands also plays an important role in raising people’s awareness. For instance, the book “Sippewissett, or, life on a salt marsh” by Tim Traver recalls the author’s personal experience at Sippewissett, a wetland located in the Northeast. In the book, Traver offers a detailed description of his connections with the wetlands, including his experience of witnessing their deterioration and recovery.
Although there has been an increase in action surrounding wetlands, people’s awareness and sense of urgency remain insufficient. According to Dr. Musonda Mumba, Secretary General of the Convention on Wetlands, “to date, nearly 90 percent of the world’s wetlands have been degraded or lost. We are losing wetlands three times faster than forests.” Therefore, World Wetlands Day is an opportunity to encourage all relevant players to participate in the wetlands restoration process. “We are mobilizing an entire generation for wetland restoration,” Mumba said.
By Yuyang Wang ’24
Staff Writer
On Aug. 1, the Mount Holyoke College Miller Worley Center for the Environment welcomed Dr. Angelica Patterson as the new curator of education and outreach.
According to Christian Feuerstein, director of news and media relations at Mount Holyoke, “Patterson received her bachelor’s in natural resources from Cornell University and her masters, master of philosophy and doctorate degrees from Columbia University in plant ecophysiology.” According to a recent interview with Dr. Patterson for Mount Holyoke News, she worked at Barnard College as a research assistant in a plant lab and as an administrator in its Environmental Science Department for seven years before coming to Mount Holyoke. Patterson said she loved this work and was inspired by the feeling of being immersed in a community of passionate students eager to lead progressive changes in their fields. “When I saw the opportunity to once again work and collaborate amongst inspiring young leaders again, I leaped at the chance,” Patterson said.
“When I saw the opportunity to once again work and collaborate amongst inspiring young leaders again, I leaped at the chance.”
When discussing her main responsibilities as the curator of education and outreach, Patterson said, “I will be responsible for the development and implementation of curricular opportunities for the Center, including the Campus Living Laboratory. This will involve outreach with and general coordination among departments, instructors, classes, MHC organizations and public audiences.” Patterson said a central goal for her work is “to broaden MWCE’s reach across campus and the local community, which will first entail communicating our mission and the resources we have that can be creatively used to support various classrooms and organizations as well as independent projects and learning experiences. I envision the development of larger projects that can better integrate environmental data into the classroom, establish community science opportunities across the Campus Living Lab and utilize more innovative technology in the teaching of environmental sciences.”
Outside of her role at the MWCE, Patterson described her background in plant science with a focus in plant ecophysiology, which she described as “the study of the physiology of plants and their responses to changes in environmental conditions.” According to Feuerstein, Patterson studies trees’ adaptation to global warming.
As she reflected on why she chose this field, Patterson said she was inspired by a paper she read during graduate school at Columbia University. “We read a paper by Richard Pearson called ‘Climate change and the migration capacity of species.’ In the paper, they noted that the percentage of species ‘committed to extinction’ using climate change projections for 2050 was around 21-23 percent with unlimited dispersal with the percentage going as high as 38-52 percent if they had no ability to disperse.” She went on to explain that although plants are immobile organisms, they can still migrate via seed dispersal. While plant distributions across the world have been changing since the beginning of time, rapidly warming climates result in plants migrating up to ten times faster than they did before in order to survive. “I was interested in learning how trees in the Northeastern United States were responding to warmer temperatures and see if there was a physiological mechanism behind their responses and if those responses differed between plants that had historically different geographic range distributions (northern vs. central vs. southern ranged trees),” Angelica said.
Currently, her research involves measuring the photosynthetic and respiration rates of leaves. Usually, the leaves she wants to study are on the high top of the forest canopy, so she has had to come up with a way to collect these leaf samples. She explained that she “would go into the field and use a shotgun to shoot branches down from the top of the canopy. These leaves are usually growing in full sunlight, so by sampling canopy level branches, we could reduce the amount of variation we would find in their physiological responses to experimental treatments.”
Feuerstein explained that this practice “... led The Guardian to dub her ‘the shotgun scientist’ in a 2020 article.”
Patterson went on to describe the results of this process. “In summary, we found that northern ranged trees had the highest rates of respiration (or carbon loss) under elevated temperatures, whereas the central ranged trees, such as the red oak, had similar rates of respiration to southern ranged trees as temperatures elevated.” Patterson explained that these findings mean that central ranged trees — such as the red oak — may be at a disadvantage when it comes to sustaining reproduction and growth as the climate warms due to climate change.
This emotional connection to the forest is one of her reasons for coming to work at Mount Holyoke. When asked about her favorite place on campus, she answered,“I would be remiss if I did not mention the natural spaces that make a part of the Campus Living Laboratory as one of the most resourceful and favorite places at MHC. I especially enjoy the trails through Prospect Hill [among] the trees — a forested area, which always brings me peace and joy.”
