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Nor Serocki

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Posts posted by Nor Serocki

  1. The SWxSW Corner CISMA, a grant funded program focusing on invasive species education and management, is seeking a new coordinator. This fulltime, grant funded position will work in Berrien, Cass, and Van Buren Counties to assist land owners and managers to better address invasive species issues. This includes outreach and education programming, working with municipalities, and both grant writing and reporting. Additional information about the position can be found here, and a full list of expectations can be found here.

    Questions as well as applications, consisting of a cover letter and 1-2 page resume, can be sent to current CISMA Coordinator Eleanor Serocki at invasivesed@vanburecd.org. The CISMA is hoping to fill this position by the end of July or early August.

     

    CISMA Coordinator PD 2021.pdf CISMA_Coordinator_Description.pdf

  2. Recently, Lowe's started a "SpringFest" campaign that includes free garden kits each Thursday this month. Unfortunately, a lot of these programs, historically, have included general "wildflower" seed packets which sometimes include problem species, such as baby's breath or some species of forget-me-nots. I reached out to the PR team and got a pretty good response. Though the seeds do include some that are non-native/naturalized, it largely avoids invasives. Additionally their "tree give away" is sourcing local Michigan red pines, which is such a better step then the general programs which provide the same species across their entire service area! I know a few years ago there were questions about a similar Cheerios promotion, so I wanted to get ahead of this one!

    Seed balls are either: 
    Red corn poppy, lanceleaf coreopsis, purple coneflower, or wild cosmos 
    Wildflower Seed Mix includes: baby blue eyes, black-eyed susan, candytuft, catchfly, corn poppy, English daisy, five spot, gloriosa daisy, scarlet flax, Siberian wallflower, sweet william pinks, tall spurred snapdragon, zinnia.

  3. Hi All, 

     

    Fallon at the BCK CISMA and I have been working with The Stewardship Network to host a webinar series focusing on riparians at 1pm on Mondays in February. We have two of these events left, with Tom Alwin from EGLE doing an invasive species update Monday, February 15th and Eric Bacon from ANC talking about permitting on the 22nd. 

    Recordings of the sessions are also available on The Stewardship Network's YouTube. 

    Please feel free to share with your networks, riparians, or lake associations!

  4. We're working to increase mapping of ToH (especially in crop areas by pushing out MAEAP techs to keep an eye out) and are also using SLF as a way to reach many of our fruit growers. Our area has a significant amount of grape growers, who see SLF kind of as a Spotted Wing Drosophila we can get ahead of. We're not doing a big push on public outreach, since 2-3 years is a long time for an average person to hear about something without seeing it. Instead, we're going directly to growers, through local events or working with MSUE. 

  5. Hey Megan, 
    We regularly submit press releases to our local news outlets, including radio, TV, and newspapers.  Being in a more rural area, there are some outlets (typically the smaller weekly ones) that pick up the piece, pretty much un-edited, every time. However, the bigger news outlets maybe pick up one or two pieces a year. These generally have pretty good reach, with the pieces for events (come to this workshop!) getting more measurable response than those for general info (Have you seen this plant?). However, this could easily be because we have more a chance for face time with those readers than the "informational" pieces, where there isn't an action item, which I like to think means those same people are reading all of the pieces we send in. The audience we have from press releases is also older in general than the total demographic of our area, since those are the folks that still get papers, listen to the radio, or watch local news stations. 

    One of the Districts we work with does have a standing paid quarter page every other week in a small local paper. It's something the public really likes, but certainly isn't a huge "bang for the buck" on smaller grants. 

    One of the best things about sending out regular press releases, though, is that your local news sources start recognizing you as a resource on the subject. For instance, when there was that big media blitz on Spotted Lanternfly in the spring, we never wrote a press release, but got multiple calls for statements or interviews, since we had worked with those folks before. Even if you don't get a huge circulation, having the CISMA's name out there more never hurts!

  6. I'm currently working with the MAEAP technicians in my area to prepare a presentation for the MAEAP track at next month's MACD conference on how CISMAs and MAEAP can work together.

    How have your programs been complimentary?

    What knowledge do you wish MAEAP techs could bring onto the farms the visit?

    Which species do you think most impact growers in your area?

    Are there ways we could work better together?

    I would love to hear any success stories (or get success photos!), as well as any issues that we could work to solve!

     

    Thanks in advance!

  7. Recently, we ran into an issue with stiltgrass patch photos, and trying to ID from that scale. We received a photo from a resident that iNaturalist had ID'd as stiltgrass. Both Greg Norwood and I also agreed that it looked like stiltgrass from the photo, but when I arrived it was actually just a patch of one of the Persicaria species. This is doubly complicated by the fact that, with the patches of stiltgrass we've worked with here in the Niles area, Persicaria is generally found nearby. I've attached a couple photos of patches where the two species grow together, with the stiltgrass outlined in red circles. Persicaria spp. would never have really fallen on my list of possible look-a-likes, but, at least in photos, it can be tricky! 

    Patch1.png

    Patch2.png

  8. That's crazy! I've heard in some cases that knotweed will "retreat" if it faces a large stress, not sprouting for a year or two. Could this have been the case? However, the only cases I've seen this in were really harsh mid-spring freezes, and after treatment. Unfortunately, the knotweed usually springs back up a few years later, sometimes a short distance away. Has anyone else seen this happen? 

  9. Most of the signs that we've posted have been for partner municipalities for Japanese Knotweed. We too laminate sheets and staple them to stakes, but in this case we leave them for a while, both to explain why the municipality is allowing this "unsightly" plant get out of control, and to why it's being sprayed later. These don't contain legal treatment information either, but have contact information changed for each area to include the local DPW director/etc for each municipality in addition to the CISMA. Because these are being left up for longer, we put a little bit more effort into the design, both to use them as a warning and an educational opportunity. 
     

    Knotweed Treatment in Process.pdf

  10. On 3/20/2019, we had a small meeting in Lawrence, MI to discuss Spotted Lanternfly, its current status on the East Coast, and our current and future outlook on the species. It was super useful, and I wanted to pass along my notes, as well as the power point which Heather Leach, who heads up efforts with the Penn State University Extension. Please post your notes if you can, and let me know if there are any questions!

     

    Leach_PreparingforSLFinMI.pptx

    Spotted Lanternfly meeting notes.pdf

  11. The Phragmites Adaptive Management Framework (PAMF) out of USGS is working to come up with a universal monitoring method for the marsh/Great Lakes areas.  More information on how they implement that method is here

    I was part of the field team for a project that implemented CMU's Coastal Wetland Monitoring Program protocols to monitor pre and post treatment Phragmites up in Saginaw Bay circa 2014/15/16. This gives really, really detailed, species level detail on vegetation regeneration and diversity, but also is super time consuming and frankly, not made for phragmites invaded wetlands. It gets good data, but way more than is needed for management, and at a cost that really isn't in line with the non-academic work I've done. That said, I'm pretty much always willing to talk about that work, and some of the cost/benefits in line with that.  

    I know that PAMF, along with Laura Bourgeau-Chavez at the Michigan Tech Research Institute (lchavez@mtu.edu), Phyllis Higman at MNFI (higman@msu.edu), and the Saginaw Bay CISMA were working on new methodologies to improve that use. 

    This summer we've also been doing some roadside surveys in our service area, utilizing township maps and GPS, which makes it more user-friendly for our Road Commission crews, since we are using the same tools they keep in their truck!

  12. There were a few questions during the MISC meeting about the survey outputs, and unfortunately there really isn't an elegant read out on that.  I'm getting an error when trying to attach these files here, primarily due to size, but I'm happy to send them along if you shoot me an email (eleanor.serocki@macd.org). This includes the original output from Google Forms, as well as what I did to organize it (which, frankly, works for me, but is still a mess). If you would like, I can also send you the original survey, so you can see it as the respondents did. Google forms are basically just another Google service, accessible the same way docs or sheets are. The links can be sent out to anyone, even those that do not have Google accounts. I know there is some issue with government agencies and Google sometimes, but there are other services, like Survey Monkey, that can fulfill the same purpose. 

  13. Hi Elise!


    We have one home owner in particular who has been treating the past two summers using the State Guidelines, treating with Triclopyr the past two summers, just as seeds start to develop. They also pull in the spring, trying to contain it to the patch in their front yard, and removing any "new" patches on the rest of the property. Lastly, those seedpods that do set and develop, they try to hand pick and burn before they release seed. 

    Unfortunately, I think they missed the mark on timing the first year, since they had just moved into the house towards the end of summer, and were using a lower concentration of Triclopyr than recommended. We haven't seen green-up here this year, so I'm not certain if they will see any results this year, but I'll update in a few months!

     

  14. I spoke some with Drew this weekend and last week, and major issue we had was with exactly what people would do with anything that had been dug, especially in larger areas. Because of this, and especially because of the size of her stand, I did end up redacting some of the information on digging. The land owner I was working with in particular traces the start of the stand to a pot that rooted, and it is fairly substantial now. She has been regularly cutting back the stand this summer, which does seem to be working, but it also looks like it is "running" in the area. I was really impressed with the die back in the area where she had been cutting repeatedly, but there was also a huge amount of biomass that was building up.

    My biggest concern with "newer" species is that I end up doing what a lot of homeowners do: I google it to look at the resources available. But, unlike most homeowners, I have outside resources (such as other professionals, this forum, etc.) to double check with. For instance, when looking up information for bamboo, no two suggestions were the same and, since there was nothing local, there was no clear choice of what was the "right" method. 

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