Monday, May 15, 2017

Episode 368 (5-15-17): Exploring the Smokies in a Summer Field Course from the Home of the Hokies


CLICK HERE to listen to episode audio (5:53)

Transcript of audio, notes on the audio, images, and additional information follow below.

All Web addresses mentioned were functional as of 5-12-17.


TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO

From the Cumberland Gap to the Atlantic Ocean, this is Virginia Water Radio for the week of May 15, 2017.

MUSIC – ~10 sec

The tune of “On Top of Old Smoky,” a traditional song associated with the Great Smoky Mountains, sets the stage to learn about an annual exploration of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.   Each August, a week-long field course called “Natural History of the Great Smoky Mountains” focuses on the park and its biodiversity, with connections to the landscape, water resources, climate, and human heritage of the Southern Appalachian region.  Virginia participants in the course are led by Dr. Don Linzey, of Virginia Tech’s Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation.  Don joins me now.

INTERVIEW - ~3 min./20 sec.

Virginia Water Radio – Don, welcome and thank you for joining me.

Don Linzey – Thank you, Alan.  It’s a pleasure to be here today.

Virginia Water Radio – 2017’s the 12th year that you’ve taken students to Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  What are your main goals in going there every year?

Don Linzey – Well, it’s a unique course both to Virginia Tech and to the Smokies.  The object is to provide a learning experience—a seven-day experience living within the park—and to provide a high-quality educational opportunity for not only students but anyone interested in natural history.  I have several master naturalists going with us this year.  So, it’s a course that’s open to classroom teachers and anyone who’s interested in natural history and particularly the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Virginia Water Radio – What are some of the key park features that you use when you’re there?

Don Linzey – We do a variety of things.  This year I’ll be taking students to the Twin Creeks Science Center; we’re going to have a tour of the center and see all the natural history collections.  We’ll be taking some hikes to some waterfalls.  We’ll go up to the highest point in the park, which is Clingmans Dome.  We’ll talk about the various forest types, as we pass through cove hardwood and hemlock and get up into the spruce-fir zone.  I will find some Red-cheeked Salamanders, which are an endangered species found only in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.   On some other days, we’ll be going out to Cades Cove, which is the lowest elevation in the park.  We’ll go out during the day and have a park ranger interpret a number of the cultural features and the history of Cades Cove.  We’ll go out at night and be looking [for wildlife]; last year we saw coyote, and deer. Probably we’ll stop at a place called Gregory’s Cave and see the bats.  So we do a variety of different things.

Virginia Water Radio – How did you happen to focus much of your career on the Smokies?

Don Linzey – The park was dedicated by President [Franklin] Roosevelt in September of 1940.  My parents happened to go to the park in September 1940.  My mom made a scrapbook, and I always loved that scrapbook.  I always wanted to go to the park, so they took me there for my high school graduation; that was my first experience.  Then when I went to Cornell University and started working on my Ph.D. degree, I decided to work on a small mammal in the Smokies about which very little was known.  I went to the Smokies in 1963, I guess; I was a park ranger-naturalist for a couple of summers.   And I met Arthur Stupka, who was the very first park naturalist.  And he was compiling all of his data from the 30-some years he was in the park and writing books on the birds of the park, amphibians and reptiles, the trees and woody shrubs.   He didn’t have time to pull together the mammal information, so he asked if my wife and I would do that, which we did.  And we published a book on the mammals of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park several years later, we dedicated it to Arthur Stupka, and the rest is history.   I have since written a book on the natural history of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which happens to be the textbook that we use for this particular course.

Virginia Water Radio – Well, Don, it sounds like a fantastic place to be and a great course.  Are there any other final comments you’d like to make about it?

Don Linzey – Well, just for the students.  They can get three hours of college credit in one week’s time. In the final evaluations, students say [the following]: “It’s one of the best experiences ever”; “very educational”; and “it’s amazing—I kept forgetting it was a class because it was so much fun.” It’s a very informal but a very educational course.

Virginia Water Radio – And I believe there’s a discount for seniors, is that right?

Don Linzey – Senior citizens over 60 can take courses for free.  And then there’s a discount for teachers.

Virginia Water Radio – Well, thank you very much, Dr. Don Linzey, of the Virginia Tech Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation.

END OF INTERVIEW

For more information about the annual Great Smoky Mountains field course, contact Don at (540) 951-9717, or e-mail him at dlinzey@vt.edu.  Thanks to Kathie and John Hollandsworth for this episode’s music, and we close with a few more seconds of “On Top of Old Smoky.”

MUSIC - ~ 13 sec

SHIP’S BELL

For more Virginia water sounds, music, and information, visit us online at virginiawaterradio.org, or call us at (540) 231-5463.  Virginia Water Radio is produced by the Virginia Water Resources Research Center, part of Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment.  Thanks to Stewart Scales for his banjo version of Cripple Creek to open and close the show.  In Blacksburg, I’m Alan Raflo, thanking you for listening, and wishing you health, wisdom, and good water.

AUDIO NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The interview with Don Linzey was recorded May 9, 2017, in Blacksburg, Va.

The version of “On Top of Old Smoky” heard in this episode was recorded for Virginia Water Radio in March 2017 by Kathie Hollandsworth (bass) and John Hollandsworth (autoharp).

Click here if you’d like to hear the full version (1 min./11 sec.) of the “Cripple Creek” arrangement/performance by Stewart Scales that opens and closes this episode.  More information about Mr. Scales and the group New Standard, with which Mr. Scales plays, is available online at http://newstandardbluegrass.com.

PHOTOS
Stream in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, August 2014.
Red-cheeked (or Jordan's) Salamander, found on hike to Clingmans Dome in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, August 2014.
Mountain view in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, August 2014.

EXTRA FACTS ABOUT GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK


Following are some excerpts from A Natural History Guide to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, by Donald W. Linzey, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 2008 (pages 21-23, 29, 51, 97, and 161).

“Great Smoky Mountains National Park comprises approximately 800 square miles of mountainous forest....  An enormous variety of plant and animal life exists in the Smokies because of the varied topography and range of climatic conditions.  These factors produce levels of species diversity unmatched elsewhere in North America.  Habitats include five major forest types, meadows, balds, rock outcroppings, caves, rivers, streams, temporary ponds, and bogs.  Approximately 2,115 miles of streams and rivers flow freely within the park.  ...With an elevation range of 857 feet to 6,643 feet...from the bottom to the top of the Smoky Mountains [the peak of Clingmans Dome], temperature and precipitation vary widely....”

“The recorded history of impacts on the flora and fauna of the Smokies begins with the Cherokees, the first known inhabitants....  Their lands covered 40,000 square miles including the Great Smokies and parts of what today are the states of Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia....  Evidence shows that Native Americans had been present in the park since at least 8,000 years before the present.”

“If allowed only one word to justify the Smokies’ worthiness as a national park, that word would be ‘plants.’ Arthur Stupka, the first part naturalist, stated, ‘Vegetation to Great Smoky Mountains National Park is what granite domes and waterfalls are to Yosemite, geysers are to Yellowstone, and sculptured pinnacles are to Bryce Canyon National Park.’”

“The park is home to approximately 6,000 known species of nonmicrobial invertebrates and to 79 native fish species, 43 species of amphibian, 40 varieties of reptiles, more than 240 species of birds, and 66 types of mammals.”

“There are currently three species of plants, one invertebrate, and 11 species of vertebrates in the park that are listed as endangered or threatened....”

SOURCES

Used in Audio

George Ellison, “A Great Observer of the Smokies,” Smoky Mountain News, 10/21/09, online at http://www.smokymountainnews.com/archives/item/1616-a-great-observer-of-the-smokies.  This article describes the career of Arthur Stupka (1905-1999), the first naturalist in Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

National Park Service, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, online at https://www.nps.gov/grsm/index.htm.

Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle, The Ballad Index, “On Top of Old Smokey,” online at http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/BSoF740.html.

SongFacts, “Old Smoky by The Weavers,” online at http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=10429.

Virginia Tech Continuing and Professional Education/Lifelong Learning Institute, “Audit College Classes for Free,” online at http://www.cpe.vt.edu/lifelonglearning/audit.html.

Virginia Tech Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, “Donald Linzey—Instructional Faculty,” online at http://www.fishwild.vt.edu/faculty/linzey/index.htm.

For More Information about Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Its Biodiversity

Donald W. Linzey, A Natural History Guide to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 2008.

Donald W. Linzey, Mammals of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 2001.

Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, online at http://gsmit.org/.  This environmental education center in Great Smoky Mountains National Park hosts the annual natural history field course described in this Water Radio episode, along with many of groups and activities.

National Park Service, “Great Smoky Mountains/Cades Cove,” online at https://www.nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/cadescove.htm.

National Park Service, “Great Smoky Mountains/Caves,” online at https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/caves.htm.

National Park Service, “Clingmans Dome,” online at https://www.nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/clingmansdome.htm.

National Park Service, “Great Smoky Mountains/Researcher work space and collections,” online at https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/workspace_collections.htm.  This site describes the natural history collections and work at the park’s Twin Creeks Sciences and Education Center, which was mentioned in this Water Radio episode.

RELATED VIRGINIA WATER RADIO EPISODES

All Water Radio episodes are listed by category at the Index link above (http://www.virginiawaterradio.org/p/index.html).  There are several subject categories related to natural history and to biodiversity: Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Insects, Mammals, Plants, Reptiles, and Science.

Previous episodes related to national parks and to biodiversity are the following:
Episode 229, 9/1/14 – Virginia’s National Park Service Units Contain a Common Wealth of Waters, Lands, and History;
Episode 230, 9/8/14 – An Introduction to Air Pollution and Water;
Episode 231, 9/15/14 – Exploring Climate Change Basics, with Examples from Assateague Island National Seashore and Shenandoah National Park;
Episode 260, 4/6/15 – Biodiversity in Virginia and the Southern Appalachian Mountains.

STANDARDS OF LEARNING (SOLs) FOR VIRGINIA TEACHERS

The episode may help with Virginia 2013 Music SOLs at various grade levels that call for “examining the relationship of music to the other fine arts and other fields of knowledge.”

This episode may also help with the following Virginia 2010 Science SOLs:

Life Science Course
LS.8 - community and population interactions, including food webs, niches, symbiotic relationships.
LS.9 - adaptations for particular ecosystems’ biotic and abiotic factors, including characteristics of land, marine, and freshwater environments.
LS.10 - changes over time in ecosystems, communities, and populations, and factors affecting those changes, including climate changes and catastrophic disturbances.
LS.11 - relationships between ecosystem dynamics and human activity.

Earth Science Course
ES.6 – renewable vs. non-renewable resources (including energy resources).

Biology Course
BIO.8 - dynamic equilibria and interactions within populations, communities, and ecosystems.

The episode may also help with the following Virginia 2008 Social Studies SOLs:

Civics and Economics Course
CE.6 – government at the national level.
CE.9 – public policy at local, state, and national levels.

World Geography Course
WG.2 - how selected physical and ecological processes shape the Earth’s surface, including climate, weather, and how humans influence their environment and are influenced by it.
WG.3 - how regional landscapes reflect the physical environment and the cultural characteristics of their inhabitants.

Government Course
GOVT.7 - national government organization and powers.
GOVT.9 – public policy process at local, state, and national levels.

The episode may also help with the following Virginia 2015 Social Studies SOLs, which become effective in the 2017-18 school year:

Civics and Economics Course
CE.6 – government at the national level.
CE.10 – public policy at local, state, and national levels.

World Geography Course
WG.2 - how selected physical and ecological processes shape the Earth’s surface, including climate, weather, and how humans influence their environment and are influenced by it.
WG.3 - how regional landscapes reflect the physical environment and the cultural characteristics of their inhabitants.

Government Course
GOVT.7 – national government organization and powers.
GOVT.9 – public policy process at local, state, and national levels.

Virginia’s SOLs are available from the Virginia Department of Education, online at http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/.