Chelsea Clifford
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ditchontologist.bsky.social
Chelsea Clifford
@ditchontologist.bsky.social
510 followers 860 following 200 posts
Sometime aquatic (socio-)ecologist 💦🌱🦟👥🏖️🌽🐄🛣️🏡🛥️🛶⛲️👩🏻‍🔬👩🏻‍🏫
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ditchontologist.bsky.social
If you, unlike me, are at #CERF2025, consider checking out this year's "transgression session" today in E10-C, 10-2:30, starting w/ Justus Jobe on forest *regeneration* before transgressing marsh, & wrapped w/ Matt Kirwan presenting our study of marsh lawns of Tangier Island (2:15). We have stories!
Landscape shot just before sunset, sun near center of image, with line of older houses and water tower below, calm water below that, picket fence below that, boardwalk at bottom center, with more water on either side. A woman (Grace Molino) steps out of the water behind the picket fence onto the boardwalk, causing ripples, backlit by the sun and its reflection, casting a long shadow on the boardwalk. She appears mostly as a dark silhouette, hair and face down, laden with bags and things she is carrying, wearing boots. Some blades of marsh grass polk up from the foreground water, and shadowy reflections of the picket fence and the houses are cast foreward onto the water below in the image. The image overall is gray, faintly blue and orange in places, with yellow orange highlights around the sun, limning the woman, and on the boardwalk. A few wet footprints reflect the sun on the baordwalk. A couple power lines cross the image at the top. Angled down looking at a child-sized toy pushmower, plastic, pink with teal wheels and top and gray handle, somewhat sunbleached. It sits in a corner of a yard, with green chain link fence at left and a black metal gate of vertical bars at right, in the edge of a shallow pool of brownish water that continues under the camera, on sparse mown marshgrass, beside a concrete sidewalk, partially buried in wrack of beige senesced marsh plant stems and leaves. The field crew- four adults, in boots, various shades of beige pants that are mostly at least partially wet, variously colored tops, and wearing hats and backpacks, one with a yellow meter stick poking out- slosh away from the camera near the middle of the frame, in calf-dep water, which persists throughout the image. They are walking down the middle of a street on Tangier; the foreground shows a manhole cover in a broadening of the street. Slight ripples and white bubbles trail behind them. To their left is a somewhat crooked white picket fence with green plants sprouting at the bottom, and to the right is a waist-high chainlink fence, with taller plants behind. Behind the fences are one- to two-story houses, lawn ornaments, and raised dark green golf carts. On the right are telephone poles, and electrical wires criscross the sky above, with a lit streetlight on the pole above their heads, though it is a cloudy gray daylight in the sky above their heads. In front of them in the distance is a seemingly lone (or perhaps double), somewhat sparse tree.
November 13, 2025 at 7:23 AM
ditchontologist.bsky.social
How it's going: I just killed my favorite, largest stress ball, punctured w/ finger, twisting too hard amidst writing an email, trying to help land managers w/ connections, in what's becoming yet another unfunded conservation/science side project, in sleep time (but schedule whacked). 😬😅😵‍💫🧠💀 🤜🔴💨🤏 🌝
pinkish-orange (with yellow swirl) rubbery ball, slightly disfigured and deflated, topped in off-white custard resembling splat of sour cream or just-mixed cake icing, one large splot and several smaller smears. Rather like a very high-walled bread bowl with too little filling. Casting a shadow onto background of pale grayish blue cloth. Dimly lit, cast in grayish yellow. (The ball is/was more bright pink in daylight.)
March 18, 2025 at 5:16 AM
ditchontologist.bsky.social
Despite having traversed and ridden down Constitution Avenue (along the National Mall in Washington D.C.) many times, I did not learn until my last visit a few weeks ago that it's a former canal and creek! Not obvious now.
Shade-dappled blue sign outside the EPA building on Constitution avenue. Text says "The EPA buildings overlook Constitution Avenue, the path of the old Washington Canal. Conceived by city designer Pierre L'Enfant and designed by architect Benjamin Latrobe, the canal made Tiber Creek into a navigable waterway connecting the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. Barges transported materials to build the new city via the canal. Eventually, though, the canal became an open sever. It was paved over in the 1870s." Below that is a historic-looking map, with the caption "The Washington Canal's route from the Potomac River to the foot of the U.S. Capitol and then south to the Anacostia River can be seen in blue on this 1862 map." View of Constitution Avenue from crosswalk. Paved, multi-lane street, with cars parked on either side and some driving. Trees line both sides. A big limestone building with columns and pediments is on the right side, and at left is a lawn with a sidewalk on the other side of the trees (the National Mall). Sunny; blue sky with a few small clouds. View of Constitution Avenue from crosswalk. Paved, multi-lane street, with cars driving. Trees line both sides. A big limestone building with columns is on the left side. Sunny; blue sky with a few small clouds.
July 10, 2024 at 6:01 PM
ditchontologist.bsky.social
Got a quick peak at the C&O and Shenandoah Canals feeding into Harper's Ferry, West Virginia last week. Look at those wetlands!
View of the C&O (Chesapeake and Ohio) Canal from slightly above (Appalachian Trail stairs down from bridge). Running diagonally through the image is the green canal, lushly full of a variety of wetland vegetation, from graminoids to small trees, with no evident water. It has stone sides, taller and more complex in the back. Behind the canal are vine-wrapped electrical poles, a functioning railroad, and a tree-covered hillside. At front, after a narrow strip of browned grass, is a paved path, the trail that now runs alongside the canal. View from National Park Service bridge over Shenandoah Canal. Canal at center recedes to distance, a sheet of green from duckweed growing on the water. The right side of the canal is a vertical stone wall with some plant growth, and the left is a steeply sloped bank of leafy shrubs. Trees line and stretch over the canal on both sides. On the right is a bit of grassy lawn at the top of the wall before more dense woods. On the left, between trees, there are glimpses of grass, then a low line of posts with rope in between, then a paved road, then more grass, then a tree-covered hillside. The whole image is quite verdant.
July 10, 2024 at 5:48 PM
ditchontologist.bsky.social
Brood XIX has arrived in southeastern Virginia! I heard an unfamiliar noise like a boat motor lowering in a few spots, then spotted several of these guys at evening low tide. #cicadas
Cicada, black with red eyes and orange wing venation and legs, floats tilted on its side in shallow dirty water, beside a brown leaf at water’s edge over sand Messy bird prints in pale, water-rippled sand, with bits of orange cicada wing at right center
May 23, 2024 at 11:25 PM