Rising senior enjoys a week of Earth Team volunteering in Vermont
Who wouldn’t love to spend their summer getting up close-and-personal with great blue herons and a praying mantis, paddling meandering rivers, and tracking wood turtles in Vermont?
Tess Overstreet, a rising high school senior from Columbia, South Carolina, got to experience this adventure in July when she served as an Earth Team volunteer with the Vermont USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) for a week during her summer vacation. The week included three days in the field shadowing the Vermont NRCS wetlands team and wrapped up with a chance to track and monitor wood turtle sites alongside one of the NRCS conservation partners, The Orianne Society.
Overstreet got an immersive and hands-on learning experience: from kayaking through a permanently protected wetland easement in Pittsford, to visiting wetland easements in Hinesburg, to checking out computer imagery back at the NRCS State Office. During her time in the office, Overstreet learned about natural resource data collected by the NRCS wetlands team which helps quantify the positive impacts wetlands provide during storm and flood events. The NRCS team explained to Overstreet how their use of drone imagery and GIS mapping work to dive into the science of conservation and measure the environmental benefits of conservation.
The timing of her visit was perfect to help illustrate the amazing, and even potentially lifesaving, role that healthy wetlands play in water storage. Kayaking through recently-flooded wetlands was an eye-opening experience and demonstrated the impacts of the floods.
“Kayaking through the flooded wetlands illustrated how much water the easements could hold,” said Stephi Drago, NRCS Biologist. “I think having Tess see it firsthand demonstrated to her how much water had come through the area. Seeing the silt line so high in the trees was a way to teach her about how to see flood level residue after water recedes. That silt line shows evidence of the flooding.”
Overstreet arrived in Vermont just after catastrophic flooding that occurred the week of July 10, 2023. More than eight inches of rain washed out roads and bridges, caused landslides and mudslides, and resulted in significant property damage and loss throughout the state. The damage to the state is similar to what Vermont suffered during the intense flooding of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.
In fact, a 2016 University of Vermont study revealed that wetlands helped protect the town of Middlebury, Vermont from $1.8 million in flood damage in 20011’sTropical Storm Irene. That’s because healthy wetlands can help store excess water during heavy rainfall events.
“I showed her a graph of water discharge that I had put together, which showed the peak in Rutland, and the slow increase of water in Middlebury, and how that was basically telling us the wetlands were absorbing a tremendous amount of water during the flooding,” Drago explained.
Witnessing the beneficial impact that wetlands can have, and their ability to act as temporary storage for extra water during storms, helped her see that conservation makes a huge difference. She said that she also has a better appreciation for how wetland restoration helps protect natural resources, but can also help protect lives, prevent property damage, and reduce erosion, especially when storms dump excess rainfall.
“I learned that wetlands act like a natural sponge that soaks up water, slowly releasing it from wetland soils that can hold the extra water,” said Overstreet. "I will never look at a wetland in the same way."
Vermont NRCS Wetland Biologist Jim Eikenberry and Biologist Stephi Drago both said Overstreet was a fantastic addition to the team, even as they team trudged through tall grass and tricky wetland terrain.
“She was fun to have in the field with us and hopefully this will keep her excited about environmental field work,” said Eikenberry. “We need more young people to see this work as a viable career opportunity.”
For the last day of her volunteer week, Overstreet went along with Orianne Society's Conservation Director, Kiley Briggs, to track wood turtles after the recent floods. She even got firsthand experience using special radio telemetry to track one of the turtles. Thankfully, they discovered that none of the turtles were far removed from their typical locations in the wetlands, despite the high floodwaters.
“My favorite part of the tracking was learning more about each turtle and their distinguishing characteristics. From a one-eyed turtle to another who is known for traveling longer distances than the average wood turtle, each one is unique,” Overstreet said.
Since 1985, Earth Team volunteers have provided a valued source of talent and enthusiasm to NRCS. As the volunteer workforce of the NRCS, they make a difference in every county in the nation, including here in Vermont. For more information, contact your local service center or the Public Affairs Specialist for Vermont, Trevor Saylor, at trevor.saylor@usda.gov.