Examining the Quality of a Compost Product Derived from Sargassum

The free-floating algae known as sargassum (Sargassum fluitans and Sargassum natans) drifts onto coastlines throughout the Atlantic Ocean during spring and summer months. Beach communities seek to maintain tourist appeal and, therefore, remove or relocate the sargassum drifts once it collects on shore. Maintenance efforts have attempted to incorporate the sargassum into dunes and beach sand. However, not all communities have the resources to manage the biomass and must dispose of it in a landfill. The utility of the seaweed biomass as a fertilizer for plant growth has been renowned for centuries. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the appropriate proportion of sargassum for other compost ingredients used in a large-scale composting system to create a quality product for utilization in horticultural and/or agricultural products. This study used ≈32 yard3 of sargassum as part of 96 yard3 of compost material that also included food waste, fish waste, and wood chips. Four protocols were prepared and included either 25% or 41.5% sargassum and various proportions of food or fish waste and wood chips, which are ingredients that would be readily available in coastline communities, to determine the ideal ratios of materials to create a quality compost. Piles were turned regularly and monitored for pH, moisture, and temperatures according to compost industry standards and approximately every 5 to 7 days. Piles cured for 4 to 8 weeks and the entire composting process lasted 5 months. Samples of compost were collected and tested through the Agricultural Analytical Services Laboratory’s U.S. Composting Council’s Seal of Testing Approval Program at Pennsylvania State University. All final compost products and protocols had reasonable quality similar to those required by current compost standards. However, the protocol incorporating equal parts sargassum (41.5%) and wood chips (41.5%), fish waste (4%), and food waste (13%) had the best results in terms of organic matter content and overall nutrient levels. Therefore, this study determined that waste management industries can use sargassum as a feedstock through a large-scale composting system to create a desirable compost product that could be used in the horticulture industries. Sargassum could also be composted and then returned to the shoreline, where it would help build soils and vegetation.

Urban Renewal by the Sea: Reinventing the Beach for the Suburban Age in Postwar Los Angeles

Urban renewal was not just a city phenomenon: it also unfolded on the beaches of coastal metropolises, most spectacularly in Los Angeles where a “beach lobby” made up of public officials, businessmen, and engineers coalesced in the 1930s. In the postwar, they implemented their vision by buying beaches for the public and turning the polluted and eroded strands of the early-twentieth century into modern playgrounds. While they effectively prevented a “white flight” from the beach and successfully reshaped the coastal environment, their efforts also resulted in the erasure of alternative beach communities. By the 1960s, the lobby could rejoice in the enduring popularity of the city’s beaches. Yet new beach advocates used the California public beach tradition as a rallying cry to stop further development. “Beach renewal” in Los Angeles thus challenges both narratives of postwar urban decline and the binary opposition between 1930s conservationists and 1960s environmental activists.

Composting as an Alternative Management Strategy for Sargassum Drifts on Coastlines

Massive drifts of sargassum (Sargassum fluitans and Sargassum natans) float onto the United States Gulf, Atlantic, and European shorelines regularly throughout the spring and summer months. To maintain tourist appeal and subsequently, the tourism industry, the standard practice of Texas beach communities has been to mechanically remove the sargassum seaweed and integrate it into dunes along the shoreline or dispose of the material in the landfill. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential to manage the invasive species sargassum using composting and to test the quality of the resulting compost. This study used ≈12 yard3 of sargassum as a feedstock mixed with cafeteria food waste and local wood chips, using a total of ≈72 yard3 of feedstocks, to create nearly 25 yard3 of stabilized compost. The final compost products were of equal or higher quality to current compost standards. Therefore, this study determined that the composting and waste management industries can use sargassum as a feedstock to create a desirable compost product that could be used in the horticulture and agriculture industries, while helping to manage this invasive species.

MAKE ME Kits: Portable Kits Invite Unexpected Outcomes

When Young Adult librarians, Youth Services librarians, and administrators at Ocean County (NJ) Library decided to apply for the Curiosity Creates grant, we were faced with a huge challenge—a 960-square-mile challenge. That’s the size of Ocean County, a large expanse of land that covers rural Pineland towns, beach communities, and urban areas.

Introduction

The risk of disruptive climate change is real and immediate. A low- pressure system forming in the tropics develops into a Category hurricane, 1 making its way slowly up the east coast of the United States. Normally a storm such as this would be expected to make a right- hand turn and move off across the Atlantic. Conditions, however, are not normal. This storm is about to encounter an intense low- pressure weather system associated with an unusual configuration of the jet stream, linked potentially to an abnormally warm condition in the Arctic. Forecasts suggest that rather than turning right, the storm is going to turn left and intensify as it moves over unseasonably warm water off the New Jersey coast. It develops into what some would describe as the storm of the century. New York and New Jersey feel the brunt of the damage. The impact extends as far north as Maine and as far south as North Carolina. Lower Manhattan is engulfed by a 14- foot storm surge, flooding the subway, plunging the city south of 39th Street into darkness. Residents of Staten Island fear for their lives as their homes are flooded, as they lose power, and as their community is effectively isolated from the rest of the world. As many as 23 people are drowned as floodwaters engulf much of the borough. Beach communities of New Jersey are devastated. As much as a week after the storm has passed, more than a million homes and businesses in New York and New Jersey are still without power. Estimates of damage range as high as $60 billion. This is the story of the devastation brought about by Hurricane Sandy in late October of 2012.The encounter with Sandy prompted a number of queries concerning a possible link to human- induced global climate change. Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, commented: “Part of the learning from this is the recognition that climate change is a reality, extreme weather is a reality.”

Numbers of naked amoebae inhabiting the intertidal zone of two geographically separate sandy beaches

Numbers of naked amoebae (Gymnamoebae) inhabiting the lower intertidal zone of two sandy beaches were estimated using a novel enrichment cultivation method. Samples were collected between June and September, 1999. Beach sand at Kames Bay, Isle of Cumbrae, Scotland contained on average 2604 amoebae cm−3 while at Dania Beach, Florida, USA, sand harboured 4236 amoebae cm−3. This is the first study to focus on the abundance of naked amoebae inhabiting a sandy beach. These numbers are higher than densities generally reported for shallow subtidal sands and show that amoebae must be considered in future studies on the dynamics of sandy beach communities.