West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Telling West Virginia's Story
Students at South Charleston High School are working on their own satellite. It will be launched into space by NASA on a Soyez rocket sometime next year. The satellite will gather all kinds of data and beam it back to the school for five years. This is what it means to talk about STEM – science, technology, engineering and math and the students are pretty excited about it.
Next week in Morgantown, a special symposium on energy will be bringing one of the nation’s most prominent faces in the field. David Pogue is a columnist…
Next week in Morgantown, a special symposium on energy will be bringing one of the nation’s most prominent faces in the field.
David Pogue is a columnist for the New York Times, who also works as the host of the PBS program Nova Science Now.
Pogue is the keynote speaker for the Science, Technology and Research Symposium, or STAR symposium, coming up next week in Morgantown. Pogue says science is a field where there’s a lot of demand—a number of job opportunities are available—but not much supply—meaning, there just aren’t enough people to fill those jobs.
“We need to get past this thing that science is for elites and science is a rare, dorky subject. I think the trickling down will happen once that begins. The President has made it a priority in science education, he hasn’t always been backed up by other lawmakers, but it has to become a priority nationally, before it becomes cool to be a science teacher, to know science and love science. It’s tough to see how anything is going to change soon,” Pogue said.
According to the Science and Engineering Readiness Index, prepared at the American Institute of Physics, West Virginia struggles mightily with preparing young people for careers in science, and related fields.
Pogue says innovation—the likes of smartphones and cloud technologies almost always require creative science, so a passion for science is important within society. In fact, it can feel magical.
“The feeling of having power over your environment feels magical. My wife and I live on opposite sides of the country. We have mastered the arts of communication, we have had video chats when I Was in Russia and she was in her car. It certainly feels magical,” Pogue said.
The symposium is October 22 and 23. The theme is “The Evolution of Energy: From Scarcity to Abundance.”
Fifty-four-year-old Rodney Bartgis, state director of the West Virginia Nature Conservancy, stood atop Cave Mountain in Pendleton County, an elevation of…
Fifty-four-year-old Rodney Bartgis, state director of the West Virginia Nature Conservancy, stood atop Cave Mountain in Pendleton County, an elevation of 2,777 feet.
“It almost looks like the Rocky Mountains,” said Bartgis. “This is the biggest uplift of limestone in the eastern mountains of the United States, and a lot of the rare plants and animals in this canyon are associated with this limestone,” he said.
The 200-acre mountaintop property on which Bartgis stood had been owned by the Puffenberger family since 1965. But last year they agreed to a conservation easement, negotiated by Bartgis, which protects it from development.
Perhaps more than any other person alive, Bartgis has helped to keep the “wild” in West Virginia.
He can point out several plants found nowhere else in eastern North America – Prairie Flax, the Death Camus lily, Indian Grass, Sideoats Grama and Big Bluestem.
Bartgis was the first person to identify these unusual species in West Virginia, among dozens of botanical discoveries he’s made in the state since he was a boy in Berkeley County.
He grew up on a small, 10-acre farm near Hedgesville, with cattle, hogs, gardens and a lot of work.
“Growing up in the country, which is now pretty much suburbia, gave me a chance to not only explore the countryside, but to tap into the knowledge of people that had grown up and been there for decades,” said Bartgis.
“So I could learn from my dad and my uncles and my granddad.”
Bartgis’ family has been farming in Berkeley County for ten generations. They’ve always felt close to the land.
“My paternal grandfather, who never made it past 8th grade, while dirt poor made his living from trapping and a little bit of dirt farming and from gathering herbs,” explained Bartgis. “He could show me in the woods, or along the creeks or in the fields, how certain plants grew in certain places.”
“If you’re looking for goldenseal, you’d look in one type of woods. If you’re looking for ginseng, in another, and so forth across the whole spectrum of plants that he would dig and sell.”
While still in high school Bartgis discovered the first White Showy Orchid in West Virginia.
It was a time when the Washington, DC suburbs were beginning to encroach further and further into the Eastern Panhandle.
“As a result, a lot of the places that I grew up hiking, botanizing and bird-watching on, were being chopped up and turned into houses,” said Bartgis. “So I also got interested in conservation.”
Bartgis went to Shepherd University to study biology, and then finished his Masters in plant ecology at West Virginia University.
Just after that The Nature Conservancy hired him to find unique and unusual places in the state that might be important to protect.
Those early years with The Nature Conservancy gave Bartgis the opportunity to explore most of the state – on foot – looking for rare plants, special habitats and unique natural areas.
A colleague at The Nature Conservancy, Andrea Brandon, echoes what many people say about Rodney’s encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world of West Virginia.
“You could blindfold Rodney Bartgis and put him on any mountaintop in the state and when you took off that blindfold, not only could Rodney identify every bird in the sky and every single plant and tree that’s growing on the ground, he could tell you by looking at his surroundings exactly where he’s at,” said Brandon.
West Virginia Division of Natural Resources vegetation ecologist, Elizabeth Byers, says most don’t know that West Virginia is a national hotspot of biodiversity.
“So protecting this is incredibly important,” said Byers.
“Among scientists, Rodney is universally respected. He is the person we go to when we have exhausted other resources, because he will very likely know the answer,” she said.
Along with colleagues at The Nature Conservancy, Bartgis has helped protect some of West Virginia’s most unique wild places, including areas in the New River Gorge, Canaan Valley, the Smoke Hole Canyon, Cheat Mountain, Cranberry Glades, Bear Rocks on the Dolly Sods, Panther Knob, and Pike Knob.
The Nature Conservancy works to preserve natural areas for many uses – biology, ecology, hunting, fishing, hiking and other recreational activities.
It takes the cooperation of land owners, donors, local, state and federal government and others to make it happen.
“We’ve protected about 120,000 acres of West Virginia over the 50 years,” said Bartgis of The Nature Conservancy. “That sounds like a lot, but in every decade there will probably be 300,000 or more acres of West Virginia converted from natural habitat to something else.”
Byers said Bartgis’ legacy will be a vast amount of protected area throughout the state.
“He’ll be leaving behind hundreds of species, thousands of acres of just sheer beauty, mystery, and wonder,” said Byers.
“He has an unbelievable legacy – most of it will be unsung, but it’s huge what he will leave.”
Rodney Bartgis is featured with others in the documentary Inspiring West Virginians, produced by Jean Snedegar with Senior Producer Suzanne Higgins.
Marshall University’s college of science is conducting an experiment that they hope will help them in the future.
The Marshall University College of Science installed a green roof in a small space just off the second floor of the science building. It’s the beginning of an experiment that will illustrate what it will take to maintain larger green roofs on the biotech building on campus. That building is being constructed. It’ll also play a role in Marshall’s continued effort to better handle storm water.
Chuck Somerville is the Dean of the College of Science.
“This is a demonstration, it’s a small area and it’s not going to have a big impact on storm water on campus, but it’s in a visible place and people can come by and see it and we can put up signage about what a green roof does and how it works,” Somerville said. “So we can get a lot of educational bang for their buck, rather than storm water treatment or storm water retention.”
It’s a process that has been several years in the making. Somerville said after seeing facilities out of the state that were using the idea, they thought they should try it on the science building.
“We’ve had to go to a company that produces the plants and does the design and go through the design process and just growing the plants is about a 6 to 8 month project there,” Somerville said.
Eventually Somerville said the roof was ready for planting. They recently put in plants that include geraniums and irises. He said after going through the process of making sure the roof could handle the weight, water and soil, they now know what to expect at the new biotech facility.
“We have a green roof planned for the new building actually it’s going to be engineered into the structure so this was an add-on after this building was long since built,” Somerville said.
Travis Bailey is an Environmental Specialist with the Health and Safety Department on campus. He’s tasked with helping the campus become more responsible for storm water. He said this is just one of the newer ways to deal with the water.
“A green roof is basically to capture the water and the let plants absorb it and if it doesn’t let it slow down and filter the water out, filter out the pollutants that are in the air, rather than that water going straight down the drain and potentially out to the river,” Bailey said. “It’s not being absorbed by the soils and filtered out, but for the most part we’re hoping that the plants will uptake and use most of that water,” Bailey said.
Huntington has a combined sewer system, meaning sanitary sewage and storm water runoff collect in the same pipes. Because of this the Environmental Protection Agency charges organizations like Marshall to collect the first inch of water for each building. So Bailey and others have started projects like the green roof, a rain garden and other means to collect this water all around campus.
Bailey said he hopes these projects show it’s possible to do these projects.
"And to show people a green roof is doable, it is not a mythical thing you hear about other cities doing," Bailey said.
“And to show people a green roof is doable, it’s not a mythical thing you hear about other cities doing, we’re showing that you can do it here, it can be done here and same thing with the rain gardens,” Bailey said. “People read about them or have heard about them and it’s like you can’t do it here, but we’re trying to show that it can be done here and we’re gearing up to do some more hopefully.”
Bailey said green roofs also can have a positive effect on stopping ultraviolet rays from harming the roof.
