The addition of Paul Super to the staff at the Purchase Knob Science and Education Center compliments the new center’s ambitious mission to integrate education and science in a meaningful way.

Super has worked as a science education specialist at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s Tremont Institute since 1999. He will be joining Susan Sachs, Purchase Knob education coordinator.

“It’s a great match,” Super said. “Susan is an educator who understands science, and I’m a scientist who dabbles in education.”

Super has been working with students and scientists at Tremont on many different research projects. He said research there has turned up 117 species of moths previously unknown to the park.

For the moth project, eighth- to 12th-grade students checked traps once a week. The trap was an ultraviolet light mounted to a small dorm-sized refrigerator. The moths attracted to the light would get trapped in the refrigerator where the cool temperature would slow down their metabolism. Students would check the fridge, identify and release the moths they knew and collect the unknown specimens to be identified by researchers.

Super said moths would also be studied at Purchase Knob along with many other plants and animals such as ferns, salamanders, songbirds and water bears. Water bears are tiny creatures less than a millimeter long that live in mosses and liverworts in wet conditions like bogs or stream banks.

Citizen science projects like those at Purchase and Tremont are a major part of the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI), an effort sponsored by the GSMNP to document all the living organisms in the park. Super said the ATBI provided a wonderful opportunity to have students participate in real, meaningful scientific research.

The Purchase Knob Science and Education Center will benefit Western North Carolina, the park and the entire region. Super said research partners at the Purchase included the park, the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Big South Fork National Recreation Area in Tennessee.

“We also want to take advantage of the skills and resources of area institutions like Western Carolina University, South-western Community College, Haywood Community Col-lege, the University of North Carolina at Asheville and War-ren Wilson College,” Super said.

Super, who will be headquartered at Purchase Knob, will spend his first winter working out of the Friends of the Smokies Waynesville office at 160 South Main Street. Reno-vations and remodeling at the Purchase will eventually lead to the capacity to house up to eight researchers, but the property is not presently suited for winter living conditions.

Two ongoing projects at the Purchase will require monitoring throughout the winter. One is the park’s air-quality monitoring station on the property, and another is collaboration between the ATBI and the Blue Ridge Parkway. The two agencies are working to establish protocol required to effectively monitor a specific area for insects. There are two, one-hectare plots at Purchase Knob that Super plans to visit at least once every two weeks.

George Ivey, director of FOS’s North Carolina office, said Super was expected to be in Waynesville beginning Dec. 3. FOS recently secured a $50,000 grant from Carolina Power and Light that will be used to help with upgrades at Purchase Knob.

 

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The Smoky Mountain News