*Workshops & Field Trips *Dinner & Dessert *Exhibitors & Resources *Networking & Fun!

Join us for OCSCD's 26th annual Barnegat Bay Environmental Educators Roundtable, on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. Our theme this year is Data: Calculating the Importance of Nature. This professional development event offers teachers, informal educators, and nature enthusiasts opportunities to engage in hands-on, interactive, indoor/outdoor workshops and field trips that focus on data collection and analysis of our natural world. The forest, field and marsh at the Lighthouse Center for Natural Resource Education provides the perfect backdrop to engage in place-based teaching and learning. Teachers can take lesson plans, resources and ideas back to their classrooms to share with their students. In addition, the Roundtable offers an Open House with over a dozen local environmental organizations exhibiting their resources and services to educators. Christine Girtain, NJEA's 2022-23 Teacher of the Year will provide our keynote. A light dinner and dessert are served.

Visit our website to read descriptions of our many programs offered. Seating is limited to keep group sizes small, so register early, before your favorite programs fill up!

This winter, Ocean County Soil Conservation District staff, Brittany Moore and Rachel Hammack, joined Craig McGee, District Manager at Camden County Soil Conservation District and Eileen Miller, Team Habitat Coordinator for South Jersey Resource Conservation & Development Council, to inspect multiple stormwater basins for the Lakewood Township Stormwater Basin Retrofit Project. Read more about their assessment on OCSCD's blog. Visit OCSCD's website to find out more about the Project.

Funding for the Lakewood Township Stormwater Basin Retrofit Project is provided through a Watershed Restoration grant from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (Grant # WM20-008) granted to the South Jersey Resource Conservation & Development Council in partnership with Ocean County Soil Conservation District, Camden County Soil Conservation District, and Lakewood Township Department of Public Works.

Here at OCSCD we know stabilization is a key conservation practice. Soil health is dependent on the protection of soil even during the nongrowing season. A bare condition leaves the soil vulnerable to nutrient loss, erosion by wind and water, and is destructive to soil microbes. This time of year, when the ground is bare and not yet prime for new seeding work, the New Jersey Soil Erosion and Sediment Control Standards have a solution. Temporary stabilization is a great way to cover bare or disturbed areas subject to erosion in non-seeding months. The best way to temporarily stabilize areas is with straw mulch, tack and a temporary seed mix, such as annual ryegrass or spring oats. (See the NJ Soil Erosion and Sediment Control Standards for Temporary Vegetative Cover for Soil Stabilization.) If permanent seeding is a priority in March, there are several seed mixtures approved in the NJ Soil Erosion and Sediment Control Standards for Permanent Vegetative Cover for Soil Stabilization that have optimal planting dates between March 1st and April 30^th for Ocean County’s hardiness zones, see Table 4-3.