TLDR: We need your help. UMD researchers are counting mosquitoes in Capitol Hill in early September. Two things this week: (1) get your data into the portal by Sunday August 16 and ask your neighbors to do the same (2) if you know anyone on a block that didn't organize this season, share the blurb at the bottom and loop me in if they're interested. We need both high and low activity blocks to learn if and how our efforts made an impact.

Hi Neighbors,

Summer is long, and this one has been a lot. Thank you for sticking with it and for tuning in this whole time. We spent the season trial and erroring our way through, piloting all kinds of tools and trying to be as helpful as we could without being annoying about it. Some worked, some didn't, some stopped fitting once we grew past them. You stayed with us anyway, and I hope you got to reap the benefits and enjoy more time outside, despite it being a million degrees out.

We're at the last stretch now, and it's the part that shapes next year.

Research partnership

In about three weeks, researchers from the University of Maryland will count the mosquitoes in our neighborhood to find out whether our work made a difference. Right now, nobody can say yet whether the light mosquito season many of us experienced was our work, the January freeze, the dry summer, or all three.

What we learn will shape where we focus next year, what we recommend to the city, and what we can point to when we ask funders to back this work in more parts of DC. Please make sure your home and block are accurately represented in the portal to make this study as informative as possible.

Where we're measuring

We'll be placing surveillance traps in 25 sites that fall within blocks that had high, medium or low/zero trapping and source reduction activity. This fall's sampling is limited to Capitol Hill. The surveillance team is coming from College Park and needs to reach every trap daily, so we kept the footprint tight. We're planning for broader sampling across the city next season.

The map below shows Capitol Hill by block, using portal data. Orange blocks had medium to high Itty Bitty activity this season, purple rings are low activity, and the lab's traps need to go on both. A subset of the orange blocks will be sampled, and if yours is one of them, I'll be in touch next week.

Two asks

1. Get your data into the portal by August 16 and ask your neighbors to do the same. The counts only mean something next to a record of what actually happened on each block, and the portal is that record. Partly filled in still counts.
   1. If you logged traps in the form we sent earlier this season, you will need to re-enter them in the portal. I'm sorry for the duplicated effort. The original form's geolocation was imprecise to the point of unusable.  
2. Help us reach neighbors on the purple blocks. Take a look at the map and see if you know anyone. The blurb below is written to paste into your own message. If they're interested, loop me in rather than sending them my way, since a warm introduction works a lot better than a cold email.

From Michelle Mingrone, the Itty Bitty Mosquito Committee:

The Itty Bitty Mosquito Committee is a group of DC neighbors working to reduce mosquitoes without spraying, mostly by setting traps and staying on top of standing water. A lot of blocks did this over the summer and a lot didn't get around to organizing, and those are the blocks I'm trying to reach right now.

We're working with mosquito researchers from the University of Maryland to find out whether any of it made a difference. To know that, we need surveillance traps on blocks where it didn't happen.

Here's what it involves: one trap in a yard for five days in early September. It's about the size of a five gallon bucket, doesn't need power, and sits in the shade. A researcher comes by once a day to service it and picks it up at the end. Nobody needs to be home for those visits, they just need permission and a way in. Nothing to sign up for, no spraying, and no expectation that anyone does anything differently.

Would you be up for hosting a trap? Or if not, is there a neighbor on your block you think might be? Any yard on the block works, so it doesn't have to be yours.

We'll share what we learn, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thanks for all you do! We've got this 💪

Michelle

Click here to unsubscribe