Blog Entry

Collaborating with New Hampshire on engagement

As the Sea Grant extension associate who covers Maine’s deep south, I collaborate routinely with my partners on the other side of the border – New Hampshire. One such partnership is with University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension’s Community Development specialists. Southern Maine shares many common social, economic, and ecological opportunities and challenges with the […]

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Radio stories featured in Acadia National Park’s 100-year time capsule

Two-thousand sixteen marked the 100th anniversary of Acadia National Park and America’s National Park System. In honor of the centennial, the University of Maine Sea Grant Program and WERU Community Radio, both official Centennial Partners, presented a weekly radio series called Coastal Conversation in Acadia. This was a special 18-part series of short (3-5 minute) […]

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monarch butterfly

New England’s Seasonal Changes are Changing

This year’s foliage was the most stunning and prolonged display of color in recent memory, a vibrant progression of crimson, orange, gold, and russet that went on for weeks and weeks. While the drought certainly had something to do with it, warming temperatures are also responsible for later peaks in fall foliage. In mid-November, against […]

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Alaska Sea Grant agent Paula Cullenberg with Native Alaskan hunters on North Slope G. Sheffield photo.

The Knowledge of Native Peoples

November is National Native American Heritage Month, a time to recognize “the significant contributions the first Americans made to the establishment and growth of the United States.” On Thanksgiving, we come together in shared humanity and celebration of the lands and waters that sustain us. The original residents of the continent accommodated European colonists, shared […]

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Using remotely operated vehicles to characterize habitat at a large scale

Our Director for Research, Dr. Damian Brady published a paper along with Dr. Robert Steneck and former graduate student, Jennifer McHenry (lead author) titled, Abiotic proxies for predictive mapping of near-shore benthic assemblages: Implications for marine spatial planning. In this paper researchers identified important habitat variables and spatial gradients that correlate with abundance, diversity, and […]

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Studying a restored Penobscot River

Between the head of tide above Bangor to where it widens into the bay at Searsport, the Penobscot River shifts from a flowing freshwater waterway banked by cedar and pine to a brackish, wave-lapped marsh with a rocky shoreline. In this estuary, salt concentrations fluctuate as the winds and tides push sea water and sediments […]

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The Value of Diverse Types of Knowledge

This year I had the privilege to travel to the Netherlands as part of my sabbatical research on the topic of stakeholder engagement in community planning for flood defense. The process included interviews with 15 Dutch practitioners from all levels of government, as well as private contractors, community groups and non-profit organizations. The result was […]

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Recent publication on larval lobster in a changing Gulf of Maine

Effects of temperature and ocean acidification on larval lobster development – UMaine graduate student, Jesica Waller, along with Dr. Rick Wahle and colleagues published a paper on the joint effects of ocean acidification and rising temperature on larval lobster development. Their results suggest that elevated temperatures associated with projected end-century warming trends cause larvae to develop faster but […]

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