In advance of the next predicted eastern spruce budworm outbreak, officials with the University of Maine, Maine Forest Service and Maine Forest Products Council have published a risk assessment and disaster preparedness plan to keep forest landowners, government officials and the general public informed. The report includes an assessment of the last outbreak and how […]
Read more
In an attempt to improve how amphibians are monitored, University of Maine researchers evaluated a waistband for attaching external radio transmitters to frogs and toads. Radio telemetry provides fine-scale temporal and spatial information about an animal’s movements and habitat use; however, its use for tracking amphibians has been restricted by transmitter mass and lack of […]
Read more
For some, a picture is worth a thousand words. For Jesica Waller, it’s worth $500, the opportunity to introduce people to her research through beautiful art and to be published in “Popular Science” magazine. Her photograph of a 3-week-old American lobster won the People’s Choice Award and its accompanying cash prize in the Vizzies, a […]
Read more
The National Park Service recently released an “Outside Science (inside parks)” video featuring a dragonfly mercury research project that was founded at the University of Maine. “Episode 2: Blue Skies and Dragonflies” explores a research collaboration among UMaine, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and National Park Service to study mercury in dragonfly larvae. The project […]
Read more
For Travis Blackmer, the summer of 2011 was a summer of garbage. And it changed his life. While classmates at the University of Maine were waiting tables, pounding nails, or painting houses to make tuition money, the 20-year old undergrad was pawing through trash. Tons and tons of trash. But he didn’t really mind. After […]
Read more
Could the rise of the Mongol Empire, the greatest land empire ever on Earth, have been linked to climate change? Aaron Putnam thinks so. In 2010 and 2011, Putnam, previously at Columbia University and now an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences and the Climate Change Institute at the University of […]
Read more
Nicholas Willey once planned to be a lawyer. Then, at his mother’s suggestion, the then-Caribou High School student attended the free University of Maine Pulp & Paper Foundation program “Consider Engineering” that gives juniors insight into the field. “It really opened my eyes to what engineering encompassed,” says Willey. As well as persuasively made the […]
Read more
Two marine science students at the University of Maine started off 2016 a little differently than they had previous years. For five days, Ashley Rossin and Elise Hartill collected red tree corals, Primnoa pacifica, from the Tracy Arm Fjord — a narrow, deep inlet of the sea nestled between high cliffs — located just south […]
Read more
Ellen Mallory, University of Maine Cooperative Extension specialist and associate professor of sustainable agriculture, was awarded $11,902 grant for food research from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The project is supported by the USDA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) and is titled, “Investigating Diversity as a Climate Resilience Strategy for Potato and […]
Read more
In the context of modern anthropogenic climate change, many Peruvian societies are experiencing the brunt of abrupt climate change impacts. The Peruvian Andes are home to 70 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers, which provide surrounding communities with water for drinking, agriculture and pastoralism, energy production and tourism. Recent studies indicate that glacier coverage in […]
Read more