Mitchell Center Research - Bear Brook Watershed in Maine
The Mitchell Center has been involved in research at a pair of instrumented watersheds at Bear Brook Watershed in Maine (BBWM) for a number of years. BBWM is a whole ecosystem manipulation experiment that has been underway since 1987. It encompasses two contiguous 25-acre forested watersheds. Ammonium sulfate fertilizer (surrogate ‘acid rain’) has been applied by helicopter to the experimental watershed since 1989. The adjacent watershed is used as an untreated reference. The BBWM response provides a major evaluation of watershed models used by federal agencies to generate predictions of environmental response to emission control scenarios. UMaine professor Ivan Fernandez is the lead PI; Mitchell Center assistant research professor Sarah Nelson is one of the investigators on the BBWM project.