Development

UMaine Alert

Posted: April 19, 2024 - 1:32 PM

At approximately 9:24 a.m. on Friday, April 19, a University of Maine graduate student was struck by a university vehicle on Long Road at the University of Maine campus in Orono. The student reports that they are at a local hospital with minor injuries.

Emergency services, including the Orono Fire Department, University Volunteer Ambulance Corps, University of Maine Police Department, Orono Police Department and Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office responded to the scene.

The university vehicle involved in the incident was a Chevrolet Express van. It was being operated by a university employee.

Counseling services and support are available for students, faculty or staff who may have been affected. The Counseling Center can be reached at 207-581-1392 and the Dean of Students Office can be reached at 207-581-1406.

The scene has been cleared and Long Road is now accessible. An investigation is being conducted by the University of Maine Police Department with assistance from the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office Crash Reconstruction Unit. Any witnesses to the incident are encouraged to contact Lt. Noel Santiago at noel.santiago@maine.edu.

Here, we describe the development of the two maps presented in BeeMapper: a land cover map and a predicted wild bee abundance map.

Land cover map

The land cover map is based on the 2004 Maine Landcover Dataset, which is freely available from the Maine Office of GIS (Landcover – MELCD 2004). This dataset has 5m spatial resolution, which captures landscape variation that is important to wild bees. We classified the original map into 8 land cover classes that each provide a unique set of resources for wild bees. We further modified this map to include roads and railroads, enhance wetland diversity, and provide the most extensive wild blueberry coverage. Additional data sources used for the land cover map are:

Roads: MEDOTPUBRDS (from MEGIS)
Railroads: RAILROUTESYS (from MEGIS)
Wetlands: National Wetlands Inventory
Additional wild blueberry fields: USDA Croplands Dataset

Predicted wild bee abundance map

The abundance map is output from the InVEST Crop Pollination Model (Lonsdorf et al. 2009) applied to Maine’s wild blueberry production landscape. The InVEST Crop Pollination Model requires three components to predict bee abundance across a landscape:

A land cover map. The land cover map presented in BeeMapper and described above is the same land cover map we used to predict wild bee abundance with the InVEST Crop Pollination Model. We resampled this map to 10m spatial resolution for computational efficiency, with no measurable loss in model performance.
Habitat suitability values for wild bees within each land cover type within the land cover map. These values were provided by expert opinion. We asked 12 experts to rank eight land cover types for their ability to provide:
- Ground nesting resources (open soil, gravel)
- Cavity nesting resources (rotting logs, dead shrubs with hollow branches)
- Forage resources (pollen and nectar from blooming flowers) in the early, middle, and late summer (3 separate scores). Assessing forage resources throughout the growing season accounts for seasonal variability in the abundance and diversity of blooming flowers and leads to more accurate model predictions.

Expert opinion-derived habitat suitability parameters are listed in Table 1. Each land cover type is ranked on a scale of 0 to 1, with 1 being most suitable habitat for wild bees.

Table 1. Expert-opinion derived parameters for the InVEST Crop Pollination Model applied to Maine wild blueberry

Land cover type	Ground nesting	Cavity nesting	Late spring forage	Early summer forage	Late summer forage
Agriculture/grassland	0.7	0.2	0.9	0.7	0.9
Blueberries	1.0	0.4	0.4	1.0	0.5
Coniferous forest	0.5	0.6	0.1	0.1	0.1
Deciduous/mixed forest	0.6	0.9	0.7	0.5	0.4
Deciduous/mixed forest edge	0.9	1.0	0.9	0.9	1.0
Emergent wetland	0.2	0.4	0.7	0.6	0.6
Urban/developed	0.9	0.6	1.0	0.9	1.0
Wetlands/water	0.1	0.1	1.3	0.2	.5

Bee life history traits for wild bees associated with the focal crop. We collected information for nesting preference, foraging distance, and flight season of 14 wild bee species found in blooming wild blueberry fields (Table 2). Due to model constraints, we were unable to incorporate bumblebees (Bombus species), an important blueberry pollinator, into the model.

Table 2. Bee life history traits for 14 common wild bee species in Maine wild blueberry

Species	Family	Nest substrate	Typical foraging distance(yd)	Flight season
Andrena carlini	Andrenidae	ground	653	Mar-Aug
Andrena carolina	Andrenidae	ground	270	Apr-Jul
Andrena vicina	Andrenidae	ground	622	Mar-Aug
Augochlorella aurata	Halictidae	ground	65	Apr-Oct
Colletes inaequalis	Colletidae	ground	1193	Mar-Sept
Halictus ligatus	Halictidae	ground	161	Mar-Nov
Lasioglossum acuminatum	Halictidae	ground	203	Apr-Oct
Lasioglossum cressonii	Halictidae	ground	68	Mar-Oct
Lasioglossum heterognathum	Halictidae	ground	17	Apr-Sept
Lasioglossum leucocomum	Halictidae	ground	34	Mar-Oct
Lasioglossum pectorale	Halictidae	ground	88	Mar-Nov
Lasioglossum versatum	Halictidae	ground	86	Mar-Oct
Osmia atriventris	Megachilidae	cavity	203	Apr-Jul
Osmia inspergens	Megachilidae	cavity	541	May-June

The InVEST Crop Pollination Model predicts bee abundance at each point across the input land cover map for each bee species using bee foraging distance and flight season in tandem with the resources offered by each land cover type throughout the growing season. These maps are then summed to create the model output, an overall predicted wild bee abundance map. Each point in this map is given an index value between 0 and 1, with 1 representing the highest wild bee abundance. We classified this index into five abundance classes for clearer interpretation.

Full details of the development of the land cover map and application of the InVEST Crop Pollination Model to the Downeast wild blueberry growing region can be found in Groff et al. (2016) and Chapin (2014).