Coastal Community Resilience

Our goal is to generate and share information related to the resilience of Maine coastal communities and the ecosystems on which they depend. We are focused specifically on building scientific and civic capacity relevant to Maine coastal communities and the ecosystems that they are part of.

This has led to a number of exciting activities, including:

  1. Graduate training in ecosystem science & marine-ecosystem based management. We are now recruiting the third cohort of students to the 3-D Ecosystem Science National Research Traineeship program, thanks to the US NSF.
  2. Damariscotta River Estuary Community Science Program. A team led by Leslie lab graduate students responded to community-identified information needs from several communities surrounding the Darling Marine Center. We are collecting both social and ecological information to support ecosystem-based management of local shellfish populations and the broader estuary, thanks to support from local donors, the Broad Reach Foundation and the NOAA Saltonstall-Kennedy Program.
  3. Arts-based research and community engagement. Thanks to support from the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, we are using oral histories, creative writing, storytelling, and photography to explore understandings of community and ecosystem resilience in collaboration with local students, municipal leaders, and other community members. Are you interested in participating? Please contact us!