Lab News & Views

Engaging in offshore wind development

We are delighted to share How to Engage in Offshore Wind Development: A Guide to Values, Questions, Perspectives, and Pathways Forward in Coastal Maine, with you. Download the Guide as a word document, or as a PDF. This guide is designed to support many different people – community members, developers, government agencies and nonprofit organizations […]

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Community Science Update

Graduate students Sarah Risley (above) and Melissa Britsch (now at the Maine Coastal Program) led local knowledge research in the Damariscotta and Medomak River estuaries. This open-access study was just published in the international scientific journal Ambio. This was the first time the knowledge of shellfish harvesters and experts working within these estuaries was documented, […]

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Damariscotta River, looking north from the bridge

Bringing Art and Science Together

We are launching a new project focused on bringing arts-based methods into coastal community resilience science and practice, thanks to support from UMaine’s Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions.

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Woman operates drone from boat

Congratulations, Dr. Jen Smith-Mayo!

Congratulations to Dr. Jennifer Smith-Mayo! Earlier this semester, Jen successfully defended her PhD dissertation entitled An Engaged Approach to Tracing How Practices of Articulation Shape Embodiment and Materiality in a Science-based Transdisciplinary Collaboration in partial fulfillment of her doctoral degree requirements for UMaine’s Graduate Program in Communication. Jen will be co-presenting research from her dissertation at the […]

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Reflecting on ecosystem-based management

Last week, I participated in a symposium at the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. This is an impressive scientific society, including more than 120,000 members from the US and 90 other countries around the world. I am particularly appreciative of AAAS as they hosted one of the […]

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Heather reflects on science communication

Thanks to the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) for including our work in this story on science communication: https://www.neefusa.org/story/environmental-education/why-science-communication-important

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Quadrat in rocky intertidal zone

Community Science Update

We had a long field season this year, starting with focus groups in the spring and then shellfish ecological studies that spanned the summer and fall. The last couple of months we also have been met with the Joint Shellfish Committee and other community members to share what we’re learning and to plan for 2025. […]

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Congratulations, Dr. Phoebe Jekielek!

Congratulations to Dr. Phoebe Jekielek! On September 19th, Phoebe successfully defended her PhD dissertation entitled Integrating life history and environmental DNA (eDNA) data to enhance detection of sea scallop (Placopecten magellanicus) populations, in partial fulfilment of her doctoral degree requirements for UMaine’s Graduate Program in Ecology and Environmental Sciences. Phoebe starts a postdoc with the Brady Lab next month and will be working with […]

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Reflecting on the Maine Climate Council process 

The Maine Climate Council Scientific and Technical Subcommittee recently released their 2024 report, which guides the work of the Council in finalizing the Maine Climate Action Plan later this year. Here, Leslie Lab affiliate Dr. Jess Reilly-Moman reflects on her experience supporting the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee over the last year. An Anthropologist and An […]

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Connecting local and scientific knowledge

Earlier this spring, I traveled to La Paz, on the gulf coast of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur (BCS). It had been four years since I had last visited, in March 2020, as the pandemic was spreading across the globe. I was grateful to be able to travel with a close colleague and […]

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