Our team of social-ecological systems scholars just published a paper in World Bank Economic Review showing that fishermen’s decisions are shaped by differences in both natural and social environments. We discovered the community with stronger fishing rights exerted more control over fishermen’s decisions than communities with weaker rights, and did so in a way consistent with the impacts of climate […]
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The director of the University of Maine Darling Marine Center says ecosystem-based approaches to restore ocean health provide a flexible framework for marine management and allow scientists and stakeholders to move beyond reactive and piecemeal solutions. “Ecosystem-based management (EBM) accounts for the diverse connections between people and oceans and the trade-offs inherent in managing for […]
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Thank you to the US NSF! This newly funded project is a great example of why federal support for Geosciences and Social Sciences research is so important in order to understand how our dynamic ocean influences local communities, and vice versa. Heather, together with collaborators at Duke University, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and Stockholm University […]
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As of August 1, 2015, I’ve taken on the Directorship of the Darling Marine Center, the University of Maine’s marine lab. I’m thrilled to be back in midcoast Maine and look forward to working with the Center community and our many collaborators to advance marine science, teaching and service on the coast of Maine. You […]
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Former Leslie Lab member Katherine Siegel, now at research assistant with UC Santa Barbara’s Sustainable Fisheries group, authored this personal essay for Heather’s course on engaged environmental scholarship and communication. Read on to learn more about Katherine’s undergraduate research on the human and ecological dimensions of Mexican small-scale fisheries. Arcángel sighed, pulled up his last […]
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Loreto, June 2015 This year, 2015, was the first year that the Annual Chocolate Clam Festival in Loreto, Mexico included a bilingual Clam Biology tent as part of the festivities. The tent featured a large diagram of the clam life cycle with interesting facts about chocolate clams, and educational coloring pages for kids. The real […]
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Heather and former Brown undergraduate Megan Palmer (Class of 2014) just published an article in Marine Technology Society Journal on the value of taking an ecosystem services approach to assessing the impacts of tidal energy development. The results are described here, and also were picked up by RI NPR!
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The Hidden Nature of Baja, January 2015 The wind was blowing hard out of the north already at 8 AM and was predicted to increase. We squeezed into an old white pick up truck that Sara had already loaded with our gear, and drove south. The peaks of the Sierra de la Giganta hugged us […]
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Leslie Lab members published results from a multi year study at 18 rocky shore sites from Maine to New York state in Ecosphere this week. Mussels could be the perfect ‘sentinel’ species to signal the health of coastal ecosystems. But a new study of blue mussels in estuary ecosystems along 600 kilometers of coastline in […]
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I am thrilled to have been selected as a 2015 Leopold Leadership Fellow! Not only is it a great honor to join the network of fellows; it also is really exciting to have the intellectual space to focus on a new dimension of my research. My quest this year is to explore different perspectives on marine conservation […]
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