In mid July, several lab members had the good fortune to participate in a guided trip on the Medomak River estuary. Heather helped organize this event. An excerpt of the press release published August 14, 2025 in the Lincoln County News is below. To read the full release, please log onto the newspaper’s site or […]
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To learn about the Leslie Lab’s contributions to collaborative research, education and community engagement in the midcoast, please see the webpage for the Damariscotta River Estuary Community Science Program: https://tinyurl.com/DREcomsci
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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