Sean Smith

Expertise

🌊 Coastal and marine topics, 🕸Ecology, 🏞 Land and natural resource use, 🚣Outdoor recreation, 💧Water quality

Smith’s teaching and research focuses on processes that shape landscapes, rivers, and landforms, and that govern surface water runoff and the transport of sediment, nutrients, and pollutants into lakes, rivers, and estuaries. A primary goal of his research is to advance the prediction and mitigation of human impacts on aquatic habitat and water quality, and development of decision tools for watershed and coastal sustainability solutions in response to land use and climate change problems. Visit Smith’s biography to learn more.

A bubble chart demonstrating a 50% research 50% teaching appointment split.
Smith balances time between teaching (50%) courses about earth systems, freshwater flows, principles of geomorphology, and fluvial processes in geomorphology, and research (50%) on watershed geomorphology with attention to processes that influence the morphology and stability of hillslopes and waterways, and that govern the flux of water, sediment and nutrients in the contemporary landscape.

Appointment details

Smith’s work is supported by:

  • School of Earth and Climate Sciences at the College of Natural Sciences, Forestry and Agriculture
  • Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions
  • Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station

Experiment Station contributions

  • Current project: Change detection in Maine headwater stream systems. Hatch project number ME022209.