Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions

Mitchell Center alum Spencer Meyer returns to give Sustainability Talk Nov. 5 By the time Spencer Meyer joined the Mitchell Center’s Sustainability Science Initiative (SSI) in 2010 as a Ph.D. student, he had already been working at UMaine and with large forest landowners for a total of eight years in a variety of capacities. But […]

  Mitchell Center Stakeholder Workshop Focuses on Tidal Power As part of the Mitchell Center-funded Integrating and Sharing Data to Support Resilience in Maine Coastal Communities project, a stakeholder workshop was held on September 27th that included UMaine team members and external partners Sipayik Environmental Department (Passamaquoddy Tribe), the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, NOAA/National […]

A novel study in Acadia National Park seeks to help visitors reduce the risk of tickborne disease When UMaine social scientist Sandra De Urioste-Stone and her students conducted climate change research in Mount Desert Island’s Acadia National Park (ANP) in 2015-16, many of the park visitors interviewed said one of their greatest concerns for future […]

The current issue of the Maine Policy Review (MPR) contains articles by five Mitchell Center faculty members, including an introduction by Senior Fellow Linda Silka who is also the executive editor of MPR. Other authors include David Hart, Karen H. Bieluch, Sandra De Urioste-Stone, and Aaron Weiskittel. As Silka writes in the introduction, the special […]

Intertidal ecosystems and the small-scale fisheries they support are an important part of coastal economies, environments, and cultures. Globally, fisheries such as the soft-shell clams (Mya arenaria), face multiple stresses related to climate change, invasive species and unsustainable land use. In a paper published in Ocean and Coastal Management, University of Maine researchers and colleagues […]

A rafting trip down the Penobscot River gives researchers perspectives on place, history, and restoration On a cold, drizzly morning in June, researchers and partners associated with the Future of Dams (FoD) project lined up beside the Penobscot River, their red life jackets and blue helmets bright in the foggy morning. Many standing in the parking […]

Undergraduate Michaela Murray reflects on her capstone experience for Mitchell Center project In 2017, I had the opportunity to partake in solutions-oriented research relating to the global problem of food system sustainability. The project was a new Mitchell Center-funded endeavor facilitated by the UMaine Honors College’s Sustainable Food System Research Collaborative (SFSRC). The goal was […]

In a paper published in Frontiers in Marine Science, researchers, including lead author Joshua Stoll of the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences and the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, map the global trade routes for lobster and quantify the effect they have on obscuring the relation between those who catch the valuable crustacean […]

By definition, a midden is a “refuse heap,” but in the case of a new Mitchell Center project, the heap is cultural gold and a window into Earth’s past. Titled “Creating a Maine Midden Minder Network and Database,” the project is being led by Alice Kelley, UMaine geoarchaeologist in the School of Earth and Climate […]

Mitchell Center helps Katahdin region assess its economic and community resilience In March 2016, Linda Silka, community psychologist and Senior Fellow at the Mitchell Center, wrote an Op-Ed in the Bangor Daily News describing the deep commitment of many UMaine faculty and students to work with communities in tackling complex or “wicked” problems at the intersection of […]