Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions

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 […]

Thanks to a generous grant from the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, a team of six Diana Davis Spencer Scholars are off to a fast start in their collaborative effort to reduce food waste. Concerns about food waste are rising in the U.S., where 40 percent of the food we produce goes to waste. This is […]

In January 2017, the Mitchell Center launched the Strengthening Coastal Economies project as part of the Diana Davis Spencer Partnership for a Sustainable Maine. The ultimate goal of this partnership is to inspire and equip a new generation of engaged, entrepreneurial leaders by providing students with transformative, hands-on experiences in the power of innovative partnerships to create a brighter […]

Bea Van Dam awarded first place for graduate student poster For her Master’s research project, School of Earth & Climate Sciences and Mitchell Center student Bea Van Dam has been peering at high-resolution elevation models of the Earth’s surface created using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology—in search of puddles of water. For the work, Van […]

UMaine’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has named associate professor Cindy Isenhour as recipient of the 2018 CLAS Outstanding Service/Outreach Award. Isenhour is an ecological and economic anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology. Isenhour is in her fifth year at UMaine and holds cooperating appointments in the School of Economics, Climate Change Institute and the Mitchell […]