Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions

Graduate student Jenny Shrum, a Ph.D. candidate in UMaine’s Ecology and Environmental Sciences graduate program and UMaine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative (SSI), is working to better understand the relationship between weather and maple sap flow, and how Maine syrup producers will adapt to climate change. Her research is supported by the National Science Foundation and Maine EPSCoR […]

For social scientists, measuring opinion is a precise scholarship, a tool that must evolve if research is to advance. This is no easy task. Opinion scales must have uniformity, so studies can be compared. Change is a challenge. Researchers at the SSI are at the forefront of such change. In a recent paper, researchers with […]

The culverts under the streets and byways of Maine’s coastal communities were built to handle a predictable amount of precipitation – a regular load of storm water that changed little from year to year. But the new millennium has brought increases in both precipitation and storm severity. Around the state, culverts meant to last decades […]

SSI researcher Tim Waring, along with colleagues from Arizona and Austria, has been awarded a grant to convene an international working group at National Institute of Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS) at the University of Tennessee. The working group will focus on evolutionary approaches to social-ecological systems change. The goal of the group is to break new […]

SSI researchers Linda Silka, Laura Lindenfeld, Karen Hutchins and others have authored a journal article, “Moving Beyond the Single Discipline: Building a Scholarship of Engagement that Permeates Higher Education (pdf)“, for the Tamara Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry. The article uses the example of the Sustainability Solutions Initiative to explore the challenges and opportunities associated with […]

Three Presque Isle high school students, junior Angela Wang and sophomores Sedona Lucas and Zach Rice, have assisted with research on the University of Maine at Presque Isle’s SSI project “Assessing the Feasibility and Sustainability of Grass Biomass Production in Aroostook County.”  The students became involved in the project as part of UMPI’s Central Aroostook […]

SSI researcher Tim Waring’s undergraduate Sustainable Development class is working with the UMaine Sustainability Coordinator to help assemble data needed to complete a submission to the Sustainability Tracking and Rating System (STARS), a project of the American Association of Sustainability in Higher Education. Many leading “green” campuses are already rated by STARS. This ongoing collaboration, […]

University of New England student working on SSI’s “Sustaining Quality of Place in the Saco River Estuary” project shared their research experiences in a Campus Compact Field Trip on October 25, 2013. The workshop featured students discussing their work on the Saco River, including such topics as stakeholder involvement, water quality, invasive species and fish […]

The University of Maine is sharing in a $16 million dollar award from the U.S. Dept. of Energy which will be used to fund projects aimed at studying tidal energy potential. The $494,000 UMaine project, led by SSI researcher and associate professor of marine sciences Gayle Zydlewski, will use data from research initiated by SSI’s […]

A delegation of scholars from Japan, including President Sato of Hirosaki University, joined the SSI Tidal Energy Team for the 2nd Marine Energy International Symposium at UMaine on September 16-17, 2013. The symposium was designed as a collaborative exchange between researchers in the Maine Tidal Power Initiative (MTPI), and various Japanese institutions. With Japan hoping […]