Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions

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 […]

This 3-year project, funded by a NOAA “B-WET” grant and coordinated by Sarah Nelson, will engage 1,275 students and 30 high school teachers in research collaborations with professional scientists on the changing nature of the snowpack across Maine. The project focus is on the coastal climate zone where snowmelt provides clues for diadromous fish migration […]

Researcher Sarah Nelson was interviewed recently by the Portland Press Herald about her work with dragonfly larvae, just one of the “sentinel species” that can provide early indicators to scientists about potentially harmful environmental conditions.  Nelson’s work focuses on food web mercury levels in Acadia National Park and in 25 other national parks across the […]

Citizen scientists who are collecting dragonfly larvae at 25 National Parks under the guidance of Mitchell Center researcher Sarah Nelson, now have a place to share their discoveries. The dragonfly larvae will be used to determine mercury levels in National Park lakes and to test the theory that dragonfly larvae can be used as indictors […]