Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions

Maine EPSCoR has announced the poster winners from the 2013 Maine EPSCoR Conference that was held on September 30 at Wells Conference Center. The winning posters for the undergraduate and graduate student competitions are posted at the Mitchell Center for viewing. The student winners are as follows: High School Competition Sedona Lucas, Zachary Rice, Sijia […]

SSI Doctoral Student Kristine Hoffman was featured on MPBN’s “Maine Things Considered” radio show on August 5, discussing some of the unusual findings from her vernal pool research. Kristine is a team member on the Protecting Natural Resources at the Community Scale project. To read the full MPBN story or listen to a podcast of […]

SSI researcher Jessica Leahy was interviewed for an article in the Kennebec Journal that appeared July 13, 2013. Leahy, Associate Professor of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources in the UMaine School of Forest Resources, discussed Maine’s Great Ponds Act which allows open access to undeveloped lands in Maine for hunting and fishing. Leahy said in […]

July 29, 2013 Orono, ME – Maine and New Hampshire’s coastal tourism and shellfish industries contribute millions of dollars annually to the regional economy. In Maine in 2010, coastal tourism and recreation added $1.1 billion to Maine’s gross domestic product, while shellfish landings in that same year generated revenues of $347 million. But these industries […]

Researchers from SSI’s Protecting Natural Resources at the Community Scale (Vernal Pool) team have been awarded  a grant from the NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) program for their project, “Of Pools and People: Small Natural Features with Large Ecosystem Functions in Urbanizing Landscapes. ”  This 4-year project was funded for $1.49M and […]

SSI Doctoral Student Kristine Hoffman was featured recently in a news broadcast on Bangor TV stations Fox 22 and ABC 7.  The story highlights Kristine’s research focusing on the conservation and habitat of the blue spotted salamander (Ambystoma laterale). Kristine is looking at the breeding ecology, habitat selection and life histories of  blue-spotted salamanders, including […]

UMaine President Paul Ferguson and SSI Director David Hart contributed an op-ed that appeared in the July 5th edition of Bangor Daily News. The piece, titled “How UMaine is Driving Sustainability, Research”, discussed the role of initiatives like SSI in facilitating economic growth in the state and in preparing students to take leadership roles in […]

SSI researchers Shaleen Jain and Esperanza Stancioff joined City of Ellsworth planner Michelle Gagnon, and city manager Michelle Beal for a guest panel on WERU Community Radio’s  “Talk of the Towns”.  The topic of discussion for the show was the role of sustainability science in helping coastal regions increasingly intense and frequent storms.  A podcast […]

University of New England associate professor James Sulikowski, a researcher on the SSI project “Sustaining Quality of Place in the Saco River Estuary through Community Based Ecosystem Management“, netted a 7 foot long, 250lb Atlantic sturgeon as part of his SSI research on the Saco river. See full Bangor Daily News article…

May 28th, 2013 Researchers at the Mitchell Center’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative are closely watching the movement of an invasive beetle known as the emerald ash borer (EAB). The beetle has recently been discovered in New Hampshire’s ash trees and now poses a serious threat to Maine. According to the USDA Forest Service, EAB was introduced […]