Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions

2022 Mitchell Center Intern Austin Simmons received the undergraduate student poster award at the Maine GIS User Group Fall Conference which took place at the Hutchinson Center is Belfast, ME on Friday, October 28. Simmons is an undergraduate student at the University of Maine’s regional campus in Machias (UMM) studying with professor Tora Johnson. During […]

Mitchell Center faculty fellow Jean MacRae was a panelist of a recent Bangor Daily News webinar on what we know about PFAS and why it matters. The webinar included discussions about what are PFAS, and how are they impacting water, agriculture, and human health in Maine – and across the nation? The webinar was co-moderated […]

Hydropower can move beyond enormous, Earth-altering infrastructure. Despite a growing trend of dam removals to preserve and restore ecology and indigenous ways of life, small hydropower projects have the potential to contribute more to a renewable energy future because they can be reliable, flexible and cost-effective, according to a review from the University of Maine. […]

The University of Maine Darling Marine Center (DMC) is launching a project to enhance the sustainability of kelp aquaculture. With support from the William Procter Scientific Innovation Fund, the two-year research and commercialization project will leverage the UMaine Aquaculture Experimental Station sea farm adjacent to DMC. “Farmers need farm designs that make efficient use of […]

New England’s droughts in 2016, 2020 and 2022 offer a preview of farming amid a changing climate. This has caused farmers who rely on rainfall to seek more reliable water sources. Rachel Schattman, assistant professor of sustainable agriculture at the University of Maine, is leading the study of a novel shallow well design that is […]

Sam Roy, Mitchell Center faculty fellow and Natural Hazards Planner for Maine Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), participated on a Maine Public panel, “The history and risk of hurricanes in Maine, and what to do to prepare.” The program, which aired on October 12, is now available for listening from Maine Public’s website. The devastation caused […]

A new study published in Global Environmental Change by University of Maine Associate Professor of Forest Policy and Economics Adam Daigneault and colleagues from seven institutions develop a first of its kind forest model intercomparison project (ForMIP) to estimate long-term futures for the world’s forests under different socioeconomic and climate mitigation pathways. Amidst growing recognition […]

Mitchell Center community members actively publish their research across a diverse range of academic journals. The following is a sample of recent papers by Mitchell Center faculty, students, and alumni. Source-sink behavioural dynamics limit institutional evolution in a group-structured society Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Timothy Waring, Guillaume St-Onge, Meredith Niles, Laura Kati Corlew, Matthew Dube, Stephanie Miller, […]

Bridie McGreavy, associate professor of environmental communication at the University of Maine Department of Communication and Journalism and Mitchell Center Faculty Fellow, received the J. Robert Cox Award in Environmental Communication & Civic Engagement for 2022 from the Environmental Communication Division of the National Communication Association. Read the full story on the College of Liberal […]

The University of Maine is one of five international sites of the 2022 Raising Indigenous Voices in Academia & Society (RIVAS) conference, acknowledging the contributions of Indigenous Peoples globally, Oct. 20–25. RIVAS supports the scholarship of Indigenous academics and speakers whose cultures help shape linguistics, archeology, cultural anthropology and other academic disciplines, and also acknowledges […]