Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions

Speaker: Paul Anderson, Executive Director, Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management (EBFM) is not a new concept and has been studied and attempted in many places around the planet. In its simplest form, EBFM considers not just how to manage individual species, but rather the relationships between species. At a more a complex level, EBFM takes into account the relationship of those species to the ecosystem in which they live. An even more comprehensive view includes the socio-economic…

Speakers: Allison Gardner, Assistant Professor, Biology & Ecology, UMaine; Sandra De Urisote-Stone, Assistant Professor, Forest Resources, UMaine Nature-based tourism is tightly coupled with the transmission and dynamics of vector-borne infectious diseases (i.e., those that are transmitted via the bite of an infected arthropod, such as a mosquito or a tick). Domestic and international travel likely play a substantial role in the spread of both vectors and pathogens to new locations, while public health concerns may influence tourism businesses’ and potential…

The conference was launched in 1994 by the Senator George J. Mitchell Center at the University of Maine with a primary focus on one of Maine’s central challenges– the future of its water resources. Originally designed to provide a collaborative nexus for water resource professionals, researchers, consultants, citizens, students, regulators, and planners to exchange information and present new findings on water resource issues in Maine, the conference has grown to include participation from a broad audience of close to 400…

Speaker: Dan Coker, The Nature Conservancy in Maine While there are many approaches to achieving conservation success, influencing public policy is a critical piece of the puzzle. Providing policy makers with tools that clearly illustrate scientific information is an effective way to help them make informed decisions about conservation issues that impact their constituents and communities. Using his current work with University of Maine faculty member Shaleen Jain to develop a high-resolution floodplain map and to model and quantify the…

Governing the vulnerabilities of urban infrastructure to water scarcity and flooding – The example of Mexico City Marco Janssen, Professor, School of Sustainability and Director, Center for Behavior, Institutions and the Environment, Arizona State University Many megacities such as Mexico City will experience in the coming decades an amplification of the existing challenges of water governance due to climatic change and further urbanization. As part of a large research project, we are developing an agent-based model of the water governance…

This event has been cancelled due to illness. We will try to reschedule for fall semester. Speaker: Dr. Andrew Miller Department of Geography and Environmental Systems, University of Maryland - Baltimore County Co-sponsor: School of Earth and Climate Sciences Dr. Miller is interested in the interaction between watershed form, hydrologic response, and fluvial morphology with particular focus on interactions between flood processes and channel and valley-floor boundary conditions. In recent years this work has focused primarily on small urban watersheds…

Speaker: Anne Henshaw, PhD, Oak Foundation In the mainstream media, images of polar bears perched on pans of melting ice continue to be emblematic of climate change and its immediate threats. While visually effective, do polar bears serve as an appropriate symbol for highlighting vulnerability and adaptive capacity to climate change, especially for the 400,000 Indigenous Peoples who call the region home? As the multi-year sea ice continues to show remarkable decline and the ocean becomes more accessible, communities face…