Huguenard’s storm surge research included in NSF World Water Day article

Research by Kimberly Huguenard, an assistant professor in ocean and marine engineering at the University of Maine, was included in a National Science Foundation (NSF) article about current water research. For the last two years, NSF has provided funding to enable communities across the country to take a closer look at the quality of their own water systems, according to the article. For World Water Day, NSF spoke with citizen scientists and engineers, including Huguenard, about their projects. Huguenard has measured storm surge interactions with estuaries in three Maine communities, the article states. “The project provides the unique opportunity not only to capture storm surge associated with extra-tropical cyclones and hurricanes, but also to develop a baseline understanding of storm tide behavior in four estuaries in Maine, something that has previously never been completed,” Huguenard said. “These findings can inform future decision-making by providing communities with critical information for climate change adaptation planning, a key sustainability challenge. Our project also provides community members with an opportunity to collect data (as citizen scientists), and to participate in a dialogue about how such data might inform local planning to meet sustainability goals.”