Media features UMaine alpine flora study
The Portland Press Herald, the Bangor Daily News, The Piscataquis Observer, Sun Journal and CentralMaine.com reported on a study led by Jacquelyn Gill, associate professor of paleoecology & plant ecology with the University of Maine School of Biology and Ecology and Climate Change Institute, that will examine 13,000 years’ worth of lake sediment containing ancient plant DNA found at four Northeast mountain ranges to determine how alpine plants carried here by glaciers in the last ice age have persisted through extensive climate change, and whether they will survive the unprecedented global warming occurring today. “The challenge of having to save a million species from climate change can make you feel like we’re in uncharted territory, that we don’t know how to do this, but the planet has gone through climate change before. The fossil record is our blueprint,” Gill said.