Press Herald interviews Howe on mountain tree lines moving upward
The Portland Press Herald interviewed University of Maine Ph.D. student Peter Howe for a story titled “As temperatures rise, so do Maine’s mountain tree lines.” Howe is digging into a collection of aerial survey photos donated to Special Collections at the university by the Sewall Co. in 2019 to create a spatially accurate photomosaic of Maine’s forests over time. The work will allow him to calculate how the rate of tree line movement on Maine’s two dozen bald mountains has changed over time, among other things. “By photographing a common object from different angles, you can get depth,” Howe said. “It is similar to the parallax effect with our eyes. Each eye sees the world from a slightly different angle, allowing our brain to create a three-dimensional image of the world around us.”