Signature and Emerging Areas

The Mayer-Rothschild Foundation awards Center on Aging, The Cedars funding to seek best practices for person-centered care

The Mayer-Rothschild Foundation has awarded funding to the University of Maine Center on Aging and The Cedars, a nonprofit retirement community in South Portland, to identify and promote the best practices for person-centered care in nursing homes, independent and assisted living facilities and dementia and memory care residences.  The foundation’s first Designation of Excellence in […]

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Tents on Mount Everest

Miner finds outdoor gear ‘forever chemicals’ in snow near Everest summit 

“Forever chemicals” used in water-repellant outdoor gear have been found in snow from the top of Mount Everest.  Kimberley Miner says these human-made per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — which have been linked to birth defects, high cholesterol and increased risk of kidney and testicular cancer — could eventually pose a risk for trekkers, climbers […]

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Mayewski, Potocki talk with Eos about Everest ice core

Paul Mayewski and Mariusz Potocki are included in the Eos story “An Ice Core from the Roof of the World” about the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition. Mayewski, director of the Climate Change Institute, was the expedition leader and lead scientist. Potocki, a Ph.D. candidate, collected the highest ice core in […]

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Media report on UMaine findings of climatic disequilibrium among flora

The Bangor Daily News, the Daily Bulldog, Village Soup and Phys.org picked up a University of Maine news release about a collaborative study which concluded that 447 species of trees and shrubs are growing in less than 50% of their suitable North American ranges. The study, which was published in the Journal of Biogeography, suggests that soils, other plants and animals […]

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Japanese barberry

Miller, McGill study supports need for enhanced invasive plant management in national parks

Maintaining National Park infrastructure and built environments, such as roads, information kiosks and visitor centers, is a known and persistent challenge. But a new study led by Kathryn Miller, University of Maine alumna and quantitative ecologist for the National Park Services’ Northeast Temperate Network, suggests that undeveloped areas within national parks also require capital investments […]

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Trees

UMaine scientists find that trees are out of equilibrium with climate, posing new challenges in a warming world

Forecasts predicting where plants and animals will inhabit over time rely primarily on information about their current climate associations, but that only plays a partial role.  Under climate change, there’s a growing interest in assessing whether trees and other species can keep pace with changing temperatures and rainfall, shifting where they are found, also known […]

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UMaine graduate students help tourism-dependent communities prepare for climate change

Four University of Maine graduate students will help communities that rely on natural resources for recreation and tourism prepare for the ramifications of climate change.  The team will provide stakeholder municipalities data to help them adapt to the changing climate and assist them with developing climate adaptation frameworks using ‘scenario planning’— a method of forecasting […]

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