Graduate student support to continue UM’s lead role in the Dragonfly Mercury Project across US National Parks
Principal Investigator: Sarah Nelson (School of Forest Resources, UMaine)
Partners: Hamish Greig (School of Biology and Ecology, UMaine), Amanda Klemmer (Ecology and Environmental Sciences and School of Biology and Ecology, UMaine), Collin Eagles-Smith (U.S. Geological Survey), Colleen Flanagan Pritz (National Park Service)
Abstract: The Dragonfly Mercury Project (DMP) engages citizen scientists in monitoring mercury contamination in National Parks across the US. The scientist team at the University of Maine (UM), US Geological Survey, and National Park Service (NPS) enlist park staff or community partners, who lead teams of citizen scientists in the collection of dragonfly larvae, effective bio-sentinels for mercury pollution. Dragonflies are analyzed at UM and USGS laboratories for mercury, a global pollutant that affects resources the NPS is charged with protecting. The DMP spans more than 200 unique locations across over 60 national parks throughout the US. Since 2011, when the project began as a UM pilot effort, parks have sampled dragonfly larvae for mercury to determine: (1) baseline mercury concentrations in national parks prior to implementation of national and international mercury use and emission controls; and, (2) which habitats and catchment characteristics influence vulnerability to mercury accumulation in foodwebs. This proposal requests funding for a graduate student who would strengthen UM’s leadership in this project by serving as a central coordinator, and move the science forward through novel data analyses and synthesis. Further, the student and the project would benefit from a mini-exchange at the USGS Corvallis contaminants lab, among the top in our field. Dragonflies are charismatic biota that garner great interest from park visitors, students, and citizen scientists, over 2,500 of whom have participated in this nationwide project. This project supports broadening participation in STEM by the inclusion of citizen scientists, mainly high school students, and provides student recruiting opportunities for UM. The project engages citizens in science and supports Maine’s nature-based tourism economy, our largest economic sector. This project directly supports UM because it would allow the project team to capture $104,500 in federal and partner funds that are available if non-federal match like this award can be secured. Continuation of the project’s large-scale, temporally continuous dataset will allow the project team to compete for funds that would enable longer-term support of this research.