Hamish Greig, an Assistant Professor of Stream Ecology, is collaborating with foresters, economists and watershed scientists from the University of Maine and Maine logging industry leaders to study Riparian Management \u2013 When foresters leave trees that shade a stream to protect its ecosystem.<\/p>\n
\u201cA riparian buffer is the area of forest adjacent to a stream that a forest-harvester leaves to try and protect that waterway,\u201d said Greig.<\/p>\n
Greig and his team acquired one of nine UMaine Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Research Collaborative (IURC)<\/a> grants to continue a study led by Ethel Wilkerson, an aquatic ecologist with the sustainability non-profit organization\u00a0Manomet<\/a>, documenting the impact of various wood cuts around streams. Greig hopes to understand the economic and ecological costs and benefits of the practice. The project also received funding from the Cooperative Forestry Research Unit<\/a> on campus.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was this exciting landscape experiment that we could never afford to do as a small research group at the University of Maine, but by partnering with these other agencies and forest companies, we could further develop this experiment,\u201d Greig says.<\/p>\n During five- to seven-day trips, Hamish’s team, undergraduates Kathleen Brown and Ethan Cantin and graduates Eric Miller and Mitchell Pasiker,\u00a0camped at the former sites to collect data on how streams have been affected by various woodcuts. The research team traveled about 900 miles roundtrip from campus to each site then back, according to Greig.<\/p>\n The previous study cut several 15-acre blocks of stream up to 11 and 24 meters adjacent to a stream and some sites were cut completely to the stream. Hamish and his team went back to each site from the previous study and took measurements of the stream\u2019s habitat, water quality, insects, leaves falling into the stream, algae and other variables.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are fortunate they had control streams where they didn\u2019t harvest at all,” he says. “Those are the ones we compare the harvested streams to and we can also compare our results to those from 17 years ago. So, we have these sort of two different ways of comparing the outcomes.”<\/p>\n Results are being interpreted and data collection is likely to continue into the coming years, he says.<\/p>\n\n\t\tIn the Maine wilderness<\/h3>\n