Research

WPES members are involved in collaborative research projects and natural resource management activities inspired by demands for science-based, stakeholder-guided solutions to modern watershed, lake, river, stream, and coastal estuary problems. Our research typically focuses on the identification and quantification of watershed and estuary characteristics and the processes affecting their dynamics. The end goal is often framed around the development of new types of information and management decision tools that natural resource managers, engineers, public safety and health professionals, and communities can use. WPES projects therefore include the influence of multiple disciplines such as geomorphology, hydrology, biology, sociology, and civil engineering. Given the stakeholder motivations for most of our projects, we put substantial effort into science communication.

Collaborating faculty in WPES have participated in projects in many locations in the country and around the world. Use the links below to learn more about the topics projects we have been working on closer to home in Maine.

Coastal Pollution and Hazards

Waterborne pollution along Maine's tidal coastline poses ecological, economic, and cultural challenges, including threats to the state's important shellfisheries.
Panorama of Jordan River in Trenton, ME at low tide, showing survey equipment

Penobscot River Processes and Management

The Penobscot is a river in flux, responding to dam renovations and removals, shifting land uses in its watershed, and a changing climate.
Image of the Milford Dam on the Penobscot River at low flow conditions

Headwater Processes and Practices

Everything begins in the headwaters, where the patterns of precipitation runoff from the landscape into small channels shapes the water and sediment budgets of the larger rivers downstream.
A researcher uses a stadia rod to measure bank height in a rocky headwater stream channel

What's Salt Got to do With It? ¿Qué papel juega la sal?

Comparing exchange flow and mixing in estuaries around the world with varying levels of river input and tidal conditions: Penobscot River Estuary, Maine; Gironde Estuary, France; Reloncavi Fjord, Chile.