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Mitchell Center staff and student work at field sites across the state and throughout the Northeast. Following is information concerning some of our major field sites. Links are provided to specific research projects being done at these sites when appropriate and also to maps with field site locations when available.
Acadia National Park
The University of
Maine has developed a pair of gauged watersheds at Acadia National
Park. Acadia National Park is located at the 44th parallel, a
mid-latitude predicted to be a zone of greatest change due to
global warming. In 1999, Acadia ranked fifth worst of all national
parks for continental weather pollution patterns that result in
poor air quality and atmospheric deposition. We have established
within the park two 100-acre watersheds that are being monitored
for stream flow, stream chemistry, and precipitation, with a focus
on atmospheric deposition and the biogeochemistry of nitrogen and
mercury. The experimental design is based on natural differences
in forests and soils induced by a 1947 wildfire.
The Acadia
watersheds are part of an emerging network of watershed research
sites spanning the entire US (Kahl and Tonnessen, 2003), providing
a national scope for this regional research project. Summer 2004 Field Work at Acadia
Bear Brook Watershed, Maine (BBWM)
A second pair of
instrumented watersheds at Bear Brook Watershed in Maine (BBWM)
has also been developed by the watershed research group at the
University. BBWM is a whole ecosystem manipulation experiment that
has been underway since 1987. It encompasses two contiguous
25-acre forested watersheds. Ammonium sulfate fertilizer
(surrogate ‘acid rain’) has been applied by helicopter to the
experimental watershed since 1989. The adjacent watershed is used
as an untreated reference. The BBWM response provides a major
evaluation of watershed models used by federal agencies to
generate predictions of environmental response to emission control
scenarios. Because acidic deposition is a major issue at Acadia, the development of indicators and patterns of response at BBWM can infer the extent of acidification and nitrogen saturation at Acadia National Park.
HELM Lakes
The University of
Maine’s High Elevation Lake Monitoring (HELM) project involves the
sampling of up to 90 lakes in Maine at an elevation of 600 meters
or higher. Because of their landscape position, high elevation
lakes are generally more dilute, less well buffered, and probably
more vulnerable to acidic precipitation than other Maine lakes.
Many of the lakes were sampled in 1987-1988, and again in
1997-present. Many high elevation lakes are located in the western
mountains of Maine. High elevation lakes in Baxter State Park have
also been sampled as part of HELM. Most lakes are sampled by
helicopter because of their remote locations. The project was
designed to complement the 1984 Eastern Lakes Survey (ELS) by the
EPA. Key references:
RLTM Lakes The Environmental Protection Agency’s Regionalized Long-Term Monitoring (RLTM) project began in 1982 with sampling at five Maine lakes to assess trends in acid-base status of Maine Lakes. The sample set grew to include 16 lakes by 1993, and the project is ongoing as of 2003. The continuous record of chemical data from the Long-Term Monitoring lakes has provided information for regional acid rain assessments. Sampling is done in the spring (lake outlets), summer (stratified conditions, both hypolimnion and epilimnion samples are taken), and fall, just at lake overturn.
Salmon Rivers In 2002, the Mitchell Center began a collaborative research program with the Atlantic Salmon Commission, Maine DEP, and NOAA Fisheries to coordinate research on Maine’s salmon rivers. Work began on three tributaries of the Narraguagus River and has expanded to include tributaries of the Union River. A survey of all of Maine’s salmon rivers was conducted in 2003 to assess differences in pH and acidity using the same field and laboratory protocol for maximum data comparability. Future work on the salmon rivers will include proposed detailed study of the Denny’s River.
Seepage Lakes The Aquifer Lakes Project (ALPS) sampled the chemistry of Maine lakes on or associated with mapped sand and gravel aquifers. ALPS lakes are seepage lakes, defined as lakes that have no surface inlets. Therefore, many of the lakes have very small watersheds and are generally useful as indicators of precipitation chemistry. The survey was done by the University of Maine in 1986-1987, and 1998-2002 (ongoing), and involves the sampling of 128 lakes. The seepage lakes are currently being evaluated as indicators of climate change, in concert with data from seepage lakes in Wisconsin.
TIME The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s ongoing Temporally Integrated Monitoring of Ecosystems (TIME) program began in 1999. The project seeks to examine changes and trends in aquatic chemistry over time, and is fundamental for EPA to meet the goals of the Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) to determine trends in ecological response. The TIME lakes, located across New England and New York, have continuous data records from 1991, when the lakes were sampled as part of EPA’s EMAP project. Some of the lakes were also sampled in 1984 and 1986 as part of the Eastern Lakes Survey I and II.
Links to additional project information:
Key references:
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