Integrating science and management to understand and sustain agricultural, horticultural, forest, and wetland ecosystems.

Welcome! Our department has as its mission the identification and application of ecological principles that contribute to the sustainable use of ecosystems in a rapidly changing global environment. Faculty expertise provides a framework for the study of interactions between biological, chemical and physical components of agricultural, horticultural, wetlands, forest, and watershed ecosystems.

We play a key role in interdisciplinary curricula and research projects involving biogeochemistry, soil science, plant science, sustainable cropping systems, and invertebrate and microbial ecology. Through its teaching and research programs in these areas the department addresses the needs of Maine's natural resource-based industries and contributes to a knowledge foundation upon which their sustainability can be built.

The department is directly responsible for the B.S. degree in Environmental Horticulture and Sustainable Agriculture, and its faculty play a pivotal role through instruction and advising in the Ecology and Environmental Sciences B.S. program. The department participates in seven graduate degree programs at both the M.S. and Ph.D. levels.

Environmental Horticulture:  http://www.umaine.edu/lhc/

Sustainable Agriculture:  Sustainable Agriculture Program

Ecology and Environmental Sciences:  http://www.umaine.edu/nrc/

Featured Student:
Michelle Jordan

Michelle Jordan is working with Dr. Stephanie Burnett and Dr. Jean McRae (College of Engineering) on a research project that will support the work of the UMaine Chapter of Engineers Without Borders. Michelle will grow plants in waste water in order to select plants that will be appropriate for a constructed wetland to be built in Guatemala. During the summer of 2008 Michelle, from Lamoine, ME, interned at a private residence in Douglas, Massachusetts. She worked on several projects such as designing and caring for the vegetable gardens, establishing three new colonies of bees, landscaping around the new pool, and tending to the extensive bird collection, including peacocks and rare breeds of ducks and chickens. One aspect of the internship that she found particularly interesting was getting to know people from many different countries; she was the only intern from the U.S. She lived with people from the Dominican Republic and Poland and worked with others from Brazil and the Czech Republic.