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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
Stream sampling for the "Correlating predictive contaminant deposition maps with streamwater chemistry" project (NRPP) is ongoing at Hadlock and Cadillac Brooks, ISCOs are still deployed, and stream samples are collected every two weeks in the summer.
Graduate student Kit Sheehan has completed field collections for litterfall and has removed her equipment from the field.
Ph.D. student Sarah Nelson, will be collecting throughfall this summer and fall. She plans to deploy 20 collectors, split between the two watersheds (Cadillac and Hadlock), and collect samples 10-12 times. During the winter she will reduce the number of sites to ten and collect snow throughout the winter. Samples will be analyzed for major ions chemistry and Hg.
In September stream samples will be collected from across Mount Desert Island as part of the NRPP assessment of chemical distribution park-wide. Samples will also be taken for the Acadia Traffic project with John Peckenham. These samples are taken one time during a single day.
These are the projects the Mitchell Center is involved with though the end of 2004. Thanks to the Park for their help in conducting research is such a wonderful setting, and thanks to everyone for their support.
Links to additional project information:
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.
Links to additional project information:
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:
- Kahl, J.S., and M. Scott. 1988. The aquatic chemistry of Maine's high elevation lakes: results from the HELM project. Lake and Reservoir Management 4: 33-40.
- Kahl, J. S., S. A. Norton, C. S. Cronan, I. J. Fernandez, L. C. Bacon, and T. A. Haines. 1991. Maine, in Acidic Deposition and Aquatic Ecosystems: Regional Case Studies. Editor D. F. Charles, 203-41.
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.
Key references:
- Kahl, J. S., S. A. Norton, C. S. Cronan, I. J. Fernandez, L. C. Bacon, and T. A. Haines. 1991. Maine, in Acidic Deposition and Aquatic Ecosystems: Regional Case Studies. Editor D. F. Charles, 203-41.
- Kahl, J. S., T. A. Haines, S. A. Norton, and R. B. Davis. 1993. Recent trends in the acid-base status of surface waters in Maine, U.S.A. Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 67: 281-300.
- Stoddard, J. L., D. S. Jeffries, A. Lukewille, T. A. Clair, P. J. Dillon, C. T. Driscoll, M. Forsius, M. Johannessen, J. S. Kahl, J. H. Kellogg, A. Kemp, J. Mannio, D. Monteith, P. S. Murdoch, S. Patrick, A. Rebsdorf, B. L. Skjelkvale, M. P. Stainton, T. Traaen, H. van Dam, K. E. Webster, J. Wieting, and A. Wilander. 1999. Regional trends in aquatic recovery from acidification in North America and Europe. Nature 401: 575-78.
- Stoddard, J.L., J.S. Kahl, F.A. Deviney, D.R. DeWalle, C.T. Driscoll, A.T. Herlihy, J.H. Kellogg, P.S. Murdoch, and J.R. Webb. 2003. Response of Surface Water Chemistry to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. U.S. E.P.A. Office of Research and Development. EPA 620/R-03/001.
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.
Links to additional project information:
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.
Key references:
- Kahl, J. S., S. A. Norton, C. S. Cronan, I. J. Fernandez, L. C. Bacon, and T. A. Haines. 1991. Maine, in Acidic Deposition and Aquatic Ecosystems: Regional Case Studies. Editor D. F. Charles, 203-41.
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:
- Kahl, J. S., S. A. Norton, C. S. Cronan, I. J. Fernandez, L. C. Bacon, and T. A. Haines. 1991. Maine, in Acidic Deposition and Aquatic Ecosystems: Regional Case Studies. Editor D. F. Charles, 203-41.
- Kahl, J. S., T. A. Haines, S. A. Norton, and R. B. Davis. 1993. Recent trends in the acid-base status of surface waters in Maine, U.S.A. Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 67: 281-300.
- Stoddard, J. L., D. S. Jeffries, A. Lukewille, T. A. Clair, P. J. Dillon, C. T. Driscoll, M. Forsius, M. Johannessen, J. S. Kahl, J. H. Kellogg, A. Kemp, J. Mannio, D. Monteith, P. S. Murdoch, S. Patrick, A. Rebsdorf, B. L. Skjelkvale, M. P. Stainton, T. Traaen, H. van Dam, K. E. Webster, J. Wieting, and A. Wilander. 1999. Regional trends in aquatic recovery from acidification in North America and Europe. Nature 401: 575-78.
- Stoddard, J.L., J.S. Kahl, F.A. Deviney, D.R. DeWalle, C.T. Driscoll, A.T. Herlihy, J.H. Kellogg, P.S. Murdoch, and J.R. Webb. 2003. Response of Surface Water Chemistry to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. U.S. E.P.A. Office of Research and Development. EPA 620/R-03/001
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