
Students from four high schools in central and Downeast Maine have been conducting research on mercury and nitrogen in local watersheds and will be presenting their findings at a poster session at Husson University’s G. Peirce Webber Student Center on Monday, May 20, 2013 at 9:00 a.m. The students will be presenting their research, which is part of a broader program that covers northern New England, for an audience of scientists, resource managers, parents, and the public. For the past four years, the Schoodic Education and Research Center (SERC) Institute at Acadia National Park, the University of Maine’s Mitchell Center, School of Forest Resources, and Climate Change Institute, Maine Sea Grant, and Dartmouth College, have collaborated with teachers in “Acadia Learning”, a program that brings scientists, teachers, and students together in partnerships that result in useful research and effective science education.
Over 200 students and their science teachers from Bangor, John Bapst, Old Town, and Sumner Memorial high schools worked on the watershed-based research projects. Students work through research questions at research sites on or near school grounds. For the Mercury in Watersheds project, students collected and identified dozens of aquatic invertebrates. Teachers and students engaged in the Nitrogen Cycling in Watersheds collected water samples through the winter and early spring, along with measurements of snow and soils. They sent their samples to the Sawyer Environmental Chemistry Research Laboratory at the University of Maine, where they were analyzed for mercury or nitrogen content, respectively. The students then used the data to investigate their own research questions about how mercury accumulates in food chains in local streams, or how changing seasonal patterns in snowmelt or streamflow might affect nitrogen (a key nutrient for plants and forests) availability in springtime.
The data provide valuable insight into new lines of research that collaborating scientists are working to develop. Nitrogen data from student research provide a small-scale reference set of data to the 26-year old nitrogen cycling project at the Bear Brook Watershed in Maine, which is directed by UMaine professor Dr. Ivan Fernandez. Student-collected mercury data become part of a regional database coordinated by UMaine scientist, Dr. Sarah Nelson, adding to the picture of mercury in freshwaters across the Northeast. [Note: see https://umainetoday.umaine.edu/past-issues/spring-2013/sentinel-species/ for more details about the mercury project.]
Dr. Abraham Miller-Rushing, Scientist Coordinator for Acadia National Park, will give a brief introductory talk on Monday morning about the role of citizen scientists in helping to investigate large-scale ecosystem questions. The student researchers will then be available to discuss their research and answer questions as they share their posters. The poster session will end at 11:00 a.m.
Acadia Learning is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Maine Department of Education, the University of Maine, private donors, and the Davis Foundation.
http://participatoryscience.org/
Contact: Hannah Webber, hannah@secinstitute.org, 207-801-1148