Acadia National Park - SERC - Research Opportunities (U.S. National Park Service)

NPS/John Kelly

One of the most important roles of the Schoodic Education and Research Center is to expand the scope and effectiveness of research within Acadia National Park and the National Park Service system. Acadia has an extensive history of natural and cultural resource research and currently supports an active and multidisciplinary program.

The National Park Service offers a variety of research support opportunities, including grant funding; reduced-cost housing and work space on an availability basis; and access to an extensive natural resource library, along with an on-line annotated natural resource bibliography, covering over 80 years of research efforts in Acadia National Park. For more information about research in the park, including an exciting new research fellowship program, visit the links below.

Research Activity | Info for Researchers | Acadia Research Fellowships | BioBlitz | Research Catalog

Information for Researchers
Research Guidelines are available for potential investigators who wish to conduct research at Acadia National Park.

Acadia National Park Research Activity
View current research activity in the park.

Information about Past Science Activities at Acadia National Park: Search an online annotated bibliography of park-related natural resource, social science, and cultural history journal articles, reports, and other materials. The Gulf of Maine KnowledgeBase provides easy access to information about the Gulf of Maine and its watershed in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, including Acadia National Park. The KnowledgeBase is a directory of technical reports, journal articles, fact sheets, maps, websites, and other information sources for science, policy, education, and management.

Acadia Research Fellowship Grants
To facilitate and encourage scientific research in Acadia National Park, two research fellowship programs are offered in 2009:

The L.L.Bean Acadia Research Fellowship: L.L.Bean, Inc., has generously donated $25,000 to support field research at any location within Acadia National Park in the physical, biological, ecological, social, and cultural sciences. Grants of up to $5,000 each will be awarded to proposals that address the park’s significant natural and/or cultural resources, the experiences of visitors and local residents who use the park, and the peoples who have lived in the Acadia region.

The Schoodic Research Fellowship: Acadia Partners for Science and Learning has generously donated $10,000 to support field research at the Schoodic section of Acadia National Park in the physical, biological, ecological, social, and cultural sciences. The intent of this fellowship is to expand the number of funded research projects being conducted on the Schoodic Peninsula and to bring more scientists to the Schoodic Education and Research Center campus. Grants of up to $5,000 each will be awarded.

Both fellowship programs are open to undergraduate and graduate students, college and university faculty, state and federal agency scientists, private-sector research professionals, and others with appropriate backgrounds and credentials.

This year's grant proposals are due by February 15, 2009. Information about the 2009 fellowship programs can be downloaded below.

Application

Guidelines and Instructions (pdf - 681kb)
Cover Sheet (rtf format)

For additional information, please contact David Manski via e-mail or at 207-288-8720 for additional information.

In 2008 a total of seven research fellowships, totaling $35,000, that addressed important science issues at Acadia National Park were awarded. Read more about last year's fellowships.

BioBlitz
Acadia National Park has hosted a series of BioBlitzes to help document some of the lesser-known taxonomic groups within the park. Learn more about BioBlitzes in the park.

Acadia National Park Research Opportunities Catalog
Acadia National Park has been the focus of many different research projects that have taught us a great deal about the park's natural and cultural resources. But what information is missing? What other questions should we be asking? Park staff is undertaking an effort beginning in spring 2006 to establish a Research Opportunities Catalog that will identify gaps in data to help guide future research efforts and highlight the unique research opportunities Acadia National Park has to offer investigators.

As a kickoff to the Research Opportunities Catalog project, SERC organized and hosted a series of five day-long scoping workshops in March, which brought together more than 50 invited subject matter experts from academia, conservation groups, NPS, and other state and federal agencies. These experts were asked to address a number of questions about current research efforts and needs in Acadia and the region, emerging issues Acadia should be preparing for, and research opportunities Acadia offers the scientific community.

For further information about the Research Opportunities Catalog or the workshops, including detailed workshop notes, visit the Acadia Partners website.

Want to learn more about the park's natural resources?
Read a new blog (Field Notes: Observations on Science and Nature in Northeastern National Parks) to see what's happening in Acadia and other parks in the Northeast. Researchers, interns, partners, and park staff contribute to the blog with details of their time in the field.