Acadia Surveys an Area Four Times the Size of Jordan Pond for Invasive Plants in 2022

Staff monitor an experimental garden bed. The white structures are temperature and moisture sensors.

In 2022, the Invasive Plant Management Team (IPMT):

• surveyed more than 780 acres in Acadia National Park, covering forested and wetland area on Mount Desert Island, the Schoodic Peninsula, Isle au Haut, and five other islands managed by National Park Service (NPS).

• treated 1.82 infested acres in total, visiting 76 field sites over the course of the 2022 season. Of the 25 species targeted, glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus) accounted for about 75 percent of the total treatment.

• contributed a total of 1,097 work hours to these treatments and surveys.

The IPMT’s survey acreage covers the area of more than four Jordan Ponds or almost two Eagle Lakes. Imagining all the treated non-native invasive plants consolidated into one area, 1.82 infested acres is roughly 1.5 Sand Beach Parking Lots—or enough to cover the trail area of the 3.3-mile Jordan Pond Path.

The IPMT’s efforts continue to support Acadia’s major restoration projects. The planned restoration of Great Meadow will address hydrological disturbances as well as a decline in species diversity related to the presence of invasive plants. In 2022, the IPMT surveyed 50 acres of the 116-acre Great Meadow wetland complex, treating eight target invasive plant species. About 10 percent of the IPMT’s work hours were spent in Great Meadow, while work at this site accounted for half of all 2022 volunteer hours. This fall, the IPMT and volunteers began collecting seeds from native grass and shrub species in Great Meadow that will be grown for active restoration efforts in the wetland complex. We are working with Schoodic Institute scientists to study the effects of native plantings to suppress glossy buckthorn and other invasive plants in this area.

Continued collaboration with other work groups, volunteers, and researchers expanded the scope of the IPMT’s work in 2022. Volunteers, particularly the Wabanaki Youth in Science (WAYS) and Youth Conservation Corps (YCC), contributed more than 220 hours to invasive plant removal, plant salvage, restoration, and forest health monitoring projects. The IPMT assisted state and federal agencies in monitoring forest pests such as the emerald ash borer, southern pine beetle, and hemlock woolly adelgid. To address the recent discovery of HWA in Acadia, the IPMT mapped stands of hemlock and pruned branches along heavily used paths to prevent its spread. We also resampled 12 forest plots established in 2021 to continue monitoring the effects of carriage road washouts from a storm last year on June 9.