Changing Acadia: Wetlands

Interpreting Change Right Where It's Happening

Large cedar-frame tripod waysides are telling visitors a story about innovative management strategies underway at two prominent destinations in Acadia – the summit of Cadillac Mountain and Great Meadow wetland. This web-based product is intended to make those displays more accessible for people who have mobility, visual, and cognitive impairments. It also documents the project for virtual visitors who may never have opportunity visit Acadia in person.

• A second web product is available for the displays at the summit of Cadillac Mountain.

NPS Photo by Jay Elhard

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The background color on this panel is a medium green sampled from leaves in one of the photographs. Across the top, a horizontal photo features a young woman in a short-sleeve T-shirt with her hair rolled in a bun on the top of her head. She is wearing a black face mask. She is leaning toward a narrow, light-colored tree trunk, holding a black smartphone with both hands, focusing intently on a brown shelf mushroom growing off the side of the tree. A caption reads, "Bio Blitz volunteer, August 2020. Photo by Emily Moses, Friends of Acadia."

There is a second vertical photograph on the left side of the panel that features shrubbery with green leaves and a yellow butterfly at the center. A caption reads, "Photo courtesy of visitor Trish Davis-Gray. Used with permission."

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ACADIA IS CHANGING FAST

Acadia’s new climate includes average temperatures that are more than 3° F warmer than they were in 1890. More precipitation falls each year, with bigger storms, more rain, and less snow than in the past. Sea level has risen by eight inches since 1950, and the ocean is warmer and more acidic.

While the landscape has always been changing, the pace of change has accelerated and uncertainty about the future has increased. Together with partners at Friends of Acadia and Schoodic Institute, we are taking action to ensure that Acadia’s beauty and vitality endures, whatever the future may hold.

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SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE

Help us monitor change, and our responses to it, by sharing your observations of plants and wildlife to iNaturalist and eBird. go.nps.gov/AcadiaData

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A black-and-white historic image serves as the primary background for this panel. A man and woman in early 20th-Century fashion stand on large flat stones placed at the edge of a small pond with cultivated vegetation growing around it. The man faces the woman wearing a gray suit, polished shoes, and a white hat with a dark, band. The woman wears a white lace dress with a high collar and long sleeves clasped around her wrists, dark shoes with heels, and a large summer hat with ribbons and floral adornments. In the bottom right corner of the panel is a small photo with a wider, uncropped version of this image that offers wider context with surrounding trees, a pathway, and a small building. A caption reads, "Sieur de Monts Spring. Courtesy of National Park Service, Acadia National Park."

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ACADIA IS CHANGING, SO ARE WE

For nearly a century, we have looked to the past for guidance on how to preserve and restore park landscapes. But now, the speed and intensity of climate change makes it impossible or undesirable to maintain conditions of the past.

We are applying a new management approach that uses the future as a guide. When facing a decision about how to protect or restore part of the park, today we consider a range of options: resist change; accept and allow change to happen; or take action to direct change toward a desired future.

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The background color of this panel is a medium brown with yellow tones sampled from highlights in a photograph of a forest scene across the top of the panel. Low-angled light of approaching sunset illuminates leaves on trees and tufts of grass along the ground. Near the left side of the frame, a white-tailed deer with majestic antlers stands alert beside a cluster of trees. A caption reads, "Copyright Alan Nyiri. Used with permission."

At the bottom left of this panel are three logos representing Friends of Acadia, the National Park Service, and the Schoodic Institute.

At the bottom right there is a small map of the immediate area with topographic lines representing the terrain, numerous labled hiking trails, the Park Loop Road and other labeled roads, as well as the labeled Great Meadow wetland. There are three red dots indicating locations for cedar tripods along hiking trails and a large green label "You Are Here."

A caption reads, "This story continues here and online." There is a QR code and a link go.nps.gov/future.


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ACTION TODAY ENSURES BEAUTY TOMORROW

In time, climate-driven changes in Acadia will be noticeable to most everyone. The forest will look different as evergreens like spruce, cedar, and fir are replaced by maple, oak, and hickory. These changes will mean more leafless trees in winter, and more new green leaves each spring. Different birds and insects will find a home here. Some changes will be gradual, others sudden. Some we can predict; others will be surprises.

Being prepared for a future climate is one way to ensure that visitors will still be able to experience and enjoy the beauty of Acadia.

NPS Photo by Jay Elhard

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Background colors of two tones of medium green on this panel were sampled from leaves in the photographs. There are three narrow vertical photographs along the entire right side of the panel. All three images feature the same vegetation crew worker wearing a green NPS ball cap, a gray long sleeved shirt and a green vest under an orange safety vest. In the top image, he is bent over inspecting a complex assortment of green plants. In the center image, he is attaching pink flagging to a tree branch. In the bottom image, he is holding in a closed fist a small bunch of small plants pulled out by the roots. A caption reads, "Photos by Ashley L. Conti, Friends of Acadia."


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ACADIA IS CHANGING, SO ARE WE

We are applying a new approach to management that considers a range of options for responding to climate change −

RESIST change by maintaining things as they were in the past.

ACCEPT change by accommodating new and different conditions.

DIRECT change by adapting management toward a future that we choose.

For example, we are working to control about 30 plant species introduced to the park. Climate change enhances the spread of these aggressive plants, decreasing overall diversity. Removing problematic species in order to preserve native habitats is a form of resisting change.

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A high contrast vertical photograph of a dense forest of tall, straight, conifer trees serves as the primary background image on this panel. The trees at the center of the frame have very few branches, the canopy to the sky is open, and there appears to be a complex carpet of deadfall branches and tree trunks piling up on the ground.


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ALLOWING CHANGE TO UNFOLD

Acadia’s forests have changed through time, and today the most common trees are cold-adapted species like spruce, fir, cedar, and paper birch. These trees are not expected to thrive in a warmer future, and in some cases we have decided to accept change. For example, the red pine scale, an invasive insect, killed all of the red pines in the park within a few years, a change too rapid and severe to resist.

What changes to Acadia’s landscape would you accept?

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SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE

Help us monitor change, and our responses to it, by sharing your observations of plants and wildlife to iNaturalist and eBird. go.nps.gov/AcadiaData

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The background color of this panel is a soft orange with brown tones sampled from highlights in the soil and wood chips in a large photograph featured across the top. Two men wearing faded denim jeans and yellow florescent safety vests are planting a large tree. One man on the left stands holding the handle of a spade that rests in broken soil at the edge of a hole. A second man on the right is wrestling a narrow tree trunk that leans sharply from a large burlap-wrapped root ball in the bottom left of the frame to upper tree branches that extend well above and beyond his head and out of the image frame in the upper right corner.

At the bottom left of this panel are three logos representing Friends of Acadia, the National Park Service, and the Schoodic Institute.

At the bottom right there is a small map of the immediate area with topographic lines representing the terrain, numerous labeled hiking trails, the Park Loop Road and other labeled roads, as well as the labeled Great Meadow wetland. There are three red dots indicating locations for cedar tripods along hiking trails and a large green label "You Are Here."

A caption reads, "This story continues here and online." There is a QR code and a link go.nps.gov/future.


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DECIDING OUR DESIRED FUTURE TOGETHER
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Acadia’s forests will likely shift from boreal trees like spruce and fir toward trees that grow better in a warmer climate, such as oak and hickory. The transition may not be smooth, as the climate is changing faster than tree species can migrate, and much stands in their way. Park staff and partners Friends of Acadia and Schoodic Institute are experimenting with planting native but more warm-adapted trees that could make up Acadia’s forest in a future climate.

Deciding to keep Acadia’s forest as forest is a form of directing change.

NPS Photo by Jay Elhard

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The primary background color of this panel was sampled from an assortment of medium green tones on a large, detailed map in the lower left corner. This map has contour hill shading offering a glimpse of the terrain and steep elevation changes in the area. A variety of elements are labeled, from hiking trails, roads, parking areas to tiny building structures. Considerable emphasis is offered for details within the Cromwell Brook watershed through the Great Meadow wetland, with locations noted for ditching, peat removal, former roadbeds and numerous scours. A brown label "You Are Here" indicates the location of this cedar tripod at the intersection of two long hiking trails.

In the bottom right corner of the panel is a landscape photograph of a winter forest scene with long shadows. The surface is sheer white ice punctuated by the trunks of mature trees. There are trace outlines of a submerged and frozen wooden boardwalk with posts poking up through the surface. A well-worn path where hikers have traveled along the route indicate clearly where the boardwalk normally should be. A caption reads, "The Jesup Path, flooded and frozen in winter 2023. Photo by Julia Walker Thomas, Friends of Acadia."


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HISTORY BEHIND THE BEAUTY

You are in the Great Meadow, one of the largest wetlands in Acadia. The beauty here can be deceiving. Great Meadow doesn’t have the function or diversity of a healthy wetland. Historic logging, road construction, and introduced plants have altered the flow of water from the Tarn through the meadow and into Cromwell Harbor.

We are working to address flooding and other impacts of past activities, while appreciating the beauty that exists.

How does knowing the history of a place change your perception of it?

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The primary background color for this panel is a deep green sampled from a photo of Glossy buckthorn leaves in the upper right corner. Near the middle of the panel along the right side there is a vertical image of a serpentine stretch of open water through a saturated wetland with bright green surface vegetation along the edges and a beaver lodge near the center. A caption reads, "Photos by Ashley L. Conti, Friends of Acadia."


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ACADIA IS CHANGING, SO ARE WE

Warmer temperatures and more frequent and intense storms are amplifying the impacts of historic alterations to the Great Meadow wetland.

With our partners, we are taking action with climate change in mind by −

• continuing to prevent the spread of invasive plants
• enlarging a culvert under the Park Loop Road, and
• removing other obstructions to improve water flow and reduce flooding.

Our goal is a wetland with a greater diversity of native plants and wildlife, improved water flow, and greater resilience to extreme weather.

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The primary background color for this panel is a deep brown sampled from highlights in tree bark in a large horizontal photograph across the center with an extreme close-up of a bird's head, open beak, and eyes emerging from a hole in the wood. A caption reads, "Photo courtesy of visitor Alex Rubenstein. Used with permission."

At the bottom left of this panel are three logos representing Friends of Acadia, the National Park Service, and the Schoodic Institute.

At the bottom right there is a small map of the immediate area with topographic lines representing the terrain, numerous labeled hiking trails, the Park Loop Road and other labeled roads, as well as the labeled Great Meadow Wetland. There are three red dots indicating locations for cedar tripods along hiking trails and a large green label "You Are Here."

A caption reads, "This story continues here and online." There is a QR code and link go.nps.gov/future.


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MONITORING A WETLAND'S RETURN

Schoodic Institute scientists, students, and volunteers are helping to monitor change in the Great Meadow wetland. To date, hundreds of people
have documented more than 600 species of plant, animal, and fungi in the area.

These data will inform our management actions, while also showing how the Great Meadow wetland is responding to climate change.

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SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE

Help us monitor change, and our responses to it, by sharing your observations of plants and wildlife to iNaturalist and eBird. go.nps.gov/AcadiaData

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About This Project

In early 2022, a group of researchers and communicators at Acadia National Park, Schoodic Institute, and Friends of Acadia began collaborating on temporary displays to highlight innovative management strategies underway at two prominent park locations – the summit of Cadillac Mountain and the Great Meadow wetland. This web-based product is intended to make those displays more accessible for people who have mobility, visual, and cognitive impairments. It also documents the project for virtual visitors who may never have opportunity to visit Acadia in person.

• A second web product is available for the displays at the summit of Cadillac Mountain.

All told, nine cedar tripods were created to display content at strategic locations across the two project sites. A total of 18 different panels with original content, each 19 x 32-inches, were designed for six cedar tripods, three each for the two destinations. Later, three additional tripods were deployed with nine duplicate panels to broaden the reach of the project.

The cedar post building material was donated as scrap from a local log yard. The tripod framework is based on smaller traditional structures built by the park trail crew for signs at locations above the treeline known for high winds and extreme conditions.

Project authors included Catherine Schmitt, Jesse Wheeler, Emma Lanning, Stephanie Ley, Brian Henkel, Abe Miller-Rushing, and Tim Watkins. Jay Elhard was the project manager, designer, and carpenter.