Sea to Trees

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Sea to Trees tells the stories of the science happening in and around Acadia, from the rocky shoreline to the evergreen forests to the granite mountaintops. In Season Four, we’re getting up close and personal with three areas in Acadia: freshwater wetlands, granite-topped mountain summits, and boreal forests.

Sea to Trees is generously sponsored by the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellowship, a partnership among Schoodic Institute, National Park Foundation, and the National Park Service.

Tags: acadia, maine, citizen science, nature, science, schoodic institute, research learning center, podcast, podcasts, audio, science communication, national park foundation

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Season 5

October 28, 2026

1. Season 5 | Audio Footprints

Transcript

[00:00:00] Tiegan Paulson: When I was in high school, I saw a video of a flying fox eating a banana. His eyes were so big, and his mouth was so full, and really it was just an excellent example of charismatic megafauna. The term flying fox refers to at least sixty-eight species of the genus Pteropus, large fruit bats living in Oceania, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. From banana eating onward, I was a bat fan. My name is Tiegan Paulson. You're listening to Seed to Trees, a podcast about science happening in and around Acadia National Park. I was somewhat predisposed to like bats. My mother is a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which means she works on recovery plans for animals protected by the Endangered Species Act. If Mom mentioned an animal at the dinner table, it usually meant it was in some trouble. And back in the early 2010s, bats were in some trouble. [00:01:00] News Anchor: The bats had white-nose syndrome, a lethal fungus first spotted in the US in 2006. (Music) [00:01:07] Tiegan Paulson: Bats, you might have heard, are having a bit of a rough time. In 2006, a disease called white-nose syndrome started killing entire colonies of bats in upstate New York. It spread quickly, reaching caves on the West Coast within ten years of its arrival in the United States. Scientists and parts of the government jumped into action. When I asked Mom about it this summer, she put me in touch with one of her longtime colleagues.And if you've ever met one of your parents' friends without your parents around... I couldn't just ask about bats. [00:01:42] Jill Utrup: Oh, your mom is awesome. So, sorry, I can't really give you any- [00:01:45] Tiegan Paulson: She pay you to say that? [00:01:46] Jill Utrup: -any good dirt. No. No, she didn't. She didn't, Tiegan. No, she is pretty amazing. [00:01:54] Tiegan Paulson: This is Jill Utrup, also with the Endangered Species program. Jill is the northern long-eared bat expert at US Fish & Wildlife. [00:02:02] Jill Utrup: My background is more in grassland birds and bugs... invertebrates. [00:02:07] Tiegan Paulson: But you don't get to be picky when it comes to endangered species. A lot of biologists with the Endangered Species Program are kind of like representative experts in particular species. Her first assignment from her boss was a type of giant salamander. [00:02:20] Jill Utrup: He's like, "Ah, you'll do great." [00:02:21] Tiegan Paulson: Then, because white-nose syndrome was quickly becoming a major problem, she was reassigned to Myotis septentrionalis. The northern long-eared bat. [00:02:30] Jill Utrup: There's a couple of other bat species, like little brown bat and tricolored bat, that have really been impacted as well. But northerns seem to be impacted especially, just because—likely because of their biology. [00:02:43] Tiegan Paulson: White-nose syndrome is caused by a fungus which grows on bats while they hibernate. It kind of burrows into their skin, causing damage and waking them up. And northern long-eared bats- [00:02:53] Jill Utrup: During the winter they're typically found in, oh, more humid areas and areas deeper in these caves or mines where the fungus really, really thrives. [00:03:05] Tiegan Paulson: It appears white on the bats, particularly around the nose. Thus, 'white-nose' syndrome. White-nose doesn't directly kill the bats so much as it disturbs their hibernation. They keep waking up, probably rubbing their noses, and that uses energy. On average, bats with white-nose syndrome wake up twice as often as bats without, and all that activity spends fat reserves that many of them just don't have. [00:03:28] Jill Utrup: Even pre white-nose, we never really found northerns in high numbers, mainly because they're very cryptic. They don't make it easy on us like some of our other bat species, where you can go in a cave and you find them in these big clusters all huddled together, whereas northerns—they'll be individually, usually, found in these little nooks and crannies. They've never been really easy to monitor. [00:03:49] Tiegan Paulson: The fact is, the map is pretty vague when it comes to our understanding of where different species of bat are living. Most of our data comes from surveys. Researchers can physically capture bats using these big bird banding nets. That lets them take a closer look, take some hair samples and such, check for scars left by white-nose syndrome. But it's pretty labor intensive. Then there's this other method: acoustic monitoring. [00:04:15] Molly Donlan: We're going to go off-trail a little bit here. [00:04:18] Tiegan Paulson: Molly Donlan, very carefully avoiding lichens and roots as we step off of Gorham Mountain Trail here in Acadia. She's a wildlife biologist at Schoodic Institute, the same place that I work, but Molly spends most of her time over at park headquarters on Mount Desert Island. [00:04:36] Molly Donlan: Ah... there it is. [00:04:36] Tiegan (in the field): Oh, there it is. [00:04:37] Molly Donlan: There it is, yeah. [00:04:39] Tiegan Paulson: Molly uses listening devices to record the echolocation pings bats make when they're flying. [00:04:45] Molly Donlan: We have the ultrasonic microphone, which is tied onto a metal pole. The actual detector itself is in that ammo can down there, just to give it some additional weatherproofing. [00:04:56] Tiegan Paulson: If the microphone is like the ears, the detector is like the brain, which is deciding what is important to listen to and record. [00:05:03] Tiegan (in the field): How long do you typically try and have them out for? [00:05:07] Molly Donlan: About two weeks. [00:05:33] Tiegan Paulson: Basically, they need to be confident that bats in the area had time to actually fly by the microphone. Molly has dozens of sites across the park filling a grid of monitoring zones. They need to try and find a place within those zones where bats might actually be. That's spots they like to hunt, or these kind of commuter routes. Bats like to fly over small streams and carriage roads because the canopy conceals them from predators like owls and falcons. [00:05:39] Molly Donlan: Not all of our sites are actually good sites for bats because we're trying to evenly sample. There are some great sites and there are some not so good ones. That's just how it is. [00:05:51] Tiegan Paulson: We pack up, grab the memory card, and we are off to redeploy the equipment at a new site. The goal for the day is to set the equipment with new memory cards, then bring the old cards with all the recordings back to the office where the magic happens. Bats have echolocation calls that are unique to their species. But given humans can't usually hear their calls—they're too high-pitched—we need some help. Molly uses a graph called a spectrogram to make a visual depiction of the sounds. A spectrogram shows the pitch, or frequency, of a sound over time. Molly can look at the swoosh and know if it's a little brown bat swoosh, or a northern long-eared swoosh, or any other batty swoosh. [00:06:36] Molly Donlan: Yeah. I mean I think it's pretty amazing that we can take these files back to the office and I can be like, "Oh yeah, that looks like an eastern small-footed bat because the spectrogram is this shape." [00:06:51] Tiegan Paulson: We have all these tools for identifying animals by their physical shapes. Their feet have particular patterns, or their snout is a certain size. These spectrograms are kind of like bats' audio footprints. [00:07:04] Molly Donlan: Here, let's see if we can... I'll play you the sound on here. [00:07:11] Tiegan Paulson: Remember how we can't hear them? Eh, well, kinda. We can't hear them normally, but the sound still exists. We just need to make it lower. If you've ever listened to the sound on a slow motion video, you probably noticed the voices were a lot lower than usual. This happens because slowing down a sound stretches out its waves, and longer waves create lower tones. Molly's got a great tool for this. She can just click a button. She'll play the regular sound first, which is pretty hard to hear, and then the slow motion version. [00:07:44] Molly Donlan: Here's the real sound. (pipping, with static in the background) [00:07:52] Molly Donlan: And then time expanded. (Pinging sound) [00:08:04] Tiegan Paulson: Whoa. That's crazy. [00:08:07] Molly Donlan: Yeah. [00:08:11] Tiegan Paulson: What might you hear if you lived in slow motion? (chorus of pinging sounds, overlapping with each other. Most fade except a single, repeating peep of a little brown bat.) [00:09:25] Tiegan Paulson: Here's the thing: acoustic monitoring, great way to keep track of bats from afar. Tons of data about species presence. The Park Service is using it to map out where different species are living inside of Acadia. They also share their data with this continent-wide acoustic data project, the North American Bat Monitoring Program. But there are some pretty significant limitations to this method. First, there are a few species which sound too similar to distinguish, like little brown bats and Indiana bats. The calls look the same. And second, you're really only getting species presence. You might have fifteen recordings of Myotis lucifugus, the little brown bat, but it could just be the same bat circling the area over and over, so you don't know how many there are. If we want more details, and we definitely do, someone is going to be in for some long nights. [00:10:24] Tiegan (in the field): How do you—do you just lower the whole net when you get something? [00:10:27] Josh Guilbert: Yep. So this is the way the system works. [00:10:29] Tiegan Paulson: Josh Guilbert, bat biologist with BRI. The Biodiversity Research Institute. [00:10:35] Josh Guilbert: So you have these aluminum poles that are each a little over, um, five foot each, and they slot into each other with a sleeve. [00:10:41] Tiegan Paulson: Mist nets are these huge nets used for catching bats and birds. This evening we're actually about two and a half hours north of Acadia at Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. It's high summer in Maine, warm, and as of yet without wind. [00:10:56] Josh Guilbert: We're trying to keep the procedures and everything as close to what's happened in Acadia as possible so they can compare between the two sites. [00:11:04] Tiegan Paulson: They actually use acoustic monitors here, too, but for a slightly different purpose. Some bat species are better at avoiding the nets than others. So in this case, the monitors give a basic idea of what kinds of things they're missing. [00:11:17] Josh Guilbert: It depends on did you put your nets in the right place? What was the wind like? What was the moonlight? Because bats can see the nets. We're essentially looking, catching bats that aren't looking where they're going and aren't seeing the nets as they come past. [00:11:32] Tiegan Paulson: Sometimes they see the nets, but they definitely see the poles, so those need to be hidden away. [00:11:37] Josh Guilbert: Right now I wanna try to put my triple-high as far back into the forest as possible, 'cause what I think's gonna happen is they come zooming down through here. And you've got to think like a bat, so you flap your arms and come running up this way. And then if I was a bat, I'd come up through here. And if they see the pole... (ominous bass note) That's something they haven't seen before, and that may spook them. So we want to try to put the pole further out of the flight way so when they're looking ahead of themselves and echolocating, they don't sense the rig and we're more likely to catch them. [00:12:11] Tiegan Paulson: As night falls, the team gathers around the back of BRI's pickup, this bright lit hub of activity. The nets are ready to set, and we just need to wait for the last of the birds to go to sleep so we don't catch one of them. Once the nets go up, it'll be a rotation of check the nets, sit for ten minutes, check the nets again. Sit, check, sit, check, and repeat until we have to stop for the evening. The most important species to learn about right now are northern long-eared bats—which we talked about with Jill—and tri-color bats, both of which BRI is hoping to tag with radio transmitters. They can use the transmitters to find out where the bats are sleeping during the day. BRI's practice is then to do a visual exit count. [00:12:56] Josh Guilbert: The transmitter is 0.30 or 0.35 grams, which is... I'm sorry, I don't know what that is in freedom units. You'll have to look that one up. (both laughing) [00:13:06] Tiegan Paulson: Freedom units, 0.01 ounces. About the weight of an individual postage stamp. That is how much these radio transmitters weigh. But these days, northerns and tri-colors are pretty rare. Since starting with BRI in 2022, Josh has seen exactly four northern long-eared bats—the last ones in 2024. (Music) [00:13:43] Tiegan Paulson: 9:15 PM, and the nets have been up for 20 minutes. First check got nothing, but it's time for round two. The team splits up, leaving the bright light of the pickup behind. [00:13:52] Josh Guilbert: We've got one. [00:13:54] Bri Frankina: Yeah? [00:13:54] Josh Guilbert: Yep. [00:13:55] Bri Frankina: How high? [00:13:56] Josh Guilbert: At the very top. [00:13:57] Tiegan Paulson: Josh and Bri, another BRI biologist, go to the ropes controlling the net. [00:14:03] Josh Guilbert: You might have to come out every night. He is there. [00:14:07] Tiegan Paulson: The sound you're about to hear is one of the bat's social calls. [00:14:11] Tiegan (in the field): Oh, my gosh. [00:14:16] Josh Guilbert: That looks—yeah, good. Oo, is it another silver? [00:14:21] Bri Frankina: It is a silver. [00:14:22] Tiegan Paulson: Silver-haired bat, Lasionycteris noctivagans. This one is giving us a piece of his mind. [00:14:31] Bri Frankina: It's on your side. It's in the pocket, in the top pocket. [00:14:39] Tiegan Paulson: He's pretty stuck. Typically, bats are out in a couple of minutes, but 10 minutes into this extraction, everyone—researchers, bat—everyone is kind of over it. [00:14:50] Josh Guilbert: Come on. Yeah, you've got yourself, haven't you, mate? [00:14:55] Tiegan Paulson: At one point they try to cut the net with a pair of scissors. They want to be incredibly cautious. The troublesome strings are wrapped tight around the bat's wings, meaning a slip or sudden movement could hurt him. And the silver-haired, not in a particularly cooperative mood, is making a lot of sudden movements. Josh and Bree give up on the scissors. [00:15:18] Josh Guilbert: Their wings, they're way more delicate than you think, and also a little more robust than you'd expect in some cases. [00:15:24] Tiegan Paulson: And then, just like that... [00:15:25] Josh Guilbert: Got the wing. He's going to start coming out this way now. [00:15:29] Tiegan Paulson: Got him out. Josh takes the bat to the truck where they collect all the data. In a bag. They do a health screening, measure his wings, body length, weight. If it's a female, they check their pregnancy status. This is also where they take a look to see if bats have any scarring from white-nose syndrome. Silver-haired bats, however, don't hibernate in caves. They migrate south. So ours is clean. And then he's on his way, back to his insects.That's the cycle. You get some of this... [00:16:00] Josh Guilbert: You might want to drop it down a little bit further as well. [00:16:02] Tiegan Paulson: Then, this. [00:16:03] Biologist 2: That's a wing biopsy. [00:16:04] Biologist 1: And we have fecal? [00:16:06] Biologist 2: No, I... Yeah, I grabbed some fecal. [00:16:07] Tiegan Paulson: Then there's some waiting around the truck. (Conversation) [00:16:15] Tiegan Paulson: And then back to check the nets. [00:16:17] Tiegan (in the field): Here we go. All right. [00:16:20] Tiegan Paulson: And that's pretty much how the night went. We got the silver-haired and two little brown bats. But then, around midnight, the wind picked up. [00:16:29] Tiegan (in the field): Is it getting cold for them, or are they okay? [00:16:32] Josh Guilbert: It's getting a little cold. I don't know where they put out the... Ethan and Bree would've chucked out... One of them would've chucked out a Kestrel, and we'll check that temperature. [00:16:43] Tiegan Paulson: A Kestrel is a device that monitors wind and temperature. It's still over 50 degrees, but the wind is picking up. The team gathers back by the pickup. [00:16:53] Josh Guilbert: I'm not thinking we're gonna catch anything, if we do I don't want it getting strangled in the net. [00:16:57] Bri Frankina: That was my concern. [00:17:00] Josh Guilbert: So I think we call it here. [00:17:03] Biologist 1: Okay. [00:17:03] Josh Guilbert: Because it doesn't seem to be... if we fill the nets and get ready to leave, and then it goes calm all of a sudden, we can always drop them back down again. But I'm not thinking that's going to happen. So let's- [00:17:15] Bri Frankina: All right. [00:17:16] Biologist 1: Okay. Furl and raise? [00:17:17] Josh Guilbert: Furl and raise. [00:17:20] Tiegan Paulson: Time to pack it up. But then, as people return from the nets... [00:17:24] Biologist 1: They got the one. And then we got one at the far one. And then we have the harp trap bat. [00:17:29] Biologist 2: And they've been all little browns? [00:17:31] Josh Guilbert: Yeah. [00:17:32] Tiegan Paulson: Three more little brown bats. The team dutifully takes down the data as the clock ticks toward 1:00 AM. [00:17:42] Biologist 1: AIl good with that one? [00:17:43] Josh Guilbert: I'm just double checking with Bri it's ready to go. [00:17:45] Bri Frankina: Yep, it's all good. [00:17:46] Josh Guilbert: Okay. [00:17:54] Tiegan (in the field): It is... Thursday, July 23rd, 2026 at 12:31. We have—well, they are processing the sixth bat now. It's actually calmed down a little bit, but I think we might be done anyway. And honestly—honestly, I'm okay with that. I am exhausted. They do this every night. Holy moly. All right. Back to it. [00:18:54] Tiegan Paulson: BRI didn't catch any northern long-eared bats this year. At least, not at Katahdin Woods and Waters. Nor did many show up on the acoustic monitors. That said, tricolor bats—the other species BRI wanted to tag—they were all over the recordings. So far as white-nose syndrome goes, we caught five little brown bats the night I joined them, and none had any significant scarring from the fungus. Back in Acadia, Molly Donlin and her crew had even more success. When they did their live captures, they got a northern long-eared bat. Overall, each group's results from this year are moderately positive. [00:19:33] Jill Utrup: What I think is really encouraging about some of this surveying and monitoring that we're doing for Northern... [00:19:39] Tiegan Paulson: Jill Utrip again, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. [00:19:42] Jill Utrup: ...is it's not only helpful for our knowledge about that species—its presence and absence, right—but also we're learning, like when we're collecting acoustic data and when we're doing netting as well, we're learning about the other bat species that are using an area. It can hopefully help us to keep a pulse on the status of these other species as well. (Music) [00:20:06] Tiegan Paulson: Hibernating bats of all kinds were hammered by white-nose syndrome. But with some species maybe, maybe beginning to recover, perhaps others—like northern long-eared bats—will, too. The only way we'll know is if we keep listening to the bats. Sometimes, of course, with our eyes. This episode of Sea to Trees was written and produced by me, Tiegan Paulson. It was edited by Catherine Schmitt with additional help from Grace Upham and Sarah Luchini. The cover art was created by Sarah Luchini. Sea to Trees is a podcast by Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park, covering stories of science in and around Acadia. Schoodic Institute is a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, inspiring science, learning, and community for a changing world. Thank you to Jill Utrup, Molly Donlan, Josh Guilbert, Bri Frankina, and all of the others who paused their work to answer questions. Music for this episode is by BlueDot Sessions. Our bat sounds are from Bat Conservation International. You can check them out individually at batcon.org. Acadia National Park and Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument sit on traditional lands of the Wabanaki, People of the Dawn. Sea to Trees is made possible by the generous support of the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early Career Fellowship, the National Park Foundation, National Park Service, and Schoodic Institute. You can find Sea to Trees wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back next month with stories about the future forests of Acadia, but in the meantime, go check out a fruit bat eating a banana. You won't be disappointed.

Bats of all kinds in northern North America have been struggling with white-nose syndrome for two decades, now. Researchers in Acadia National Park and Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument are doing their best to track the situation, and they’re using nets and microphones to do it. In this episode we get up close and personal with bats and the sounds they make, including their unique echolocation calls—their ‘audio footprints’, if you will. Never heard a bat echolocate before? You’re in for a treat.

Episode Tags: acadia, acadia national park, maine, citizen science, nature, science, schoodic institute, research learning center, podcast, podcasts, audio, science communication, national park foundation

Season 5 Trailer

Season Five Trailer: Sea to Trees

Transcript

Tiegan Paulson (Host): [Music] Sea the Trees season five is just around the corner. My name is Tiegan Paulson, and for this latest installment in the Schoodic Institute's podcast, we bring you bats, red spruce trees, coastal history, and their uncertain futures. Also, one of my mother's coworkers. [Music fades]

Jill Utrup: So, sorry, I can't really give you any...

Tiegan Paulson: She pay you to say that?

Jill Utrup: ...any good dirt. No, no. She didn't. She didn't, Tiegan. No, she is, she is- [fades, music returns]

Tiegan Paulson (Host): We're headed all the way up to Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.

[In the field] Oh my gosh...

Josh Guilbert: That looks, yeah, good.

Tiegan Paulson (Host): Bats! And also, what the sounds they make look like. [Music stops]

Molly Donlan: I mean I think it's pretty amazing that we can take these files back to the office and I can be like, "Oh, yeah, that looks like an eastern small-footed bat because the spectrogram is this shape." [Music returns]

Tiegan Paulson (Host): We'll look at forests and how we manage them with the help of a Second Century Stewardship fellow, a park manager at Acadia, and Schoodic Institute's very own Nicholas Fisichelli.

Nicholas Fisichelli: I think you're underselling it. It's very controversial. And it should be. It's something very different at this point.

Tiegan Paulson (Host): New realities might require new solutions. In episode three, people have been living on these shores for thousands of years. Two thousand shell mounds contain cultural materials from their day-to-day lives, and though they are mostly hidden under the soil, an Acadia science fellow has a plan to measure their extent without having to dig any of them up. [Music fades]

Deirdre McGrath: It's never been used on shell heaps before, but it's been used on similar accumulated areas in other parts of the world.

Drone Pilot: Clear. [Drone whirs, sound moving up and away]

Tiegan Paulson (Host): Ah, yeah. It's time for some drones all that and more on season five of Seed to Trees, coming soon wherever you get your podcasts. [Drone sound fades]

Season five of Sea to Trees is just around the corner, and we have an excellent cast of characters. We have appearances from no less than three Acadia Science Fellows, Schoodic Institute’s own Nick Fisichelli, and… my mother’s coworker? She’s actually a great help. Tune in this winter for episodes covering endangered bats, spruce trees, and the history hidden under Acadia’s shorelines.

Episode Tags: acadia, maine, citizen science, nature, science, schoodic institute, research learning center, podcast, podcasts, audio, science communication, national park foundation

Season 4

February 18, 2026

3. Place-based Science | The Coastal Spruce Fir Forest

Transcript

Episode 2: Place-based Science

The Coastal Spruce-Fir Forest

Narration: If you stepped into the spruce-fir forests of Acadia National Park early last summer, these are some of the bird songs you might be greeted with.

*Golden Crowned Kinglet, Dark Eyed Junko, Black Throated Green Warbler, Winter Wren and Red Breasted Nuthatch songs play*

Black Throated Green Warblers are small boisterous birds that are one of the most common summer residents of the coastal spruce fir forest. *Black Throated Green song plays again*

While the current soundscape of Acadia may seem normal to us, it is pretty different from even sixty-six years ago. It may even be quieter than it used to be, but most of us might not realize that when we step into the forest. Sixty-six years ago in 1959, you might have heard a completely different song.

*bird songs start playing*

You probably would have heard three times as many black throated green warblers.

*Black Throated Green songs play*

Some birds weren’t even detected in 2025 that you might have heard back in 1959 like the Bay Breasted Warbler.

*Bay Breasted Warbler song plays*

Others, like the yellow rumped warbler, noticeably declined.

*Yellow Rumped Warbler song plays* Our sense of what a forest in Acadia sounds like is based on our present experiences. In reality, we may be experiencing something called shifting baseline syndrome. A shifting baseline is a gradual change in what we accept as normal for the environment. These changes happen slowly and usually over generations so they are imperceptible to most people. But this change doesn’t go unnoticed by everyone, especially ecologists who devote their lives to studying trends and asking questions.

*music starts*

Welcome to Sea to Trees. My name is Julia Rush. Today we’re traveling through time to understand how coastal spruce fir forests in Acadia have changed over the past sixty-six years. In 1959 a PhD student named Ron Davis recognized a gap in literature on coastal spruce fir forests in Maine and conducted surveys of different locations to characterize these under-studied ecosystems. Today, researchers at Schoodic Institute and the University of Maine are revisiting Ron’s surveys to try to uncover the story of the coastal spruce fir forest and understand the future of these ecosystems in the face of climate change.

{Gillian Audier}: So I'm recreating surveys that were done by a researcher in 1959 named Dr. Ron Davis.

Gillian Audier is this year's Gero Fellow in Science Research at Schoodic Institute. She spent this summer retracing Ron Davis’ steps on Mount Desert Island to resurvey bird populations in coastal spruce fir forests.

{Gillian A}: He went to a bunch of different locations around MDI and just downeast Maine in general, to study lots of things, including bird populations.

She took me to one of the inventory sites in Blackwoods Forest on Mount Desert Island this summer to show me how she conducted surveys of the forest’s bird population. This site is just off of the Park Loop Road in Acadia National Park and about a two minute walk through the woods.

{Gillian A}: Once you get off the road, there's, like, just a really thick area of deciduous trees, and you kind of have to crash through and like it's really crowded, but then once you get through, it's like just a whole different biome, and it's so quiet right there, even though the roads here.

As we reached the survey site we were surrounded by bright green moss blanketing the forest floor. The moss was soft under our feet making each footfall nearly silent and almost acted like soundproofing, softening the noises of the forest. Tall, straight, grey-barked trees watched over us as they swayed gently with the ocean breeze. We could hear far-off lobster boats chugging as they worked and the buoy bell clanging in the bay. Gillian ventured here three times throughout June and July to collect her data.

{Gillian A}: So there's five different locations. This is one of them, Blackwoods, and at each location we have five to six different flags, which are each about 150 meters apart. And I just go to each of these flags, and I wait a little bit so the birds get used to my presence, and then I spend the next five minutes trying to be as quiet as possible and not moving around or making too much noise, and I just record every bird that you hear or see.

A point count survey is a research method used in ornithology, the study of birds, to sample a population. The flags marking each point count location are spaced out from each other to avoid repeat birds while sampling a larger area of the forest.

{Gillian A}: And then you hike to the next one, and you do it at each of the sites, and it all has to get done before nine AM because because, well, that's when Ron Davis stopped it. I'm trying to replicate it as closely as he was. But also, even, like, by like, eight, a lot of the bird activity has died down. It's pretty surprising how quickly they they start to, like, become less active in the day.

She had to get an early start to reach Mount Desert Island by sunrise from Schoodic, but was usually greeted by familiar voices.

{Gillian A}: I would usually leave at like four thirty AM and by the time I got here would be like five thirty to six, so pretty early it would be like the first couple sites were definitely louder, but it was always the same, like ten to fifteen birds.

While we were in Blackwoods we sat and listened and, even though it was much later in the day, we heard some of those songs.

{Gillian A}: Right now we're listening to Golden crowned kinglets, which is that, like, squeaky, high pitched one, and then that loud, kind of, like car alarm one, that's the red breasted Nuthatch. And those two guys you just, like, constantly hear, they never stop talking.

*Red Breasted Nuthatch sings*

{Gillian A}: That's the Nuthatch.

When it came time to evaluate her data, Gillian found that Ron heard more birds overall back in 1959 than she did in 2025. There were some species Gillian didn’t detect at all that Ron heard and recorded. Conducting a resurvey of existing datasets like this is one way ecologists attempt to identify shifting baselines. In this case they were looking to evaluate changes in bird populations and were able to determine a decline in birds. But you have to have an older dataset to compare your data to in order to detect those changes.

{Gillian A}: And it's pretty unique to have a data set to recreate from like, such a long time ago. So that's that's pretty valuable to have data from, you know, six decades ago. That's not the most common thing, and to be able to go to like those exact locations again.

In terms of natural history, sixty-six years is a pretty short amount of time considering the Earth has existed for billions of years. But sixty-six years is a long time ago for us. In 1959 Dwight D. Eisenhower was the president of the United States, the first ever Barbie doll was put on display at the American Toy Fair, and the Sound of Music debuted on Broadway. The world of ecology was pretty different too which presents some challenges for anyone resurveying Ron’s original study.

{Camilla Seirup}: Dr. Davis published in his thesis these little hand drawn maps of the sites. They're very professionally done, but he didn't have access to GIS information at the time. So he hand drew his site maps.

Camilla Seirup is a biologist for the Northeast Temperate Network which is part of the Inventory and Monitoring division of the National Park Service. In the summers of 2020, 2021, and 2022, as a graduate student at the University of Maine, Camilla resurveyed trees and soil at the sites Ron established in 1959. Today, ecologists use GIS, or Geographic Information Systems, to track their data collection and mark their research sites. But without access to that technology, Ron had to work analog.

*music starts*

{Camilla S}: One site in particular that was quite a challenge was the Beech mountain site. The calculated GPS location put us on this slope with very little spruce, and it didn't match the description, there was a lot of white pine and cedar. And, you know, it's been sixty years, maybe things had changed, but on his little hand drawn map, he had a boulder pointed out on it, which felt pretty permanent, and also, if it was obvious enough or prominent enough to be on this map, we figured we should be able to find it. I decided we should go back out in the field, take a closer look around, or really widen our search area. And we found it. We found the boulder, and there's this perfect strip of spruce that, I mean, I think that we located that site down to the meter. It was really amazing. So that was a challenging, but a really fun part of the project, just trying to figure out where he'd been.

Once she found all of the inventory sites, Camilla conducted her own resurvey. Her aim was to look at changes in forest structure in these coastal spruce sites. Because Ron didn’t just survey the birds in his initial sample, he took a wide inventory of the forest. Along with bird populations he sampled insects, small mammals, soil, and trees.

{Camilla S}: His work was this landmark study. He was the first one to delineate this coastal spruce population. And what's notable about that is that red spruce is a cold, sort of cold adapted species, and so for the most part, in the United States, its range is in northern and high elevation sites, but it has this sort of, this local range extension down the coast of Maine, facilitated by the ocean.

Camilla started by taking inventory of the trees in each of these sites.

{Camilla S}: So every tree in the plot was measured for diameter. We looked at its general health and got its x y coordinate so that I could generate a map, and I have maps of the stem locations across the whole the plot. We also identified the species, measured it or assessed its status, so whether it was alive or dead

She also measured and counted saplings, seedlings, and dead trees, estimated the percent cover of plants on the forest floor and took soil samples and tree cores. All of these pieces of data worked together to give Camilla a pretty large snapshot of the overall health of the forests. Camilla was able to compare her data to Ron’s and look for changes.

{Camilla S}: I titled my thesis sixty years of change in coastal spruce, but I think it's notable, like what didn't change, and that's that all the sites remained spruce.

Camilla found that red spruce remained dominant in sites that were predominantly red spruce back in 1959 and it actually increased across all sites. Red spruce is the most common tree species in coastal forests in Downeast Maine. But it’s also believed to be sensitive to changes in temperature and precipitation patterns. The climate is changing and the Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest-warming parts of the global ocean. Some models suggest that red spruce could lose almost all of its habitat in the United States in the near future. Camilla’s findings that red spruce has persisted was surprising considering its sensitivity and dire predictions. But there’s still a lot of uncertainty, and we can’t know for sure what the future holds for red spruce.

{Camilla S}: Resurveying and in general, long term monitoring is really important, because without it, we just don't know how resources are changing over time. You don't know where you've been, and you don't know where you are now, and you can't develop trends and projections for where you might be in the future. So a very critical piece of research.

The studies by Gillian and Camilla and subsequent observations are possible because of the initial inventory Ron took back in 1959. And like Gillian said, it’s pretty special to have access to such an extensive ecological survey from over sixty years ago. What’s even more special is being able to speak with the scientist who conducted the surveys in the first place to discuss your findings.

{Gillian A}: I don't remember what, how far along in the process we were when I last talked to you, I think we were still just planning everything. But since then, we've, yeah, recreated your bird surveys as closely as possible. Followed all the same methods.

Gillian and I visited Ron at his home in Orono in January so she could share her findings with him and talk about how her resurvey went. We were greeted at the door with a warm welcome from Ron and his dog Gingah before sitting down to chat. Gillian shared how the surveys went and that her findings suggest a decline in overall bird abundance in these coastal spruce fir forests.

{Dr. Ron Davis}: Well, I've heard, of course, about declines in bird populations, but I find it very sad.

Bird populations are declining all around North America so Ron wasn’t very surprised by Gillian’s data. But he wasn’t expecting that someone would be revisiting his research over sixty years later.

{Ron D}: One of the reactions I have is a sense of delight. That somebody like you is resampling what I did back in the late fifties, which was a long time ago, and I'm fortunate to have lived long enough to see that. And I was also delighted by what Camilla did. That's very satisfying for somebody like me.

Even though much has changed, Ron’s motivation for working in ecology aligned with Gillian’s and they immediately connected over their love of nature.

{Ron D}: I was always motivated by the beauty of the ecosystem. If it weren't for that, I probably wouldn't have done the work {Gillian A}: Yeah, {Ron D]: I like being in nature, and that's a very important part of the motivation for doing the kinds of things that I do. {Gillian A}: Me too {Ron D}: And I like being in nature because it's refreshing and inspiring, and it makes me feel good. {Gillian A}: Yeah, I totally agree.

Although Ron didn’t think anyone would revisit his work back when he was doing his initial inventory, he was thinking about the future.

{Ron D}: I always felt that it was very important to establish ecological baselines for future comparisons to in order to evaluate the impact of environmental changes that humans have made and will continue to make in the future.

Shifting baseline syndrome is real and we face it whenever we step into a forest and are greeted by fewer birds than there used to be. And these resurveys provide us with even more context and information, but we can’t predict the future of these forests in the face of climate change.

{Ron D}: Trees are long lived and they don't respond very quickly, so we don't really know, despite Camilla's results, just what effect it's going to have. We’ll have to wait another few decades. So you'll be around. *laughs* You might be around, but I won't.

While we have an idea of some of the changes that these spruce fir forests in Acadia have undergone over the past sixty years, there are still many unanswered questions about why those changes happened. Studies like Gillian’s and Camilla’s help clear away some of the fog that obscures the stories of these places but the future can never be certain. Predictive models can change as conditions evolve and time passes. Some of our questions are answered while new ones spring up.

*music starts*

Each ecosystem in Acadia is unique and faces its own challenges. There is no one answer of how to help these ecosystems. What we do know is that each restoration plan and research method here in the Park requires careful, inclusive science. Providing the time and space for scientific inquiry was part of the original mission of Acadia when it was first established as a National Monument in 1916. Of course science looks different today – we don’t have to hand-draw maps of research sites – and science will continue to change and it’s up to us to see the glimmers of hope that come from scientific inquiry. Like maybe bringing native plants and Wabanaki harvesters back to the Great Meadow will inspire more relationship building and healing for indigenous communities in National Parks around the country. Or maybe studying microtopography in summit restoration will help scientists on other low elevation mountains restore their summits. Maybe red spruce will stay resilient to climate change and Ron, Gillian, and Camilla’s data will help future generations understand that resiliency.

Understanding the history of this land and our own role in it, acknowledging the very real threats our ecosystems face and continuing to ask questions, helps us move forward into a brighter future. Because if we don’t know where we’ve been and we don’t know where we are now, how will we know where to go in the future?

Thank you for listening to Sea to Trees, a podcast from Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park, a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, inspiring science, learning and community for a changing world. Acadia National Park is on traditional lands of the Wabanaki, people of the dawn. A big thank you to this episode's guests Gillian Audier, Camilla Seirup, and Dr. Ron Davis. Birdsong recordings in this episode are courtesy of Matthew D. Medler and Cornell Lab of Ornithology Macaulay Library and Laura Sebastianelli. Once again, thank you to all of the guests on each episode this season. And thank you to everyone who has contributed to this season along the way. Sea to Trees is written and produced by me, Julia Rush, and edited by Catherine Schmitt and Sarah Luchini. The cover art was created by Sarah Luchini. Sea to Trees is possible through generous support of the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellowship, the National Park Foundation, National Park Service, and Schoodic Institute.

Along the coast of Maine a special cold-adapted forest ecosystem thrives: the coastal spruce fir forest. The cool air that blows off the ocean provides an ideal environment for these colder species, but their future, like many, is uncertain. In this episode, we’re traveling through time to understand how coastal spruce fir forests in Acadia have changed over the past sixty-six years.

Episode Tags: acadia, acadia national park, maine, citizen science, nature, science, schoodic institute, research learning center, podcast, podcasts, audio, science communication, national park foundation

January 21, 2026

2. Place-based Science | The Mountain Summit

Transcript

Sea to Trees Season 4 Episode 2: Place-based Science

The Mountain Summit

[Hiking sounds (breathing, crunching footsteps)]

Julia: Yeah how far are we? Amina: We have gone Julia: Oh wow Amina We’ve gone 1.2 miles so Julia: Out of? Amina: I think 1.6?

Welcome to Sea to Trees. My name is Julia Rush and today, we’re hiking a mountain in Acadia National Park.

Amina: Just the hint of fall starting

We’re looking out over Jordan Pond on Mount Desert Island. It’s a sunny, clear, early September day and at every vista point we can see out over the pond and beyond the edge of the Island at the Atlantic Ocean. It’s breathtaking.

Amina: Look at that! Julia: I know every few feet Amina: It just gets better

This hike isn’t for leisure, but it’s hard not to enjoy yourself while taking in sweeping views and breathing fresh, pine air. This is actually part of our morning commute to work which means I’m one-handed. As it turns out, hiking with a microphone in one hand…

Julia: I think if I go back, backwards. Slow and steady.

Proved to be just teetering on the edge of too dangerous.

Julia: Ok yeah this may be a two-handed moment, right? Amina: Perhaps Julia: I think we’re getting to a point where Amina: Yeah Julia: I think I’m gonna just - *audio cuts* [music starts]

We’re hiking to work because it’s the only way to get to the restoration sites atop Penobscot and Sargent mountains. Today is all about the mountain summit. A part of Acadia National Park that gives it its signature bald-granite horizon line. A space awaiting intrepid hikers for them to mark their journey, rest and eat a snack, surrounded by panoramic views of more mountains and the ocean beyond. An ecosystem that houses rare and subalpine plants typically found further north. One that's under threat.

My day actually started around 5:30 in the morning. I got up, made coffee, ate my breakfast and packed my bag, preparing to meet the restoration team, at the car at 7 o’clock. After loading up we began the hour-and-a-half drive to the trailhead, watching the world start to wake around us. Once we made it to the trail, laced up our boots, hauled our packs over our shoulders, and made sure all our equipment was accounted for, we started the hike.

[audio of hiking, making conversation, breathing heavily]

If you’ve ever hiked a mountain in Acadia, you might know how unassuming they can look from afar. These peaks are not sharp and looming, they’re soft and sloping across the horizon. But that doesn’t mean the hikes in Acadia are easy. On this day we hiked the Jordan Cliffs trail which features metal rungs and ladders to help you scale, well, the Jordan Cliffs. It’s not quite as harrowing as the name suggests, but with thirty liter packs on our backs and the late summer heat starting to creep in, it was definitely strenuous. After an hour and a half of hiking we finally reached our destination.

Julia: Oh yeah, where are we right now? Amina: We’re at the top of Penobscot, I guess not quite the very top, but on the north side of Penobscot mountain Julia: We’re still on the summit? Amina: Yes, we’re still at the top, not the very very peak <<fade under>>

This is Amina Wilson. She’s the restoration research associate at Schoodic Institute. Her morning commute nearly every day during the summer and fall is a hike and her office is a mountain summit. On paper, restoring a mountain summit has a somewhat straightforward order of operations, one we’ll get into a little bit later. But there’s so much work that goes on behind the scenes of a summit field season. I took part in each step of that process this year to understand all the work that goes into restoring Acadia’s summits.

After the long hike we got to work monitoring plots that already underwent restoration in past seasons.

Amina: All right, so we have three different types of plots up here on the mountain.

These plots that Amina is talking about are patches where vegetation is degraded and restoration methods have been applied. Like I said earlier, mountains in Acadia have soft, rounded peaks, most of which have exposed bald tops, with only a few trees here and there. Here on Penobscot, the sloping granite rock faces that make up the summit are pretty expansive. Between these granite ledges there are islands of vegetation, think low, shrubby plants that can withstand the winds that blow right off the ocean. A degraded area is one where you can see that there once was plant cover but for reasons we’ll get to in a second, the plants have died off. You can tell just by looking at these spots that plants used to grow here by the hard line between living plants and dried up gravel.

Amina W: We have restored areas, and within those we have seeded plots and unseeded plots.

Restored plots are degraded areas that were identified in field seasons past and treated with a restoration method. The two methods here are seeded and unseeded. Seeded plots have a layer of soil and seeds while unseeded just have soil. That way they can see if planting seeds is worth the effort.

Amina W: We also have control plots, such as this one right here. Control plots are restorable areas, so they're degraded, and they're something that we might choose for restoration, but we're using them as a control so we're never going to restore them. We're just leaving them as is, and we use that as a baseline to see just how well the vegetation is doing in those areas, what kind of species are growing, species richness, all that stuff.

So, I know it sounds a little counterintuitive to identify an area where plants have died off and then just leave it alone, but these plots play a crucial role in research. Having these control plots help Amina and the rest of the team understand what the mountain might look like if they weren’t doing any restoration at all. Imagine if these plots started to grow back vegetation all on their own without any help from the scientists. It would greatly inform the restoration plan for these areas.

Amina W: And then we also have reference plots, which are next to restored plots, and those are patches of intact vegetation that we want to ideally restore our restored plots to look like those one day.

So the three types of plots here are: restored plots that have had a restoration method applied, control plots which are degraded areas that were left alone to act like a baseline, and then reference plots, the healthy, intact islands of vegetation that give scientists like Amina a reference to aim for.

Amina W: But yeah, today we are just monitoring all three of those types of plots, and we use these handy dandy little half meter by half meter quadrats.

In this case, monitoring means counting the number of plants in these plots to understand how successful the applied restoration methods are. To do that they use a quadrat which is a half-meter by half-meter plastic square made with a pvc pipe frame and strings arranged in a grid inside the square.

Amina W: So yeah, what we do is we identify every single living plant species as best we can, and we count the number of squares that it occurs in, and then we also estimate the overall cover in the whole quadrat. So, because there's 25 squares, one square is 4% of the overall area.

Each of the plots has four nails in the ground where each corner of the quadrat sits. So that from year to year, they monitor the same exact spot in each plot. Amina set the quadrat down on the nails and then started to count.

[Amina counting to herself]

All of the data they collect goes into a spreadsheet to be analyzed later. Because, while they are actively restoring these summits, they’re also experimenting to find out what the most effective restoration method is.

Amina W: All right, if you would like to help. Julia R: Me? Amina W: Yeah

When I said I would be getting you up close and personal with some of the science happening in Acadia this season, I meant it. Not only was I able to observe the science, I actually got my hands on some of it. Amina enlisted me to help with the monitoring, handing over her data collection tablet so I could enter what she observed. We hiked all this way, she may as well put me to work right?

Amina W: So I am just going to tell you, essentially, category, family, genus, species in that order. And then I'll give you, I'll give you all of the data in the order that it appears in here, the number of cells that it appears in, and then the percent cover that, I think it is.

My training is in journalism which is why you can hear a bit of panic in my voice, but Amina gave me careful instructions and guidance so I could help get all the monitoring done on Penobscot.

Amina W: All right, so I'm gonna hand you this. Julia R: Okay, Amina W: I have it filled out for crustose lichen, and if you can just those three are going to be blank, and then I'll give you a number.

I followed Amina around the rest of the day watching passing hikers steal curious glances at us as we worked. By the time we were wrapped up, after lots of patience from Amina, I had memorized the category, family, genus, and species for three toothed cinquefoil, one of the plants that makes these summits so special.

Chris Nadeau: The summits of in Acadia are some of the most beautiful places in the park. They're visited by millions of people each year. And the summits are also characterized by this really low lying vegetation.

Dr. Chris Nadeau is a climate adaptation scientist at Schoodic Institute. You may recognize him from last episode about the Great Meadow Wetland. He’s also the lead scientist on the restoration and research happening on the summits.

Chris N: And so when you have low lying vegetation, and lots of people, lots of vegetation gets trampled, once the vegetation gets trampled, then it dies after being trampled a few times. And then if we get a heavy rain event or a heavy wind event, then the soil that used to be under those plants can blow or wash off the mountain. And then once the soil is gone, it's just really difficult to get plants back in these places, and so we've been working to try to figure out how to restore plants to those places.

Three toothed cinquefoil is one of those low-lying plants Chris is talking about. It sort of creeps along the ground and almost looks like a wild strawberry plant. Each of its shiny, deep green leaves has three little points that look like teeth and it sprouts tiny white flowers in the spring. Three toothed cinquefoil is a sub-alpine plant, meaning it thrives in the transition zones between forested slopes and treeless mountaintops. Sub-alpine ecosystems are rare in coastal Maine, making them special. Most of the other summit plants are low to the ground too, which makes them all easy targets for foot traffic.

Chris N: So we have a lot of species that are found much further north, but also some rare species that are found further south, and they all kind of come together on a on Acadia’s kind of low elevation coastal summits and so protecting those plant communities and restoring them is really important.

With millions of hikers come millions of boots. And with so many visitors, there are bound to be some who will go off trail, whether that’s to try to get even better views or simply because they don’t realize that they’ve stepped off the marked path. Like Chris said, it doesn’t take much to trample and kill these low plants and they end up taking on a ton of damage from human traffic alone. On top of that, those heavy downpours that Chris mentioned are increasing in frequency. According to Maine's Climate Future reports from the University of Maine, extreme precipitation events are happening more and more often in the Northeast and are due, in part, to increased temperatures brought on by climate change. So the need for this restoration is critical.

The monitoring Amina and I were doing on Penobscot Mountain happens late in the summer. But the restoration season kicks off a little bit earlier with a hike to address the foundation of these plots: the soil.

Lauren Knierim: So this is year three of Save Our Summits.

Lauren Knierim is the community volunteer ambassador for Acadia National Park. This summer she led two hikes per week guiding volunteers up to Sargent and Penobscot mountains. Save Our Summits, a partnership of Schoodic Institute, Friends of Acadia, and the National Park Service, was designed to address the issue of how to get soil up to the top of a mountain.

Lauren K: And so there were a couple of different ideas thrown around about how we could get all of this soil up there. We talked about a helicopter bringing the soil. We talked about mules bringing the soil up the trail. And those just weren't really feasible, and somehow our best option that we settled on was all of you. Each of the volunteers showed up bright and early at the trailhead to hike soil up to the summit of Penobscot mountain. Soil that will be used by Amina and her crew to create new restoration plots this fall.

Volunteer: How much are we carrying up in the group today? Lauren K: How much do you think? There's 11 of us I think Volunteer: I was gonna say 200 Lauren K: Got 166

In just one hike, eleven volunteers carried up one hundred and sixty six pounds of soil. I packed five pounds into my own backpack and sincerely underestimated just how heavy five pounds feels after an hour of hiking. Over the past three years seven hundred and ninety two volunteers hiked up over thirteen thousand pounds of soil to Sargent and Penobscot mountains. These hikes happen during the summer so that when it’s time to make new plots in the fall, the soil is already at the top of the mountain. The next step in the process, this year, was the summit advisory meeting, a gathering of experts to help the restoration team brainstorm new methods to apply on the summits.

Chris N: There isn't a lot of understanding about how to restore plants and soil to mountain summits, especially these kind of unique, low elevation mountain summits, like we have here in Acadia. And so because we don't really know how to do that restoration we have consulted with a variety of different experts, from restoration ecologists to people who study mosses and lichens to people who study soil, all sorts of different experts have come to the summits, they've seen restoration work we've done in the past, and then we have a big conversation about, what should we be doing in the future? This meeting took place over the course of two days and started with hikes to each restoration site. Once we arrived at the sites, Chris, Amina and the rest of the crew explained the restoration, their methods, some of the results and the challenges they’re facing.

Amina W: So I know some of you have had a chance to walk around and kind of look at the difference between these three plots that are around here the two closest to us were both built in 2023 so they’re two years old.

This restoration crew consists of partners at the National Park Service and Friends of Acadia. Jesse Wheeler, Acadia’s Vegetation Program Manager and Emma Lanning a biological science technician for the Park are involved in each stage of the restoration process.

It was quite inspiring to see so many people from all over the country come together to aid in a restoration happening right here in Acadia.

Chris N: It is super unique and and it's, it's a really exciting meeting to be a part of, just because you get to spend a whole day, two full days out on mountain summits, just talking to great people that are excited to be there and interested in helping out.

After the summit advisory meeting wrapped up, Chris, Amina, Jesse, and Emma organized all of the ideas that came from the gathering and picked out a couple to try in this year’s restoration plots.

Chris N: One of the things that three different people came up with independently, is that while we were walking around on the summits, people noticed that the natural plots that are still intact have all this microtopography, so all these bumps and humps and valleys that that catch seed, they hold water, but our plots are just completely flat. They have four centimeters of soil everywhere. And so many people noticed that and suggested that we might want to incorporate micro topography.

In the fall, Amina’s crew started to use the soil that was hiked up to create new plots with a plan for how to incorporate these new ideas.

Julia R: Okay, what are we doing? Amina W: Restoring degraded area on top of Sargent mountain. Julia R: And How cold is it? Amina W: So cold it's probably 50 degrees, yeah, but feels like 30 with the wind chill,

I hiked up Sargent mountain with Amina this fall, a month after our monitoring day, to help out with the last bit of work on the summits for the season. This last step is when the crew makes new plots that will undergo monitoring next year. Again, I got my hands dirty, this time literally.

Julia R: So we're carrying soil? Amina W: Yeah, so if you want to grab a bag of soil, We started out by finding a degraded area that would be a good candidate for restoration. And then, using the soil hiked up by volunteers throughout the summer, created a new plot. This year they are adding a new type of plot testing out a new method to see if the theory about microtopography works.

Amina W: So if you see on this plot, there's like these little mounds that we created, kind of using like a bowl to create like kind of sand castle type molds on top.

To make a microtopography plot we applied a layer of soil across the degraded area and then made mounds out of soil just like sandcastles spaced out around the plot. Then we spread seeds and some leaf litter from surrounding vegetation all over the plot and covered the whole thing up with a blanket of erosion control fabric. This fabric is sort of like burlap and it helps to protect the seeds and soil from all of the factors that threaten these plots in the first place, to set them up for success. The erosion control fabric, along with every other tool and instrument used up here gets hiked up the mountain by the restoration team, which is no small feat. With the biodegradable stakes that we stowed in Amina's bag, we secured the edges of the fabric in place and lined sandbags along any exposed edges.

Amina W: And that is what a finished plot looks like.

Once all the soil is used up and each new plot is tucked in for the winter ahead, the planning process for next season starts. And the cycle continues.

Come next summer, the restoration team will be back, placing quadrats on those same four nails in each plot, counting tiny seedlings that have sprouted from the seeds sown the previous year, fruits of the labor of numerous field technicians, National Park managers, scientists and citizens, including me. Each tiny little seedling carries the hope of those individuals. Hope for their success in growing in the face of increasingly severe weather, hope that hikers will step mindfully and stay on trail, and hope for a bright future for Acadia’s summits.

Thank you for listening to Sea to Trees, a podcast from Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park, a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, inspiring science, learning and community for a changing world. Acadia National Park is on traditional lands of the Wabanaki, people of the dawn. A big thank you to this episode's guests Dr. Chris Nadeau, Amina Wilson, and Lauren Knierim. Sea to Trees is written and produced by me, Julia Rush, and edited by Catherine Schmitt and Sarah Luchini. The cover art was created by Sarah Luchini. Sea to Trees is possible through generous support of the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellowship, the National Park Foundation, National Park Service, and Schoodic Institute.

High atop Acadia’s mountain summits are sweeping views, subalpine plants, and an ecosystem under threat. Come with me as I take part in each step of a field season and learn about how scientists are working to help restore these unique places.

Episode Tags: acadia, acadia national park, maine, citizen science, nature, science, schoodic institute, research learning center, podcast, podcasts, audio, science communication, national park foundation

December 17, 2025

1. Place-based Science | The Freshwater Wetland

Transcript

Sea to Trees Season 4 Episode 1: Place-based Science

The Freshwater Wetland

Narration Seven years ago, I woke up to a bright, freezing winter day. In the deepest recesses of winter in Maine the question, “What am I going to do today?” always feels daunting to me. Usually my answer is to cozy up under a blanket and watch movies rather than brace the cold. But on this particular day, videos of people ice skating on the smoothest ice I’d ever seen were spreading around social media. The videos showed my high-school classmates skating in between birch trees in an area called Sieur de Monts Spring on Mount Desert Island. I love ice skating so I knew what I was going to do that day.

[music]

I squeezed into multiple pairs of pants, pulled layer after layer over my head and threw my skates into the back of the car, ready to take on the cold. I arrived and eagerly laced up my skates, slipped on my mittens and glided out onto the ice. I was greeted with the familiar winter silence I’ve known my whole life and continued to explore. The ice was smooth and clear as glass. I skimmed further into the line of birch trees, weaving between their silvery trunks that seemingly grew from the ice and pushed out beyond the treeline into the Great Meadow. I looked back at where I had just skated from and it was like a forest had grown up out of a lake and then the lake had frozen. The smooth, glassy ice was so clear I could see a wooden boardwalk path beneath me. I continued skating, circling around the birch trees and marveling at what an other-worldly feeling it was to skate in a forest.

For years I’ve looked back on the memory of that day and remembered just how magical it was. But there’s more hiding beneath the surface here. This thick ice obscured the story beneath, but didn’t erase it. Because where I was skating is not a lake. Those boardwalks and birches are not normally under water. So what’s the story of this place?

Dr. Suzanne Greenlaw: There's a lot of information of on Great Meadow, historical information, but it's all in separate places. So there's herbarium records, there is inventory records the park has done over 40 years, there is, like, anthropological sort of records that are in different kinds of museums from, you know, 50, 150, years ago. But they don't all show up in one place that can tell a story, like a time scale story, right?

This is a problem for all of us, is that the data in these places are in these separate boxes and don't aren't able to work together to tell a full length story of the landscape

You are listening to Sea to Trees. I am Julia Rush and today I’m taking you into the Great Meadow, the largest freshwater wetland in Acadia National Park. We’ll learn about the ongoing restoration happening there, how soil coring can take us back in time to visualize a landscape thousands of years ago, and how an indigenous approach to wetland restoration means restoring relationships and food sovereignty.

Dr. Suzanne Greenlaw, whom you just heard, is a post-doctoral scientist and Indigenous ecologist at Schoodic Institute. You'll also hear from Dr. Chris Nadeau, a climate change adaptation scientist at Schoodic Institute, Lauren Gibson, Wild Acadia Coordinator at Friends of Acadia, and Andrea Nurse, paleoecology research associate at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute.

[music fades out]

Julia Rush: Do you think you could, like, describe, kind of what we're looking at, because we've been talking about it, and I'm trying to, like, translate that to somebody who can't see because it's pretty spectacular, like, and it's kind of hard to describe. But how would you, yeah how would you describe it?

Lauren Gibson: Sure, yeah so right now we’re literally standing in the wetland we’ve got the park loop road behind us we can tell how interested people are to see the vista we are at, because it's so busy, people are stopping, they slow down to take a look. But we're looking at Dorr Mountain, which is amazing right now because you're seeing some of the fall foliage, the oranges and yellows and the reds are really starting to pop. But you can just kind of see like this. All the grasses and the shrubs that make up the meadow are just beautiful in the sunlight right now, you've got Cromwell brook that cuts through the meadow and kind of winds its way through those grasses and those shrubs.

Lauren Gibson is the Wild Acadia coordinator for Friends of Acadia. The Wild Acadia initiative is a partnership between Friends of Acadia, Schoodic Institute, and the National Park Service. It’s an interdisciplinary approach to restoration and management of resources in the Park. Lauren and I met at the edge of Great Meadow earlier this fall to talk about the troubled wetland.

Lauren G: Well, you know, if you just drive by, you look at it and you're like, oh my gosh, it's beautiful you have Dorr mountain, the vista, the wetland, it's so it is, it's beautiful. But when you get down into it, just like you're experiencing right now, you're like, Wait, is it supposed to look like this? And the answer is, No, it's not as healthy or as functional as it should be.

When Lauren says the vista I want to help you try and picture what we’re experiencing: trees line both sides of the main road that cuts through the park.

[music]

As you round an unassuming corner there’s a break in the trees on the right that gives way to the expanse of the meadow. The grasses and sedges that make up most of the wetland spread out all throughout the space and bow and sway together in the wind. Dorr mountain rises up straight out of the meadow to balance the rich landscape into the view Lauren and I are taking in. And yet, it’s a deceiving picture because it’s not very healthy. So what would a healthy Great Meadow wetland look like?

Dr. Chris Nadeau: So, so there are a few things that are more typical of a healthy, quote, unquote, healthy wetland.

Doctor Chris Nadeau is a climate change adaptation scientist at Schoodic Institute working on the Great meadow restoration project.

Chris N: One of the main, one of the main things we focus on is the hydrology, so how water flows through the wetland. And so the water shouldn't be super duper variable, and so it shouldn't go swinging between super duper dry and absolutely flooded.

Absolutely flooded, just like in my ice skating story.

Lauren G: When you're standing here, it's like nearly impossible to imagine that much water in the wetland, especially you look at how high the vegetation is, too, and to think that at one point, all you saw was ice, and people ice skating out in this wetland, just how much water and how high that water was, and what a unique experience for there to be a freezing event on top of it and allow people to access the meadow that way.

That freezing event was preceded by a combination of snowfall, melting, and rainfall that were sequenced just right to create the inches-thick ice I skated on. That day of ice skating underlines the need for the restoration happening here, which has focused on the culvert where all of the water in Great Meadow drains out of.

Lauren G: So right now, the culvert is just a 36 inch diameter circle, which sometimes also gets clogged. And so in those big rainstorms that we see, if the water, you know, sometimes it's not able to move through at all, and in other times, it's just an inadequate space for that amount of water to move through. So we're seeing flooding, extreme flooding events, and then this summer, you know, extreme drought. So what we're hoping that the culvert replacement will do is eliminate those really high highs and those really low lows, and reduce the flashiness of the system.

So the culvert responsible for draining all of the water from Great Meadow is only three feet in diameter. When a large rainstorm blows through and the water rushes down Dorr Mountain and settles into the wetland, all it has is this little straw to push through to drain. And then on the flip side, the current culvert doesn’t facilitate a natural stream flow, so in long dry periods, water drains from the wetland far too fast leaving it dry.

Chris N: From a natural perspective, there's only so many critters that can live in a place that is super dry sometimes, and then a few weeks later, it's super wet, and then a few weeks after that, it's super dry. So the wetland needs to get restored to a more natural hydrologic function. Having wetland water flow through the wetland more naturally, and that will help restore kind of the plants and animals that live in the wetland too.

The next stage of the restoration will be to install a twelve foot box culvert. This new culvert has a bottom that mimics a natural stream bed and allows wildlife to pass beneath the road. It sounds pretty simple, but this project requires lots of planning, engineering and collaboration. One huge factor that we haven’t even touched on yet is the people on this landscape. Acadia National Park is a very busy place. It's one of the most visited National Parks in the country and sees millions of visitors every year. Closing the Great Meadow off from visitors for this ongoing project isn’t an option, so people play a big role in the planning process. But people are also a big part of why the wetland is facing so many challenges. George Dorr was one of the founders of Acadia National Park and dedicated much of his life to preserving areas around Mount Desert Island, especially the Great Meadow.

Lauren G: George Dorr, when he arrived like he was really fascinated by this area, and so also wanted to make it accessible, and making it accessible meant building roads and a trail system through the wetland into Sieur de Monts and that infrastructure still exists today and serves to impede the hydrology.

The history of Mount Desert Island does not begin with Dorr, however. Acadia National Park lies within traditional Wabanaki homeland.

Wabanaki, meaning Dawnland People, is a collective term for the people who have inhabited these lands since time immemorial, represented today by four federally-recognized Native American Tribes, Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Mi’kmaq Nation, Penobscot Nation, and the Passamaquoddy Tribe.

Today Wabanaki communities are collaborating with the National Park Service to restore relationships with the place now known as Acadia, including in The Great Meadow. Doctor Suzanne Greenlaw, who we heard from earlier, is a post-doctoral scientist at Schoodic Institute and she works with Wabanaki communities to restore traditional harvesting within the Park. She’s an ecologist, writer and traditional harvester and is a citizen of the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians.

Suzanne Greenlaw: A lot of the work I do is what is current today. So that means, like, how do we create tools and management strategies to benefit native people?

When Suzanne started working on the Great Meadow project, she was greeted with a ton of questions.

Suzanne G: Wabanaki people were asking, Well, what was there in the past? What? How has the land changed? Landscape changed over time, like, what is the land telling us? How can the land inform us, help us make our decisions? And and I found that really hard to answer

But what does it mean to look back in time at the land to tell a story? How far back do you go when you try to tell that story?

Suzanne G: We are limited to 150 years ago, 100 years ago, and we were finding these records of times from like, you know, George Dorr, and these kind of comments about, maybe about what was there in the past. But how do we know actually, what was there, even before, sort of Europeans came, before George Dorr started writing these down, right? And can you actually 100% believe what they're saying in a lot of ways, like, right? There's a lot of these people who wrote, kind of wrote in certain ways that you can tell that maybe it's, it's a little, I don't know the right word, but it's like, their stories are a little embellished. Or is their indigenous accounts of indigenous relationships truthful?

It seems like a nearly impossible challenge right? How can you accurately visualize a landscape hundreds or even thousands of years ago? Suzanne had heard about soil coring, a research technique where scientists take a vertical cylinder of earth that can then be dated and analyzed in a lab. Specifically, the pollen and plant DNA in the soil can be analyzed to paint a clearer image of what kinds of plants grew there in the past.

Suzanne G: Most of the time, like soil cores are done in an archeological sort of field. But we were wondering is, could these cores help us to make decisions for restoration?

So after Acadia’s Program Manager for Natural and Cultural Resources suggested soil coring, plans were made for the soil samples to be taken from the Great Meadow and analyzed. Suzanne included a list of plants of interest that are culturally significant for Wabanaki communities. In August, a team of National Park, Schoodic Institute and Friends of Acadia staff took to Great Meadow to collect soil samples.

[sounds of feet walking on the wooden boardwalk, folks chatting, cicadas]

Lauren G: We’re looking for an orange flag that’s like about twenty feet off the boardwalk so if anybody spies it let us know.

We’re back on the boardwalk in Great Meadow, except this time, it’s not covered in ice. This summer was actually one of those extremely dry periods so we could step down into the wetland and not get wet at all. Imagining the ice on this particular day provided a bit of a reprieve from heat that was in the upper eighties paired with thick, muggy humidity.

But laden with equipment, measuring instruments, plenty of water and one microphone we braved the beating sun and collected the samples.

Andrea Nurse: Okay, so the so the plan is to do two cores side by side, here and right here. So the tricky part, or maybe we can move over a little bit, but the tricky part is not to step on the other core while you're trying to get this one out.

Andrea Nurse lead the soil coring and works at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute as a paleoecologist. She specializes in pollen and plant macrofossil analysis which means she studies the pollen from soil samples to identify what plants were growing there at a particular time in history.

Before we get any further into the soil coring, I must confess, I myself didn’t really know how a soil coring worked before we trekked out into the Meadow. So let me break it down for you.

[music starts]

Imagine a chocolate cake that has multiple layers of cake and frosting. Now imagine sticking a straw down into the cake and pulling it back out. In that little cylinder you get a clear view of all the layers and what’s going on below the surface of the cake, like maybe there’s a ganache layer you didn’t even realize was there!

Back in the meadow, in place of a straw, we used metal corers about a meter long and a few inches in diameter. Just like on the cake, we pushed the corer into the earth

Chorus of voices: Okay, ready, friends?

And then pulled it back out,

Chorus of voices: Okay, let's see if we can get it out. 123, oh, yeah, it's coming. There it is. Keep that tight. Keep that tight.

To bring up a sample. Then that sample is sealed up and taken back to the lab to be studied.

Andrea N: What we're doing here with the Schoodic Institute and Acadia National Park is looking at how the vegetation has changed over time on the great meadow. The great meadow being the largest freshwater wetland within Acadia National Park. And my role is to take sediment cores, which we've already done, from great meadow, and study them incrementally from probably about 8000 years ago to present, and when I say studying them incrementally, we'll take samples every few centimeters and process the sediments to extract the pollen, and then I identify what pollen is there under a microscope.

The question I was asking at this point was how far down are we coring into the meadow? If we are shooting for eight-thousand years ago like Andrea said, how do we know once we’ve reached deep enough in the earth?

Andrea N: At the bottom it's gray clay. And that gray clay was laid down by it's called glacial marine clay. So as the glaciers were melting, there was water and fine rock dust coming into that area, running off the glaciers, and it was mixing with sea water, and it just it produces a gray clay that covers much of the south eastern part of Maine.

Thankfully, it was shockingly obvious once we started to hit this glacial clay. For the most part these cores are brown and earthy pretty much all the way down, until you hit that clay. In stark contrast to the browns of the sediment, the glacial clay is blue-grey and dense, dense like the clay you would use to make pottery.

Julia Oh yeah look! Found the clay Chorus of voices: Exclamations

The excitement of laying eyes on clay that was deposited in a time when glaciers sat miles high above Mount Desert Island never really got old the entire day of soil coring. This clip was after hours of working the corer in and out of the earth and hauling all of our equipment even deeper into the wetland to get to the second coring site under the beating sun. And it wasn’t even the first time we pulled up glacial clay, but each time we saw that bright grey at the bottom of the core it sent a wave of pure awe through the group at the sheer timescale of this project.

After we labeled and carefully packed up each soil core, they were then taken back to the lab at University of Maine to begin the pollen analysis. Results from Andrea’s pollen study will be transformed into a data visualization project that will be able to give scientists, park managers and visitors a look at a continuous timescale story of the Great Meadow Wetland beginning thousands of years ago.

But the work doesn’t stop there for Suzanne.

Suzanne G: What I’m finding in a lot of the literature, especially from the Midwest and even further west, that a lot of wetland areas were actually are sources of food for indigenous people and for us in Maine in the east, I would say that relationship to the wetlands and those food sources has been so long since we've been removed from a lot of these places, we don't have a lot of those traditional foods in our diet anymore

When Wabanaki, people are thinking about restoring they're also it's not just a restoration of health for a wetland, it's rest, but it is that, but it's also restoration of people in relationship to a wetland, so that, that there's, there's like a, it's always a relationship based approach, in the sense that, you know, we see these landscapes as places of home and so, so what does that mean to restore human relationship in these locations as well?

Can restoration also be a food sovereignty project? And what does that like to include a community, and if these plants so, we include plants of interest now, but also plants of interest for future relationships. And then can a restoration project also support distribution of food?

The plants that Andrea is looking for in the pollen analysis include native plants that could be re-introduced into the wetland to help restore it. Some of those are plants of interest for Wabanaki communities meaning they have traditional uses as food and medicine. Bringing those native plants back to the landscape will help heal the Great Meadow, supporting the overall ecosystem. Suzanne’s goal is to bring Wabanaki harvesters back to the wetland to practice traditional harvesting and gather food for their community once those plants are restored. Suzanne G: Right so a healthy environment is also means a healthy people.

That's easy to say that, but how do you enact that? How do you put that into action?

Putting that into action actually, is a lot of work, because as just one scientist in a restoration project, that means I need to actually have a lot of partnerships and relationships and make this as collaborative and open as possible, with Wabanaki nonprofits who are doing food distribution, who are doing food harvesting, so restoration becomes a community effort, and not just an individual science you know, like a handful of scientific efforts.

If this sounds like something you’ve never heard of before within a restoration project, it’s because you probably haven’t. This community-based approach to restoration is fairly rare in Acadia. Suzanne is no stranger to the feeling of working in unknown territory.

Suzanne G: So what I've learned in the work that I do and the work that I guess I do, I also want to not make it seem like I do it. But the work that many indigenous people who are in academia, who are in these sort of science worlds the roles that we have and the work that we do is, is somewhat, pushing forward into a path that is not hasn't been there before, all right, so having a like say Bonnie, having a Penobscot archeologist, having you know people, people from the community, being the researcher of their own community, is not an easy path. And people be like, nobody's ever done that before. I mean, I don't know how many times I've heard that right, which is very nice in some ways, but it's also really lonely, and other times and constantly having to change, or, like, move the direction. It's like moving a river, almost like, you know, this flow is going this way. Everything has always gone this way. And how do you actually shift the river to actually make it more community driven, or which is not even participatory research, right? There's all these sort of methodologies that say, Oh, this is how we do community research. They're all not, they're not for Native people half the most of the time. So actually, how do you do research for and by Native people? Is, is both really rewarding and also can be really challenging.

Growing up here I knew a very brief history of Wabanaki people, but looking under my feet under the ice and discovering the boardwalk below was like taking a look at the full story of the Great Meadow. There is an entire history that is a living, breathing part of this place and it’s right in front of us and isn’t going away.

Like Suzanne said, it takes moving rivers to make change happen within an established system. That takes collaborative initiatives like this one and people like Suzanne who lead in moving the rivers. And it takes individuals who are willing to look through the ice and face the stories that have always been there and are a part of this land we call home.

Thank you for listening to Sea to Trees, a podcast from Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park, a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, inspiring science, learning and community for a changing world. Acadia National Park is on traditional lands of the Wabanaki, people of the dawn.

A big thank you to this episode's guests Dr. Suzanne Greenlaw, Lauren Gibson, Dr. Chris Nadeau, and Andrea Nurse.

Sea to Trees is written and produced by me, Julia Rush, and edited by Catherine Schmitt and Sarah Luchini. The cover art was created by Sarah Luchini. Sea to Trees is possible through generous support of the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellowship, the National Park Foundation, National Park Service, and Schoodic Institute.

Reference Links:

● Great Meadow Wetland Rehab to Reclaim More Natural Flow: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/great-meadow-wetland-rehab-to-reclaim-more-natural-flow.htm ● Wild Acadia: https://friendsofacadia.org/our-impact/wild-acadia/

● Flooding and freezing event: https://www.nps.gov/articles/wild-winter-weather.htm ● Wabanaki Alliance: https://www.wabanakialliance.com/ ● Abbe Museum: https://www.abbemuseum.org/

In this season premiere episode of Sea to Trees we’ll travel to the largest freshwater wetland in Acadia National Park: The Great Meadow. Listen to learn more about the ongoing restoration of the Great Meadow, how soil coring can take us back in time to visualize a landscape thousands of years ago, and how an Indigenous approach to wetland restoration means restoring relationships and food sovereignty.

Episode Tags: acadia, acadia national park, maine, citizen science, nature, science, schoodic institute, research learning center, podcast, podcasts, audio, science communication, national park foundation

Season 4 Trailer

Place-Based Science | Trailer

Transcript

Sea to Trees Season 4 Place-Based Science

Trailer Script

[00:00-00:03] Music starts

[00:03-00:33] Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park is proud to bring you season four of Sea to Trees, a podcast that tells the stories of science happening in and around Acadia.

My name is Julia Rush and I will be your host this season. Each episode focuses on one specific area in Acadia and together we’ll discover some of the ecological research happening there.

I’ll be taking you into the boreal forest,

[00:30-00:45] Gillian Audier: I really like this spot too, because once you get off the road, there's, like, just a really thick area of deciduous trees, and you kind of have to crash through and like it's really crowded, but then once you get through, it's like just a whole different biome, and it's so quiet right there, even though the roads here. [15 sec.]

To the grassy freshwater wetland,

[00:48-00:58] Chris Nadeau: You go to Great Meadow nestled at the bottom of Dorr Mountain and you can look at the pink rhodora flowers through the fog and when I do that like my stress level just drops right away. [10 sec.]

All the way up to the granite-capped mountain summit

[01:03-01: ] Jenny Kafas: This is gorgeous oh my god Amina Wilson: Isn’t it so good? Jenny: Yeah and I love this view of like between the mountains <<fade out>>

To give you an immersive feel for what it’s like studying science in Acadia. Stay tuned for Season four to learn more about these three ecosystems in Acadia, the science happening there, and of course, the people behind the science. [13 sec.]

Julia Oh yeah look! Found the clay Chorus of voices: Exclamations [10 sec.] <<fade out>>

Sea to Trees is possible with generous support through the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellowship, a partnership among Schoodic Institute, the National Park Foundation, and the National Park Service. Acadia National Park is on the traditional lands of the Wabanaki, people of the dawn. This season is written and produced by me, Julia Rush, and edited by Catherine Schmitt and Sarah Luchini.

In Season Four, we’re getting up close and personal with three areas in Acadia: freshwater wetlands, granite-topped mountain summits, and boreal forests. Each episode is set in one of those research sites and focuses on the science stories happening there.

Episode Tags: acadia, acadia national park, maine, citizen science, nature, science, schoodic institute, research learning center, podcast, podcasts, audio, science communication, national park foundation

Season 3

December 17, 2024

3. Past, Present, and Future | Ferrying Frogs and Measuring Mice

Transcript

Past, Present, and Future

Ferrying Frogs and Measuring Mice

In the summer of eighteen-eighty … a group of men who called themselves the Champlain Society took the pulse of Mount Desert Island. Not yet called Acadia National Park… the Harvard students documented and collected plants.. birds… and insects all across the island… trekking from its rocky shore lines to its sub-alpine peaks. They kept track of weather patterns like temperature… barometric pressure… and humidity. The Champlain Society’s notes and journals tell us how strong the island's pulse was one hundred and thirty six years ago.

In nineteen nineteen… Florence Bascom… the first female geologist to write about Mount Desert Island… took Acadia’s pulse in a different way. During Bascom’s time… the park was known as Lafayette National Park… but the geology was the same. She described the island as a region of superb natural charm and of no small physiographic and geologic interest. Bascom was awestruck by the deep valleys of Somes Sound and Echo Lake. She reconstructed the island's ancient past… illustrating just how long Acadia’s heart had been beating.

Today… thirty two inventory and monitoring networks dot the country. Their scientists traverse rugged landscapes and venture into distant locations to better understand the resources of our National Parks. They track wildlife… count vegetation… test water quality… measure soil health… and much more.

Past and present research are in constant dialogue. Specimens and observations collected by scientists a hundred years ago give a glimpse of a natural world different from the present. But what happens when there’s a gap… when a particular indicator is missing. When the doctor takes your pulse but not your blood oxygen. It means you aren’t getting a full picture… the full extent of your health. When we look under rocks but not on the roads… when we count the shrews but not the mice.

Sea to Trees is brought to you by Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park. I’m Trevor Grandin. In this episode we’re getting hands on with frogs and mice. We’ll learn about two studies that are taking the pulse of amphibian and small mammal populations in Acadia and how their projects could help keep the park's heartbeat strong in a future that will not resemble the past.

Part one… frog and toad.

On a misty night in early May… Marisa Monroe and I… wide eyed and on alert…walked along Sieur De Monts road… scanning our headlamps from side to side and surrounded by the sound of spring peepers, searching for amphibians.

*frog noises and walking sounds*

Unsurprisingly… Marisa was the first to spot one of our slimy friends. She set down her clipboard and rolled up her sleeves. Instead of pointing it out right away she chided me to look a little closer.

{Monroe}: Do you see him? {Grandin}: Who? {Monroe}: Look closely! Find him. Keep looking. {Grandin}: Oh this little guy! He is blended in! *Laughing* {Monroe}: I know, he looks like a worm. These are hard to pick up. Hi! Oh my gosh, so beautiful. So I believe this is a… I believe it’s a red backed salamander. It’s a lead-phase, so it doesn’t actually have a red back… *fade*

This delightful salamander lives a dual life in Marisa’s mind – as a wonderful individual whose nightly routine includes basking on warm asphalt but also as one of hundreds of other salamanders whose presence on this specific road… on this specific night will provide valuable data in her research study that aims to protect them.

Marisa… an Acadia Science Fellow and graduate student at the University of Maine… is interested in the distribution and migration habits of Acadia’s amphibians. Along with her dedicated volunteers… she’s spent many of her nights in 2024… scouring the park’s roads… looking for some of its smallest and most porous creatures.

Many of the evenings start out in the same way… On a rainy night when the roads are saturated… volunteers throughout Acadia National Park descend upon their dedicated roadways… ready to tabulate toads.

*car door closing*

{Monroe}: We're wearing our safety vests, it's dark, it's in the park. There's really no streetlights out at these sites. So we put on our flashers, and we tried to stay really visible.

Flashlights and headlamps in tow… the volunteers write down site information on their data sheet like… date and start time…temperature… precipitation type… and road wetness

*writing on paper*

Then… the fun begins.

*helicopter noise* Like a search helicopter with a spotlight the volunteers start at the beginning of their stretch of road… marked by a small pink flag staked into the ground… and start to scan.

*walking and frog noises* {Monroe}: Here’s a spring peeper. Oop hello. Oop hello! We’ve got one here and do you know who this is? It’s an eastern newt. New species! {Grandin}: Oop, here we go! {Monroe}: Who’d ya see? Who’d ya see? Ooh! Hey, we’ve got a new species! Hello beautiful!

When an amphibian is found… the volunteer tallies it in the corresponding species box to indicate the number of individuals that were seen. After it’s been counted and appropriately fawned over… the volunteer will wet their hands and carefully ferry the amphibian to the side of the road it was facing.

Wet hands without any perfumes or moisturizers are best for picking up amphibians. Frogs… toads… and salamanders breathe through their skin and need to keep it wet to pull oxygen from the air. Skin products can transfer from the hands to the amphibian causing adverse reactions and trouble breathing. Vinyl and latex gloves carry the same risks of contamination. On top of chemical transfer… gloves could also dry out the amphibian's skin. Their sensitive respiratory systems is part of what makes them an important indicator species of wetland health.

{Monroe}: Sometimes it's not always clear which direction it wants to go. And if it looks like it can go by itself, we just let it sort of herd it over to the side of the road. And that's because we don't want to double count that amphibian as we come back from the other direction. And we also note any dead amphibians on the roads that have been run over by cars already that night.

Taking note of the dead amphibians on the roads is just as important as the live ones… because this project is more than a simple survey. It carries with it the hope to save these creatures from undue mortality. These frogs…salamanders… and toads are on the roads for two major reasons and both are explained by the animal’s life cycle. Time for a refresher!

*school bell ring*

The word amphibian comes from the ancient Greek roots amphi meaning double and bios meaning life.

Double life… an incredibly literal way to describe the journey of these slippery creatures. In the spring…toads and frogs wake up from their hibernations and lay their eggs in semi protected bodies of water… think ponds without predatory fish… freshwater wetlands… or seasonal vernal pools that fill up with spring rain or snow melt only to evaporate come summer.

Their eggs hatch and the tadpoles start life number one… in the water. They putter around with paddle shaped tails breathing through gills. Then… when the time comes… the juveniles leave their ponds and pools with newly grown arms and legs… making a mad dash to the forest where they will live out the majority of life number two.

Salamanders and newts can differ slightly from this order. Newts have an extra land stage called an eft… before they spend the rest of their adult lives back in the water they crawl around on land like an orange peel with legs. Some salamanders… like the red backed salamander… forgo the water entirely… preferring to lay their eggs inside fallen logs and under moist leaf litter.

So once again… what are all these amphibians doing on the roads? Being cold blooded creatures… they regulate their body temperature using the surrounding environment. Especially during the spring… when amphibians are waking up and thawing out… they need a quick way to get warm again.

Enter… asphalt. Even though the temperature may still be in the upper thirties… most roadways are exposed to sunlight throughout the day… absorbing and retaining its heat. As the sun sets and the air temperature drops… that heat in the pavement dissipates at a much slower rate… creating a natural warming pad perfect for amphibians to hunker down on.

Reason number two for their road affinity is explained through a more… reproductive lens.

{Monroe}: An amphibian might start in the forest like a spotted salamander. And then in the spring, they need to find each other and they need to be in an aquatic environment so they can lay their eggs and fertilize their eggs. So they often have to cross the road. And then, after they're done breeding and laying their eggs, they go back to the forest.

And then, while they are back in the forest their larval salamander, or if you're a frog or a tadpole, they're developing after they hatch from their eggs. And then in a few weeks, they have to leave the pond. And depending on where they want to go or need to go in order to forage for food, they might have to cross another road. So throughout the year, they're doing different things in order to survive and to grow up and to reproduce. And that puts them in conflict with roads often

So that means adults are crossing roads at least twice… once to lay their eggs in a pond or lake and another to high tail it back to their wooded homes. Study and assistance of that early spring migration is historically where much of the effort has gone to… helping the adults lay their eggs and get back across the road after.

Organizations across the country have held amphibian crossing events and supported monitoring networks for decades. When temperatures begin to rise in early spring… volunteers dawn their fluorescent vests and patrol the roadways…fill buckets with frogs… toads… and salamanders (rarely all at once) and ferry them safely to the other side.

Maine Big Night… one such amphibian monitoring organization… has been in operation since twenty-eighteen and has recorded more than twenty-thousand amphibians on the roads. But these early spring events… that focus on assisting the adults… leave a major victim of car strikes unaddressed – their babies.

Marisa and her volunteers have continued their monitoring all throughout the summer and well into the fall… not just during the adult migrations. She hopes that this long term monitoring captures not only the adults but also the juveniles that are left to cross the road all by themselves.

{Monroe}: Why I think that it’s really interesting and important is that even if we save all of the adults that are migrating in the spring to their breeding habitats, if we ignore all their juveniles when they leave the pools and they all get hit by cars their populations may still be at risk for decline or extirpation.

That term Marisa mentioned… extirpation… it means local extinction. It’s extinction on a much smaller scale… the loss of a population of red backed salamanders that once bred in a specific forest now leveled by urban development or the silencing of a once raucous wetland by the tires of a passing car. These once common animals could become uncommon or even rare.

*car door, car turning on*

{Goldfarb}: So you know, here in the US, we kill more than a million vertebrate animals, to say nothing of insects and arachnids, with our cars every single day, right? There's literally nothing that we do that kills more wild animals on land than drive.

That’s author Ben Goldfarb… whose book Crossing: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet underscores the effects that roads have on nature.

{Goldfarb}: We've all seen the dead white tailed deer or raccoon or a possum or gray squirrel by the side of the highway. And you know, of course, all of those individual deaths are tragic, but you know that the animals that we kill most frequently, logically enough, are also the most abundant ones. Right? White tailed deer are not going to go extinct because of roadkill.

For a long time… roadkill was considered collateral damage… an event that nature could balance easily…especially for amphibians whose clutch sizes can sometimes number in the thousands. But in practice… that’s not necessarily the case.

In 1995… biologist Lenore Fahrig and her colleagues published Effect of road traffic on amphibian density in the journal Biological Conservation. They sought to understand the effects of roadways on local amphibian populations. They surveyed three roads along the Rideau River near Ottawa, Canada with differing levels of traffic intensity… from low to high… within a similar wetland habitat. Their research practices included noting the number of dead frogs on the road and the intensity of frog vocalizations in the surrounding wetlands.

*frog croaks*

The data they collected…were shocking but not unforeseen.

The roads with lower traffic density… fewer cars driving by… had more dead frogs than higher traffic areas. Why? Because the populations in the high traffic areas had already been negatively impacted. There were fewer frogs crossing the roads because there were fewer frogs breeding in that location. They also heard fewer frogs on the high density roads. Fahrig and her colleagues underscored that cars can play a role in animal populations… in some instances seriously hurting them.

{Goldfarb}: And, you know, I think that in some ways we are very focused on the extinction crisis, right? We're in the middle of the sixth mass extinction. You always hear that, that phrase, and certainly that's a huge problem. But I think that an almost bigger issue, in some ways, is common species becoming increasingly rare, right, as those individual populations get extirpated.

And that’s what Marisa is trying to prevent with her research. As visitation to National Parks is trending up… including at Acadia… protecting the wildlife that call this island home is a top priority. With more visitors in the park and more cars on the road… the possibility of amphibian/automobile collisions rises greatly.

Acadia is covered in more than thirty miles of roads that connect culturally significant and visually stunning landmarks all across the island. The roads provide access to a number of wetlands… a habitat that makes up more than twenty percent of Acadia’s parkland. Some of these wetlands… like Great Meadow… are fed by freshwater streams… while some… like Bass Harbor Marsh… are salt marshes that ebb and flow with the tidal clock.

The fifteen sites that Marisa and her volunteers survey range in popularity from busy portions of Park Loop Road to silent stretches of Schoodic Peninsula. For every survey location… a volunteer carries with them a bright green data sheet printed on waterproof paper. They mark the age of the amphibian… adult or juvenile… whether it’s alive or dead… and its species.

There are thirteen different species of amphibian that have been documented in Acadia National Park and eighteen in the state of Maine. The American Toad makes up Acadia’s one lone toad species. There are six frog species that include the American bullfrog… green frog… gray tree frog… spring peeper… and

{Monroe}: We’ve got a new species! Hello beautiful! This is a pickerel frog, a very common frog and beautiful. So this frog sometimes gets confused for a leopard frog and if anyone sees a leopard frog in Acadia they should take a picture because we don’t actually have any photographic evidence that they are here.

There are six salamander species. The spotted salamander… red-backed salamander… northern dusky salamander… northern two lined salamander… and

{Monroe}: Oh! It’s a new species. This is a four toed salamander. See how he’s got this little pug nose. And it looks like there’s a little constriction at the base of his tale, right there. And then you can see that his tail looks like a different color than his body. And then her belly is a beautiful spotted salt and pepper. Beautiful belly. And they’ve got four toes on their back feet, one of the tiniest feet you’ll ever see.

The last salamander… the eastern newt… is commonly found waddling across wet roadways on spring nights… but not in the form one would expect. Newts have that one extra step in the middle of their larval and adult stages mentioned earlier called a Red Eft… E-F-T. Bright orange and slow moving… these critters are hard to miss.

{Monroe}: And then, do you know who this is? {Grandin}: No! {Monroe}: It’s an eastern newt. It’s actually his juvenile form, he’s a red eft. Uhh… he’s not sexually mature yet and then when he’s ready or she’s ready to be an adult they go to an aquatic habitat and they transform into a more olive green newt that looks completely different than this. Instead of this rounder tail it’ll have more of a paddle tail that’s more adapted to swimming. And then of course they also have their larval form where they have gills.

Although it’s perfectly safe to handle red efts… their bright coloring broadcasts an important message in the animal kingdom:

*morse code*

I am highly poisonous… you do not want to eat me. This tactic… called aposematism… is important for such a small and edible creature. Where some salamanders wear their toxicity on their sleeve… some fill an outsized role as food for other animals.

A recent article published in the journal Biological Letters found that the number of salamanders living in northeastern US forests is much higher than once thought. It suggested that the biomass of red backed salamanders in a given forest in the Northeast was higher than any other vertebrate present. These abundant salamanders provide an important food source for birds… snakes… and small mammals… but as we’ve heard… ubiquity does not spare a species from extirpation.

{Wheeler}: In wildlife biology and in the management of parks these thresholds for mass mortality events, and so whether that is a harbor seal die off, or whether that is a die off of crows or sea birds.

That’s Bik Wheeler… wildlife biologist at Acadia National Park. He’s one of the National Park Service managers that could benefit the most from Marisa’s study.

{Wheeler}: And so we have these thresholds for mass mortality events, and we don't have that for amphibians. And realistically, if we just apply those same thresholds to amphibians which are another vertebrate in the park, then every night would be a mass mortality event, right? Every night that they're moving on the roads would be a mass mortality event, which is something that we probably shouldn't ignore.

Sometimes in science… there’s a rift between the research and the application. How do you get from the study results and information to on the ground implementation? For managers like Bik… that’s what’s most exciting about Marisa’s study. Not only do they know the problem… amphibian’s getting hit by cars… but they also know the fix… less driving in high traffic migration areas.

{Wheeler}: Let's do the applied sciences stuff. Let's make the fixes. It's time to get out of the ivory tower and start getting on the ground and doing work. And I do appreciate that mentality, but certainly coming from a place based ecological perspective, like here at a park where our ivory tower is at ground level, right?... So that's what's been really exciting about this, is both to understand where and when mortality or migration is happening, so that we can mitigate that with different management strategies, but then also to understand, just as a the natural history of these different species, of which species are moving when, and in relationship to different weather events and to get the full picture is really greatest.

According to the United States Geological Survey’s State of the Amphibians… scientists predict an annual three point seven percent decrease in amphibian populations across the country. With declines already threatening thirty percent of the world's approximately seven thousand amphibian species… a hands off approach could see quote ‘the average amphibian species gone from half of the places where it now occurs in < 20 years.’ As far as park managers can tell… Acadia’s amphibian populations aren’t on the brink of collapse… but with global populations trending down and cars posing such an obvious an cause of mortality… conservation efforts are looking towards the future.

A little more than one eighth of US land is designated as protected and conserved. Two thousand and fifty threatened and endangered animals… plants… and fungi call that land home. And the overlap for those statistics is huge. National Parks and conservation areas across the country play an outsized role in preserving biodiversity and catching declines well before they become critical. That’s why it’s important to understand Acadia’s amphibians today… so we can better protect them tomorrow.

{Monroe}: Yeah, what’s really exciting about this project and why I’m excited to do it is that the park wants the data so they want to be able to do some sort of mitigation. Depending on what we find that could be maybe we close roads on certain nights if we can predict movements or we could possibly build a specially designed culvert for amphibians or maybe you continue with volunteer assisted migrations. But the park is interested in saving their amphibians. Which is exciting that there’s a lot of motivation behind this project.

That motivation could be the difference between a wetland teaming with life and a silent pond without frogs… a strong heartbeat and one that is starting to weaken… and there are researchers all across the park monitoring the strength of Acadia’s heartbeat. As we’ve just learned and will hear next… the parks smallest creatures play an outsized role in its success. From the amphibian pedestrians to the small mammals that run Acadia’s terrestrial kitchen.

Part 2: If you give a mouse a cookie.

*walking on gravel*

On an early morning in mid-June… I met up with a group of researchers in the parking lot of the Schoodic Woods campground. As we walked down one of the gravel paths that snake throughout the peninsula… we made a sudden turn directly into the woods.

*sounds of brush*

{Slabach}: Here, because of the habitat we’ll walk the lines together. So we’ll walk T1 and then we’ll turn around and walk T2. Feel free to ask questions. We’re all open books and they’ve been doing this for a while. You guys want to lead? It’s your line.

As we pushed through branches and swerved to avoid stepping on ferns… the researchers stopped every few yards… knelt down… and slapped their hands against little silver boxes… closing the front doors to these metal traps.

*snap, snap*

{Nguyen}: What time is it? {Slaback}: It is 5:13

This group of researchers is made up of College of the Atlantic professor and Second Century Stewardship Fellow Brittany Slabach and Trinity College students Dylan Nguyen and Genevieve Ellis… or as they’re known over their walkie talkies…

{Slabach}: So trail names – I’m Goose. That’s Sassquatch with two esses because she’s sassy, as you just heard, and that’s Shawty over there. *laughing*

The small rectangular traps they’re closing look like mobile homes for mice… and for a lack of better words that’s exactly what they are. Filled with a synthetic polyfill and a tasty snack of peanut butter… bird seed… and mealworms… this research team is in search of small mammals.

We walked along one of two transects in Schoodic Woods. Dylan and Genevieve checked each trap for a capture and closed any that were still open. Since many of their target species are partially nocturnal… they set up their traps in the evening… let them sit overnight… and check them early in the morning.

*snap snap*

And after several empty traps… we find the first one with a closed door…

{Slabach}: This is fourteen. {Nguyen}: Capture {Slabach}: What kind of friend? {Nguyen}: I can not see due to the polyfill {Slabach}: Stinky one

Peering into the trap… the rodent's identity is uncovered.

{Slabach}: Hi buddy! That looks to be a southern red backed vole and that looks to be a new capture. Okay! Let’s work this guy out. Okay, so capture and a large

Taking off her backpack… Brittany takes out a plastic… see-through briefcase filled with scientific gadgets and gizmos. Tube scales… ear tagging equipment… and syringes mixed with rulers… plastic bags… and small zip ties.

{Slabach}: If we start getting a lot of captures that’s when we’d split up and check lines and we’ll get an idea of how many captures we have and we make a game plan. Our number one concern at all times is the well being of the organisms. I didn’t see an ear tag so I’m gonna get one ready Dillon. So it’s oh-five-three-five, this is Schwoods, tee-one, station fourteen, large Sherman. Hold off on the species till I get it out. The tag number is eight-nine-one.

Medical gloves on her hands… Brittany empties the contents of the trap… vole and all… into a gallon size plastic bag.

{Slabach}: So I don’t see an ear tag and I don’t see a rip in the ear.

These guys can rip out their ear tags sometimes. So this is a southern red backed vole. It's interesting if you read the field guide so they'll say they have more of a blunt nose. Their external pinnae, their ears here, they’re not as large as deer mice and they have a shorter tail.

So these guys are typically species found mostly in old growth forests. They’re not great climbers… We’ve got a scrotal male. We had a pregnant female and I told you there had to at least be one more… I know, I know.

They weigh the animal by clipping the bag… with the vole inside… to a tube scale then weighing the bag again when they’ve let the vole go. Grasping the vole by the nape of the neck… like a cat does her kittens… Brittany takes measurements of the major body parts.

At minimum… Brittany’s crew measures the organism's weight and various body lengths. If it’s a new capture… an ear tag is attached. As much data as possible is taken but stress levels and cooperation are always taken into account.

{Slabach}: We do take genetic samples. The target for that is deer mice because you cannot tell the species apart phenotypically. A lot of times when you get your hands on an organism you try and get all of the information you can. That's why we take body measurements, we take weight, we take hind foot, ear length, tail length, those are all standard measurements.

Dr. Slabach’s work here in Schoodic Woods… laying out traps and coaxing some of Acadia’s smallest residents inside… is part of a larger rodent survey happening in the park's lowest and highest places. The question at the center of the research is human disturbance and how it affects Acadia’s small mammals. But disturbance can take many different forms. That’s why there are two branches to Brittany’s research.

Branch number one: the Schoodic Peninsula and Schoodic Woods.

The northern half of the Schoodic Peninsula is a relatively newer part of Acadia National Park and was selectively logged for red spruce before the Schoodic Woods campground and visitors center were built in twenty-fifteen. That means there’s a distinct line between the selectively logged… disturbed… shrubby habitat of the north and the undisturbed old growth habitat closer to Schoodic Point which has been protected for much longer.

Brittany and her team are trying to understand how historical disturbances… like logging and human recreation might affect the present state of a forest. That takes the form of trapping rodents in these differing but neighboring habitats to understand what animals are present… how they are moving between the two habitats… and what habitats they prefer.

{Slabach}: There’s been a lot of questions that have come up about these competitive interactions but also if we’re thinking about this over the long term and really the broad question of how historical landscape disturbance can influence in our case small mammal population distribution and small mammal ecology, to me that’s a really interesting question. If we think about how forests are changing, what they look like now and what that past landscape disturbance looked like and how that could be influencing what they look like now we can start to look at projection in the future.

Branch number two: Restoration efforts on Acadia’s mountains

Restoration projects at the top of Cadillac… Sargent… and Penobscot mountains… supported by Friends of Acadia and Schoodic Institute in partnership with the National Park Service… are trying to revegetate and regrow sensitive plant communities that have been trampled by heavy foot traffic and off-trail hiking. Soil and seeds are trekked up the mountain and spread on historic plant plots to promote growth… but that seeding is bringing new resources like burlap… seeds… and soil… into already established habitats.

To understand how these small mammals are interacting with the restoration efforts… Brittany and her team set traps on two mountains with active restoration projects: Sargent and Cadillac and one mountain without restoration efforts that would act as the control or unchanged habitat… Pemetic Mountain.

I caught up with her after our field excursion to talk about it.

{Slabach}: We set cameras on this, on the summits, because we're interested in just what uses them in general. And we have some cameras out on some of the vegetation plots. We have lots of pictures of mice stealing seeds from the vegetation plots and, doing telemetry, we saw them out and about on just bald rock when like 25 mile an hour winds at 1130 at night, just munching on some sandwort, which just provides a totally different view in my brain of how hardy these individuals are.

That hardiness is a valued asset when almost every predator wants a piece of you. Mice and other small mammals are a major provider in the larger food web. They make up the diet of birds like hawks and owls… snakes… and even land mammals like otters and fisher cats. They, too, play an outsized role in helping managers understand the wider health of the park.

{Wheeler}: Everybody loves to eat them. Everybody gets diseases from them. Everybody is, you know, playing a role with these.

Wildlife biologist Bik Wheeler again.

{Wheeler}: and so they're really critical to understanding small mammals, and their relationships and dynamics. Is critical to understanding what is available and what is going on with other species that interact with them, which is widespread, and so the importance of a mouse is almost always overlooked.

Not anymore. Though this is only the second year of trapping for Brittany and her team… the preliminary data is already uncovering some interesting information about small mammal populations at the top of these mountain habitats.

{Slabach}: But on the summits, summits that either are actually being restored or have restoration activities of some sort on them, it's a much higher abundance just overall capture numbers compared to those that are not. And so whether this has something to do with the restoration itself or if it's a year factor, we're not sure, right, correlation does not equal causation. We say that all the time in science, but, I mean, there's just a stark difference in those and so that's something that we're really interested in.

Then comes the dreaded question for any research project… what is this used for? Where does the information that comes from this study go and how does it get used? Much like Marisa’s project… Brittany wants the work she does to have real world uses for management and conservation.

{Slabach}: Conducting research for the sake of research is fascinating and fun, but it needs to be useful. And I want to provide information that we can use, whether it's to better understand species distribution pattern, ecology, behavior, management decisions, right? Like, let's use this data so it can inform conservation and management.

For her peninsula trapping she wants to improve predictive models that could help us understand the future of animal populations. If you know what habitats and biomes certain animals prefer and thrive in… coupling that with historic disturbance information could better articulate the future of local species.

{Slabach}: If we start to think about how forests are changing if we understand what they look like now and what that past landscape disturbance looked like and how that could be influencing what they look like now we can start to think about projection in the future. I want a forest that has all different types of species in it, I want lots of red backed voles, they do something very different than peromyscus do, right! And it’s good for the forest, so trying to piece out what is it about these sites that these organisms are really interested in, what’s attracting them and then also what these competitive interactions might be if any is something that we’re interested in.

The management implications for Brittany’s mountain trapping research is in dialogue with how we decide to restore an ecosystem. Revegetating struggling plant communities is an undeniably good thing but how that revegetation happens and what communities it affects is an important piece of the puzzle.

{Slabach}: And you know, if there is evidence, after a couple years that maybe it's the restorations resulting in a non-target kind of animal issue, that's something that I hope that we would consider, right?

Back in the woods… Brittany, her crew, and I came upon another trap with its front hatch already closed. Excitedly… we gathered around the small metal box. Gloves on and plastic bag at the ready… Brittany peered into the trap expectantly. Tipping the contents into the bag she says…

{Slabach}: This is a woodland jumping mouse.

Swimming inside the plastic bag is an orange mouse with long hind feet and an even longer tail. It wiggled from edge to edge of the bag looking for an exit.

{Slabach}: Bright orange and it’s got that dark mohawk and it looks like it’s a new capture. So you see that long beautiful tail and it looks like we’ve got a kink in the tail guys. So the woodlands have this white spot on the tail compared to the meadow. You can see those beautiful hind feet and they’re just feisty.

As the jumping mouse slid around the plastic bag… Brittany hooked the tube scale to the top and tried to measure the mouse's weight.

{Slabach}: I know, I know, I know. Thirty two grams. One of their escape mechanisms is they jump. These guys can actually jump, I believe, up to three meters. This is gonna be a smushed body length, Dylan. This guy’s moving quite a bit on me. So yeah, fifty for body, put in the notes please that it’s smushed. Let’s see if we can get this guy out.

Opening up the bag and dipping her gloved hand inside Brittany… pinched his back… and carefully raised him into the fresh air. She clutched her ruler and started to inspect the mouse.

{Slabach}: Nope, nope, nope. He can turn on you with those big ‘ol.

As Brittany’s spoke… the mouse twisted its body in her hand and like a swimmer at the starting block placed its two hind feet against her palm.

{Slabach}: Okay, bag please, bag please, bag please, bag please, bag please, bag please. So these guys can really turn on you if they get that hind foot on you and that’s why you gotta keep a hold of their tail.

After a few more measurements… the team decided to put an ear tag on him and let him go. Leaping from Brittany’s hand… the mouse dove into the brush and disappeared with a series of hops.

Beyond the research and data… the communities that interact with these studies add a dimension to already very impactful research projects. Brittany and her team started an Instagram account called The Little Box Project… posting photos from the field that include inquisitive racoons manhandling mammal traps and team selfies from successful summit days. Since her mountain traps are sometimes found by curious hikers… Brittany wrote her name and project information on every metal box and often gets texts or calls asking questions about the project.

{Slabach}: There's so many people who would stop and kind of ask questions, and some of them would see our traps out, and they'd holler at us, like, what are these yours, you know? And I had three wonderful students working with me, and they would always get really excited to answer questions and show them our telemetry gear. And you know, we had really great, wonderful conversations with lots of people. And so we're just, you know, the science education piece is really important to me, and I think it's also really something I want my students to participate in.

Then there’s Marisa’s project that’s almost entirely driven by willing community members… and citizen scientists who often live just down the road from their research plots. Some volunteers also came with valuable knowledge of where they’ve seen major amphibian migrations in the past.

{Monroe}: I'm not from Mount Desert Island. I'm not even from Maine. And the people involved in this work are, I mean, most of them are from the island. And I've even heard of amphibian crossing sites from them. But they are the members of their community that are sort of involved in this work. So it's been really nice to have them so heavily involved like I get to build more of a partnership than me coming into their island and doing work all by myself.

Those communities… whether they’re made up of plants… birds… or people… make Acadia’s heartbeat stronger. Through the years we’ve taken the pulse of the park in many ways… by looking under leaves… searching the skies… or reading the rocks. For over one hundred and fifty years park managers and researchers have been painting a picture and finding out what makes Acadia National Park keep ticking. Now it’s time to see the park through the eyes of its smallest and most influential creatures.

The legacy of Acadia spans many lifetimes but one universal truth can be identified… the same heart continues to beat. The same rocks tumble on the shore… the same trees stipple the mountain sides. Marisa and Brittany’s research projects are helping managers better understand how our hearts can beat in rhythm with Acadia’s… how our priorities of stewardship and protection can better serve the land. Acadia’s heart will continue to pump regardless of our presence… but whether that beating includes bullfrog songs and the patter of tiny feet against hollow ground will be up to us.

Thank you for listening to Sea to Trees, a podcast from Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park. Acadia National Park is on the traditional lands of the Wabanaki, People of the Dawn. This show was made by Trevor Grandin, the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early Career Fellow in Science Communication. Catherine Schmitt is our senior editor. The cover art was created by Sarah Luchini.

Special thanks to Marisa Monroe, Ben Goldfarb, Brittany Slabach, and Bik Wheeler for sharing their expertise with us.

As a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, Schoodic Institute inspires science, learning, and community for a changing world. To learn more visit schoodicinstitute.org.

{Monroe}: What sound does a newt make walking? {Grandin}: I don’t know, what sound does a newt make walking? {Monroe}: No, I thought maybe you could pick it up on your microphone! {Grandin}: Oh! I thought you were telling an amphibian joke!

Description: During warm, wet nights in early spring, thousands of amphibians shake off their winter grogginess and take to the roads. Hardy small mammals scamper along the forest floor and make extensive homes within the cracks of Acadia’s mountains. Some of the park’s smallest creatures, that play outsized roles in nature’s food web, are also some of its most mysterious. Which of Acadia’s roadways sees the most traffic from Spring Peepers? What about amphibian traffic the rest of the year? How are the park’s deer mice interacting with restoration projects on Sargent Mountain? Learn about two survey projects asking these questions and more. We find out what it’s like to take the pulse of Acadia National Park on Season 3 Episode 3 of Sea to Trees.

Web Links:

Maine Big Night https://mainebignight.org/

Crossings by Ben Goldfarb https://www.bengoldfarb.com/crossings

Little Box Project

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/littleboxproject

Effect of road traffic on amphibian density by Lenore Fahrig, et al. https://escholarship.org/content/qt22t1h3q1/qt22t1h3q1.pdf

Study finds salamanders are surprisingly abundant in northeastern forests https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/study-finds-salamanders-are-surprisingly-abundant-northeastern-forests

During warm, wet nights in early spring, thousands of amphibians shake off their winter grogginess and take to the roads. Hardy small mammals scamper along the forest floor and make extensive homes within the cracks of Acadia’s mountains. Some of the park’s smallest creatures, that play outsized roles in nature’s food web, are also some of its most mysterious. Learn about two survey projects asking what it’s like to take the pulse of Acadia National Park on Season 3 Episode 3 of Sea to Trees.

Episode Tags: acadia, acadia national park, maine, citizen science, nature, science, schoodic institute, research learning center, podcast, podcasts, audio, science communication, national park foundation

November 20, 2024

2. Past, Present, and Future | How Fame Changed MacArthur’s Warblers

Transcript

Title: Past, Present, and Future

How Fame Changed MacArthur’s Warblers

Transcript:

On an early morning in late June, Schoodic Institute’s Catherine Schmitt and I stood on the side of a busy road on Mount Desert Island. As cars rumbled by in pursuit of a parking space and chance to see a lighthouse, College of the Atlantic student Fiona Young explained her research process for the 2024 field season.

{Young}: “So it's a snapshot method, so I'll stand by a point like this one, usually there's less cars. And listen for three minutes. And then after three minutes, I record the location of all the birds using bearing and distance, which is estimated. And, yeah. And then I repeat that for all the points…”

Starting at five AM and surrounded by spruce and fir trees, she pushes through the evergreen forest with a GPS and compass in hand. She stands at one of her seventeen sites throughout the forest and attentively listens for specific species of warblers and her identification skills are wicked impressive. During our roadside conversation Fiona’s head was on a swivel, noting each bird that sang around us.

{Young}:“So there’s a black and white warbler and there’s a Black-Throated Green warbler, the Black-throated Green warbler is in the genus that I’m recording Setophaga but the Black and White warbler is not. That’s also different from the genus that Macarthur had been studying because it was reclassified.”

That MacArthur Fiona mentioned is Robert MacArthur, a man who walked these same woods almost seventy years ago and who- despite his short life- changed the field of ecology.

Sea to Trees is brought to you by Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park. I’m Trevor Grandin. In this episode we’ll learn about one of ecology's most influential studies that happened right here in Acadia, the man behind the study, and how the research of the past is influencing the research of the present.

In the summer of nineteen-fifty six Yale PHD student Robert Macarthur stood in a spruce-fir forest in Acadia National Park. As he peered to the sky, streaks of yellow and orange darted through the treetops. Warblers- like feathered gymnasts- jumped from branch to branch, dangled upside down, and leaped in pursuit of insect prey.

MacArthur’s birdwatching was more than a hobby. He was listening and looking for five specific species of warblers that occurred in mature spruce and fir forests – the Cape May {Cape May Song}, Yellow-rumped {Yellow Rumped Song}, Black-throated Green {Black-Throated Green Song}, Blackburnian {Blackburnian Song}, and Bay-breasted warblers {Baybreasted Song}.

All of this birdwatching was spurred by a theory Macarthur was eager to explore – that theory was called Gause’s principle, also known as the principle of competitive exclusion. Michael Kaspari from the University of Oklahoma explains it.

{Kaspari} “Gauss’ law basically said or suggested that species have to be different in an ecological way, and how they forage, where they nest, what their predators and parasites are, they have to be different in a profound way in order for them to coexist together. Basically, it was one of the first theories of what we now call biodiversity.”

For example, in the early nineteenth century, gray squirrels were introduced into the United Kingdom. At the time, the UK already had a dominant squirrel species- the red squirrel. After the gray squirrels' introduction, they spread rapidly. Red squirrel populations plummeted. Because these two squirrels are relatively similar in their ecological niche, competitive exclusion underscores why they can’t exist together. Red squirrels are endangered throughout much of the United Kingdom.

When the theory was first introduced at the turn of the twentieth century many ecologists and researchers were skeptical about its validity. Gause's law was often only supported in theoretical or lab based settings, rarely observed in natural ecosystems. In fact, some species and ecosystems run counter to the competitive exclusion idea all together.

The popular “paradox of the plankton” describes the situation that many ocean plankton find themselves in- a plethora of species all eating the same food in the same environments. Somehow, they get along just fine, coexisting without competition taking hold. Prior to the nineteen-fifties, researchers also pointed at the Eastern warblers as a special case in the conversation surrounding competitive exclusion.

{Kaspari} “The warblers of the east were just utterly gorgeous, utterly captivating. They literally looked like Christmas tree ornaments. They were just painted in different ways… And so MacArthur would hear from other ornithologists and say all the Gauss, that's crazy. That's because look at the Warblers, five things that look are just colored differently, but seem to be doing exactly the same thing. So this is an exception.”

MacArthur, a talented birder himself, saw these warblers as a perfect subject to test the mechanics of Gause’s principle. For two field seasons he sat in a folding chair in the spruce/fir forests of Mount Desert Island and watched the trees. In a relatively low tech field MacArthur went about his research in a way birders and ecologists could fully understand. With a pair of binoculars in one hand and a stopwatch in the other he took note of species numbers, where they were in the spruces, how much time they spent there, and what they were doing.

Cape May…top of the tree… terminal zone… foraging Yellow-rumped… bottom of the tree… base zone… calling

Slowly but surely MacArthur’s hypothesis started to take shape. He thought that the warblers were employing niche partitioning when they foraged for food. The birds were dividing the trees into their own ecological niches. Each species spent a bulk of their time foraging in their own specialized parts of the tree, a practice that aligned them with the ideals of competitive exclusion.

Some species preferred to forage in the very tops of the trees where the new growth was happening. Others spent most of their time at the very bottom, picking through the lowest branches and scratching through the underbrush. Despite living and coexisting in the same cafeteria and often eating the same food, these birds were sitting at different tables saving them the trouble of major competition.

In the October nineteen-fifty eight issue of Ecology MacArthur published his “Population Ecology of Some Warblers of Northeastern Coniferous Forests” in and shifted the field of ecological science. That might sound like hyperbole, but the reception of his paper was one of raucous applause. MacArthur had taken a relatively well-known, partially-disputed theory and went about testing it in a clear and concise manner.

That clarity is owed in part to his undergraduate and graduate schooling. MacArthur, a mathematician at heart, injected statistics and measurable data into a field that, at the time, was dominated by purely observational study.

Dr. Kaspari explains it’s the difference between deduction and induction. Ecology had often been all about induction, creating stories and explaining the world through pure observation. MacArthur went about his work in a very deductive way, taking assumptions about the world, creating predictions based on those assumptions, and collecting data with those predictions in mind. He brought ecology much closer to the hypothesis based research we see today.

{Kaspari} “And what MacArthur did was say, ‘Well, if Gauss is going to be useful to us, we need to be able to dissect that hypothesis, that verbal hypothesis, literally one sentence into its component parts; put mathematical relationships in there, extract predictions, and then go off and test and that is really a much better definition of what the MacArthurian paradigm turned out to be… So he really did bring that toolkit in a way that I think that lifted everybody up and although people don't talk about much about MacArthur’s warblers anymore, except as kind of an iconic study, most ecologists have now incorporated some of his basic fundamental mathematics into the field.”

The finding of niche partitioning in warblers and the incorporation of experimental design in his study weren’t the only reasons for MacArthur’s success. His writing style created an interesting journey of discovery unmarred by jargon and statistics.

And choosing Acadia National Park as a field site tied MacArthur to the park’s science history, a rich and vibrant lineage that reaches all the way back to well before the park’s founding and continues to influence research initiatives to this day. Enter Bik Wheeler, wildlife biologist in Acadia National Park. His introduction to MacArthur’s study happened like many other young undergraduates.

{Wheeler}: “I first formally read it when I was in undergraduate school. I think that it's one of those formative studies that's been so ubiquitous in science literacy, at least in my era, where I think that I was exposed to it far before I knew it even existed. And so thinking back I know I probably did have a high school textbook that had, like the diagram and I probably did have middle school lessons that were indirectly referencing these types of theories that came about from this one sort of origin seed.”

So when it came time for his masters thesis Bik chose to revisit MacArthur’s warblers. In the years since the publishing of“Population Ecology of Some Warblers…” the study hadn’t been directly replicated. Some tried to apply the same methods onto different theories, some applied the same theory onto different species in different locations, some even replicated the study close by to the original site, but no one had directly replicated the study at the same place with the same birds. And replication is a major part of the scientific method.

{Wheeler}: “You know there's not a lot of glory in repeat studies that confirm findings. But really those are the unsung heroes, because those are the ones that really allow us to settle in understandings and so if I had whatever commodity that's important to people, let's say citations or something, if I had a million citations that I could just give out to papers, I would do all of the repeat method papers that didn't get the proper exposure that they deserve, because what's the story there? Okay, they did the same thing. They found the same thing. You know, let's not do a press release about that. But that's the important stuff.”

Although direct replication was the hope, one big, recent scientific change would make it difficult.

Science flashback!

The year is twenty-eleven and you’re at a meeting of the American Ornithological Union.

The organization has just decided to reclassify the scientific names of some warblers, big deal.

The reclassification was spurred by new DNA research that revealed some warblers were more closely related than first thought. So, what does the reclassification look like?

It consolidated and created entirely new genuses. The changes were wide ranging but one modification seemed to be more influential than the others. Before the twenty-eleven change, the genus Dendroica, home of the wood warblers, had twenty-seven individual species in it. Dendroica had some of the most well known warblers in its genus like the yellow-rumped and cape-may warbler. Also before the change, the genus Setophaga had one lone species- Setophaga reticula, the American Redstart.

Based on DNA data these two genuses were merged to better articulate the relationship between them. Every wood warbler was now reclassified.

End flashback!

Apart from ornithologists and bird watchers, who cares? Why does the reclassification matter to Bik’s study? Well, the five birds that MacArthur was observing in the 1950s had been part of the genus Dendroica. Now in twenty-fourteen, Dendroica was no more and the new genus was even bigger. There were birds breeding in MacArthur’s research area that were even more closely related than he knew at the time leaving a large piece of the niche partitioning story untold. Maybe these unaccounted for birds played a part in the resource hierarchy that MacArthur wasn’t seeing.

Not only were the bird names different, but the birds themselves were different. Some species didn’t breed in that forest anymore and new ones had entered. On top of that, changes in forest composition turned the study site, once dominated by white spruce, into a mostly red spruce forest. All these changes led Bik to reconsider the phrase “repeat study.”

{Wheeler}: “I don't call it a repeat study, because we're talking about different trees. We're talking about different warblers. We are talking about the same soil. That's what we've got. We’ve got different times. We do have the same methodology, and so we have some consistencies, but we do also have so much that's changed. And so it's really a revisit and looking at what's changed, and trying to understand those changes, both from an ecological species interaction perspective and also the context of that social component.”

During his study, Bik observed four warbler species. Two carried over from MacArthur’s study, the yellow rumped and black throated green warbler, and two were unique to his study, the Magnolia Warbler (Magnolia song) and Northern Parula (Parula song). Bik’s field work took place during the breeding seasons of twenty-fourteen and twenty-fifteen. Using MacArthur’s same methodology Bik was looking at different birds among different trees. And after the field work, Bik’s data illustrated that. The data pointed to a breakdown in partitioning. That means the warblers weren’t holding to the distinct foraging sections MacArthur had observed. {Wheeler}: And so what I was finding was a lot more overlap in what zones that the warblers were using. because even in the original study, the sampling was from multiple trees, and it was creating zonations of each tree and understanding how much overlap or partitioning there was between species utilizations of that resource. And what I saw repeating the same methodology was a much higher overlap, sort of like a collapse in that partitioning, if you will.”

Maybe the partitioning played a bigger role with the populations and forest makeup MacArthur was observing but as certain warbler species stopped coming back and the trees changed Gause's Law lost its hold. Which begs the question, how are there so many warbler species? What are the factors that allow so many different warblers to coexist with similar needs? Bik has theories.

{Wheeler}: “It's like a really hard job to be a warbler. There's not too many of them, basically, right? Because for them to have to partition resources, to not be able to coexist, to have competition between species be so intense that they can't coexist, there needs to be limited resources and so many warblers. I do think that resources are becoming more and more limited, but also warblers are becoming more and more limited.”

Interrupting Bik for just a moment, it is really hard to be a warbler. The decline in bird populations comes from many different angles. Habitat loss and degradation spurred by human development, in both North and South Americas, is constricting breeding and wintering areas. And more erratic and sustained temperature swings are shifting bird ranges creating new interspecies interactions that historically haven’t occurred. Climate change is also contributing to something called phenological mismatch. When earlier springs cause migration patterns and resource abundance to become out of sync causing warblers to arrive at stop-over and breeding grounds well after peak food collecting time causing them to fly further without food, risking exhaustion, predation, or limited breeding.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Initiatives and intentional conservation efforts are yielding positive results. Some bird populations, like waterfowl and wetland birds, are holding steady or rising thanks to policy changes and international partnerships to protect them and their habitat, showing that changes can be made. Back to Bik and his explanation of why there are so many warbler species.

{Wheeler}: “There's also a few foundational differences, one being interactions between species, is also, by definition, less than interactions within species. And so we get a lot of these territorial interactions and species and interspecies and intraspecies dominance hierarchies. So there's a lot at play as far as social interactions.”

“And then, you know, it's just a really tough life to be a migratory, neotropical migrant, to have to make these migrations twice a year, to have to be in all of these different landscapes and utilize those resources, and then raise the young. So it's, it's kind of this amazing challenge that we have any warblers at all, let alone warblers that are competing so intensely that they're out competing each other.”

So if a landscape and habitat can change that drastically in only sixty years, what will it look like after Bik’s study and how will the data change?

That’s where Fiona Young reenters. As an upcoming senior at College of the Atlantic, Fiona was looking for something to do in the summer of 2024. Her criteria were simple, outside and with birds. Her professor mentioned that the ten year mark of Bik’s field season was coming up and how cool it would be if someone could recreate it once again to get an updated idea of breeding numbers. Fiona said, “Sign me up.”

{Fiona}: “I said, okay, and the three of us met and talked about it. And definitely made me nervous, because, you know, it has this whole hype around it, but it was, it was really cool to feel like I was following a chain of scientists doing really cool stuff.”

From early June to mid-July, Fiona stood in the forest listening to birds five hours a day two days a week. Now that her field season is over and she’s been able to give a cursory glance at her data, Fiona’s preliminary findings complement and differ from Bik’s twenty-fourteen study in interesting ways. Overall, different species are breeding. Three of the four breeding species that Bik observed in twenty-fourteen carried over into Fiona’s study and only two out of MacArthur’s five species were still there meaning some species aren’t stopping in these woods at all and once again different warblers are taking their place.

But Fiona’s experience recreating MacArthur’s study went beyond the data and statistics. As she started her research, the early morning bushwacking seemed like a less than ideal way to spend her last summer as an undergraduate. Unsurprisingly, those feelings faded and a greater appreciation came to the surface.

{Young}: The first few times I went out, to be honest, I had a hard time. I mean, it's early, there's a lot of places where you [are], physically, pushing through things. And even though I was like, ‘Yes, this is something I like doing. I'm doing it for the birds. They're beautiful. It's nice to be outside.’ But, you know, I wish I wasn't pushing around sticks in the woods right now. And I think that that attitude kind of subsided as I did it more and on the very last survey, it was a really cool feeling, because I realized, ‘Oh, I feel kind of sentimental about this place.’

Maybe that’s the feeling that MacArthur had as he was pushing through the woods looking up at the warblers overhead. A sense of sentimentality for such a unique ecosystem. From MacArthur in nineteen-fifty six, to Bik Wheeler in twenty-fourteen, to Fiona Young in twenty-twenty four. A scientific history anchored in the same Acadia forest by some of the same birds. A scientific chain of discovery trying to explain the natural world and its beauty.

For his warbler paper MacArthur won awards and accolades continuing a string of influential research he’d been conducting throughout his academic career. In his book Song of the Dodo, David Quammen describes MacArthur’s prospects as a young researcher.

{Quammen}: “Young MacArthur was a hot prospect. He possessed the right combination of talents and ambitions to make a big impact at that particular time in that particular field. He was formidably bright, restless, almighty, curious, innovative, and mathematically proficient. He loved the natural world, especially birds, but he had no interest in spending his life as a descriptive field naturalist. He cared about ideas and deep mechanisms, about order and explanation, not just about creatures and landscapes. He was eager to change the very character of ecology.”

And looking back MacArthur ended up doing just that. Shortly after his warbler paper was published he met Edward O. Wilson, an ecologist and ant specialist who MacArthur became great friends with. Working together Wilson and MacArthur published a cornerstone piece of research in nineteen-sixty seven called The Theory of Island Biogeography. It hypothesized that islands maintain an equilibrium of plant and animal species through extirpations, or local extinctions, and new introductions.

After graduation, MacArthur’s academic career was spent as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton working closely with collaborators and colleagues. In nineteen-seventy two, MacArthur learned that he had renal cancer and his work went into hyperdrive. He compiled his life’s work into the book Geographical Ecology: Patterns in the Distribution of Species and published it later that year. Robert MacArthur died soon after at the age forty-two.

A year after his death the Ecological Society of America awarded MacArthur the Eminent Ecologist award and his friend E.O. Wilson wrote the acknowledgement. He included one of MacArthur’s own quotes:

MacArthur was a scientist’s scientist, to whom gifted biologists of all ages turned for advice and encouragement. “Doing science,” he {MacArthur} wrote, “is not such a barrier to feeling or such a dehumanizing influence as it is often made out. It does not take the beauty from nature. The only rules of {the} scientific method are honest observations and accurate logic. To be great science it must also be guided by a judgment, almost an instinct, for what is worth studying. No one should feel that honesty and accuracy guided by imagination have any power to take away nature’s beauty.”

MacArthur’s work changed the field of biogeography and set a new course for what ecology could look like. Ecology, having relied heavily on the cataloging and observation of natural history, was blooming into the predictive and theory driven discipline it had the potential to be. Those contributions live on through the work of Bik and Fiona as well as professors and instructors like The University of Oklahoma’s Michael Kaspari.

{Kaspari}: “So I use MacArthur mainly to show what a multivariate, multitudinous mind can do to advance a whole field with one paper, which is largely fieldwork from the library and from a lawn chair, doing what ecologists love to do, and that is, watch critters. I think it's a lovely story by someone who we lost at 40 years old and again, one of the great minds in the field and it's always good to show students. Look at this. He did this as a graduate student. You know, you don't have to be around for a long time to make a big contribution. You just have to have a different perspective.”

It’s easy, in science, to get wrapped up in the newest, shiniest discovery. As an ever changing and evolving discipline, theories and research are always being overridden, tooled with and reworked. Not often does a piece of research completely alter the protocols and norms of a field of study and even less often does that research come from a small stand of trees in a national park. In a world that’s hurdling forward by leaps and bounds, looking into the past for a little help could uncover and explain the present we live in, as long as we’re willing to listen.

At the end of our visit with Fiona Catherine asked her,

{Schmitt}: “Do you have a favorite site?” {Young}: “I think J8 might be my favorite site, because it's closest to the cliffs. And the other day, I saw scoters there, and you can hear the bells. And it's really nice to come out of the woods after two hours and just look at the ocean for a second, and we go ‘ahhh.’” {Schmitt}: “Can we go there?” {Young}: “Yeah we can.” {Schmitt}: “Do you have time?” {Young}: “I do have time.”

*walking and brushing through branches*

We pushed through spruce branches, wadded into smatterings of sheep laurel, and vaulted over the trunks of long-dead trees. After about ten minutes of trudging south,

{Schmitt}: “Yeah, I can see why you like this site.” {Young}: “You kind of just have to stop for a second.”

We stood and listened.

Join us for the next episode as we move from the past to the present where we’ll try and understand the human disturbances affecting critters all throughout Acadia National Park. From the late-night amphibian pedestrians traversing the park's roads,

{Trevor}: “Ope, here’s another guy! Or is it a worm?” {Marisa}: “He’s like, ‘I’m a worm!’”

to the furry mice that scamper along its trails.

{Brittany}: “Bag please, bag please, bag please, bag please, bag please! These guys can turn really easily if they get that hind leg on you.”

Thank you for listening to Sea to Trees, a podcast from Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park. Acadia National Park is on the traditional lands of the Wabanaki, People of the Dawn. This show was made by Trevor Grandin, the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early Career Fellow in Science Communication. Catherine Schmitt is our senior editor. The cover art was created by Sarah Luchini.

Special thanks to Dr. Michael Kaspari, Bik Wheeler, and Fiona Young for sharing their expertise with us. A very big thank you to David Quammen for providing voice over. Many thanks Laura Sebastianelli and the Schoodic Notes project for the bulk of the bird sounds. The cape may warbler call was recorded by Gregory Budney and is stored in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Macaulay Library.

As a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, Schoodic Institute inspires science, learning, and community for a changing world. To learn more visit schoodicinstitute.org.

Episode Description:

In 1956, Robert MacArthur sat in a spruce-fir forest of Acadia National Park and tried to understand the truth behind warbler diversity. How could there be so many different species coexisting, when theory seeks to crown “one warbler to rule them all?” Learn about MacArthur’s study, how it changed the field of ecology, and the scientists revisiting his work over half a century later on Season 3 Episode 2 of Sea to Trees.

Reference Links:

Knowing Your Warblers: Thoughts on the 50th Anniversary of Macarthur by Michael Kaspari = https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/spruce-woods-warblers-revisited-60-years-later-the-cast-of-characters-has-changed/

Spruce-Woods Warblers Revisited: 60 Years Later, the Cast of Characters Has Changed by Irby Lovette = https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/spruce-woods-warblers-revisited-60-years-later-the-cast-of-characters-has-changed/

Schoodic Notes – Bird Sounds of Acadia = https://schoodicnotes.blog/

In 1956, Robert MacArthur sat in a spruce-fir forest of Acadia National Park and tried to understand the truth behind warbler diversity. How could there be so many different species coexisting, when theory seeks to crown “one warbler to rule them all?” Learn about MacArthur’s study, how it changed the field of ecology, and the scientists revisiting his work over half a century later on Season 3 Episode 2 of Sea to Trees.

Episode Tags: acadia, acadia national park, maine, citizen science, nature, science, schoodic institute, research learning center, podcast, podcasts, audio, science communication, national park foundation

October 16, 2024

1. Past, Present, and Future | Historical Aerial Photography

Transcript

Title: Past, Present, and Future

Historical Aerial Photography

Transcript : Balloons, pigeons, and kites. All three of these objects have served as vehicles for aerial photography. In 1860– floating high above the city of Boston in a hot air balloon– James Wallace Black took one of the first successful aerial photographs. He titled it “Boston as the eagle and the wild goose see it.” Taken only a year before the start of the Civil War photographs like Black’s would become a staple for military reconnaissance.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Lt. Hugh D. Wise had built an eighteen foot high kite with a box camera attached to it and the German inventor Dr. Julius Neubronner strapped cameras to the chests of pigeons, turning them into avian paparazzo and releasing them throughout the country.

{Pigeon flutter}

After the Wright brothers first successful flight in nineteen- oh three cameras started to make their way into airplanes, becoming tools for information in World War One and World War Two.

{Music}

But military intel wasn’t the only use for this burgeoning field. Scientists started using aerial photographs to understand difficult to reach geological formations like glaciers and volcanic craters. Archeologists began to see ancient works– like the Ancestral Pueblo ruins of the southwest– from a different point of view. And the damage from natural disasters like earthquakes and floods became easier to assess.

Sea to Trees is brought to you by Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park. I’m Trevor Grandin. In this episode we’ll delve into the past to understand how a collection of aerial photographs once stored in a library annex are being unearthed and how they could help tell the story of modern Maine.

{Pause}

Peter Howe’s face is positioned inches away from a brightly lit table on the third floor of the University of Maine’s Fogler Library. Behind a locked door in the special collections section, two negative aerial photographs of the Schoodic Peninsula are side by side and backlit.

{HOWE}: “This... this one here… what’s the date we have on this one? This is nineteen-fifty-five... so one-hundred-and-twenty-five... this was one of the largest surveys we have on record... the eastern corporation. This survey… so there were nine rolls of film... oh here we go… (fade)”

The black and white photos capture a birds-eye view of the peninsula, allowing us to study the layout of Acadia on August twenty-fifth, nineteen-fifty five. Like Peter said, these photos are part of film roll number one-hundred-and-twenty-five, a series of aerial shots of Downeast Maine produced for the Eastern Corporation, a paper manufacturing company that once controlled large swaths of spruce forest throughout Maine.

Roll one-hundred-and-twenty-five is a tiny part of a much larger collection held within UMaine’s Special Collections. This treasure trove of aerial photography consists of almost three-thousand canisters of film.

The photographs were donated by the very organization that took them, the James W. Sewall Company. Sewall’s primary directive was forestry and civil engineering. This manifested as mill operation inspections, timber appraisals, fire protection, and large scale land surveys. An early promotional pamphlet lays out their purpose to prospective clients.

{Wood chopping and trees falling} {Music}

{Character voice over}: “Thanks to modern forestry knowledge and methods... the possible increase in the value of forest and timber lands can now be estimated with remarkable accuracy… You already know that all wooded lands are steadily increasing in value; we want you to realize that practically all these wooded lands can be appreciably enhanced in value under careful management... and that it is our business... as practical foresters... to achieve the best possible results along these lines for our patrons.”

As technology advanced, Sewall’s operations grew wings and the survey process took an aerial approach, beginning in 1946.

{Propeller plane taking off and circling}

For almost seventy years, organizations like the Eastern Corporation, Maine Department of Transportation, and even the National Park Service hired Sewall to fly over land in their jurisdiction and take survey photos. Equipped with a pilot and a camera operator, the small propeller planes buzzed along the landscape. A camera, like an overhead projector without an arm, poked out of a fitted hole in the plane's body and pointed at the ground.

{Camera shutters}

The camera operator sitting next to the machine – shutter button in hand – snapped photos at specific moments in the air, producing a quilt of images waiting to be stitched together later. The collection includes surveys from Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and even Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

Many organizations wanted to understand what types of vegetation were present and in what abundance. Some flights took place during specific seasonal or weather events like leaf offs or strong ice storms. Eight years after a fire burned over seventeen thousand acres of land on Mount Desert Island, a survey crew documented the newly grown forests of birch and aspen trees that took hold after the blaze.

All taken at different points in time spanning from nineteen-forty-six to twenty-fifteen, these photographs illustrate how a landscape can change, both naturally and through human intervention. That’s where Peter Howe comes in.

Peter is a PhD student in the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources and an Acadia Science Fellow. He’s using this collection of photographs for his own research while trying to make it accessible for the public. Working with library specialist Paul Smitherman, Peter is taking a multistep approach to his research.

{Howe}: “Ya know… my little piece of this project has many parts. Like definitely the big collaborative first step that I’m working with Paul on is we just need to get a lot of this digitized because just a small fraction of the archive has been digitized at this point… and then getting them stitched together into these georeferenced mosaics that we can compare to the modern landscape and modern imagery. Then from there, looking closer at the forest and trying to understand forest change across time which is where I’m hoping to do more GIS analysis.”

And that first step – the digitization – may be Peter’s largest step.

{keys jingling and unlocking}

Because behind the locked doors of the special collections storage lies a small fraction of his work.

{HOWE}: “This is what… one percent of everything… fades.”

This one percent of the film collection takes the form of two floor to ceiling, long metal shelves filled top to bottom with jet black canisters. Each canister is about the height of a roll of paper towels and weighs over fifteen pounds. A bright yellow Kodak sticker swiped across the front of the canisters identifies them as infrared aerographic safety film.

The tops of the canisters are labeled with their respective numbers, the organization that commissioned them, the date they were taken, and their scale. The other ninety nine percent of the film is stored in a University of Maine annex across campus sitting snugly on rolling library stacks.

{rolling shelves}

{HOWE}: “Somewhere up there is the number five canister… probably on that top shelf. That’s nineteen - forty nine. It would be some of the earliest.”

Prior to Peter’s research, Smitherman was manually scanning in film as it was requested. If someone asked for photos, for example of Hancock county, he would scan a couple and send them on their way. Using this manual scanning process it takes about ten minutes to upload one roll. With over three thousand canisters in the collection it would take over twenty days of continuous, around-the-clock scanning to digitize every roll. Thanks to funding from the Northeastern State Research Cooperative and Acadia Science Fellowship the project now has access to an automatic scanner.

In its idle form the UltraScan 5000 looks like a powder-blue pancake griddle. Taking up the entire table top, the heavy rectangular machine’s lid has two black, plastic coverings on either side. Lifting the lid illuminates what’s hiding under those exterior coverings. Two black batons – like plastic rolling pins – hold the film rolls and gently rotate, spooling and unspooling the negatives over the glass scanning table in the middle. Load the roll up, let the spokes rotate and they scan the photos automatically.

Although the scanner is an obvious upgrade, it comes with its own set of quirks. Made in nineteen-ninety nine, the model was discontinued in the early two thousands. Consequently, there is no technical support that goes along with the scanner and no updates for its software. Without updates the scanner can only run on Windows XP, an operating system that works on a choice number of older computers.

{HOWE}: “So we had to find a dated computer that wasn’t too fast but wasn’t too slow and then using this software that hasn’t been updated because they stopped making it back in two thousand.”

Scanning a whole roll of film manually wouldn’t be such a big hassle if they only had a couple photos inside but each roll of film comes with around two hundred and fifty negatives. The rolls also contain an important component for interpreting the photos: a flight index.

{HOWE}: “So with each photo survey they would produce these maps… it’s a photo index that shows where each photograph was taken and so these are the flight lines that the pilots flew. And so they would fly in this very regular patterned route and part of that is because they really wanted to ensure that they captured every square inch of the land that they were surveying but also that there was overlap between photographs because even back then they were doing and earlier version of photogrammetry that is what I’m doing today.”

Photogrammetry, a word from Greek, can be broken down into three parts. Phos,meaning light; gramm, meaning drawing; and metrein, the noun for measure. Put simply, the process of measuring an object using a photograph.

A more complicated explanation comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Photogrammetry is a method of approximating a three-dimensional structure using two dimensional images. Photographs are stitched together using special software to make the 3D models and photomosaic maps. This method of measurement can be used to map topography, model shipwrecks, statues, and even large scale forests.

{HOWE}: “So there’s kind of two outputs that the photogrammetry process can produce and that’s… one, being an orthomosaic, that’s this stitched together composite image and then the other being this actual three dimensional model of what’s in the photographs. So it’s really amazing that we can get a three dimensional model of the historical landscape that even captures tree height, forest canopy height back in time.”

After the scanning process, these aerial negatives are uploaded into Peter’s photogrammetry software and put together along overlapping edges. The map that’s created is a tapestry of negative photographs for a specific region during a specific year. Processes like Peter’s – digitizing and uploading historical negatives – have been happening for a while.

{Halsted}: “We’ve had printed air photos here for years… probably since the 1980s.”

That’s Christian Halsted, director of earth resources information at the Maine Geological Survey where he’s in charge of the aerial photograph collection.

{Halsted}: “Obviously they sit in filing cabinets and you kind of have to know to contact us to come in and look at them. We recognized that they weren’t getting a lot of use because they were sort of a hidden treasure, a hidden resource.”

After receiving USGS funding to digitize their collection, Maine Geological Survey created their own interactive map. There are many similarities between their map and Peter Howe’s atlas. Both collections are made of photographs produced by the Sewall company, both are for public reference at any time, and both can be filtered by year. But they’re distinct in important ways.

{Halsted}: “We didn’t georeference each individual photo into a mosaic like you would think of… like google maps… like a seamless photo layer but what we did was we geolocated each photo. When you zoom in an area and you click on it you basically just get the photos that overlap that area that you clicked on and then you can review them individually and see if one or multiple of the photos are the ones you’re looking for.”

But Peter’s project goes a step further than scanning and uploading. To tie these historical photographs to the present Peter clicks through every negative and places a “ground control point.” These points are primarily located on objects and features he knows haven’t moved since the photographs were taken.

{HOWE}: “A good point would be a great rock, or a farmhouse, or a bridge, or a road intersection. Something that really clearly comes to a point that’s exposed, that we know won’t be later covered by canopy and things that we’re really sure haven’t moved.”

Once these control points are established in the historical photographs, the computer finds those unmoved points in modern satellite imagery allowing for an almost seamless overlay of historical and current imagery.

The product? The Northern Forest Historical Atlas. A site similar to Google Earth but where many are used to seeing the emerald expanse of Maine, black and white TV static has taken its place.

{Radio Static}

Zoom in a little further and the static morphs into pockets of historical photographs intermixed with current satellite imagery. Film is still the ideal way to capture aerial photography in many ways. Film resolution is so clear that you can drop into individual streets with almost no loss of clarity, at higher resolution than the digital cameras many use today.

Looking at Bar Harbor while flipping between historical and present photography uncovers the buildings, parking lots, and roads that were or weren’t present in nineteen-sixty six. Across Mount Desert Island, the ponds and lakes grow and shrink from past to present suspended at the exact height they were in nineteen-fifty five.

This unique perspective can foster a change in spatial understanding. Individual environments and landscapes that are often only seen from eye-level are looked on from up above. Roads that often seem so permanent and reliable are shrunken into small veins that snake throughout wider wilderness. From ground-level our world is relegated to what is directly around us, but the aerial photographs reaffirm our understanding of nature’s connectedness. And as more film rolls are scanned in and geolocated the historical layers to choose from will only grow expanding their uses.

{HOWE}: “You know, I’m working with a few foresters who are interested in the logging history, the forest disturbance history in the land that they manage. Understanding successional change, understanding fire histories, understanding insect and disease histories.”

The aerial photography that Peter is digitizing will be of use to those right here in Acadia National Park. Restoration work on the summits of Acadia’s mountains is seeking to revegetate areas worn down by visitors and natural erosion. Thousands of pounds of soil have already been trekked up to the top of Sergent and Penobscot mountains with the hope that plants will take hold once again.

{Wheeler}“As we move forward and get more iterations of aerial photography and remote sensing data from now on., that's going to help us in kind of having a big picture monitoring of and tracking of progress as we restore square footage or square meters or…how much area right are we restoring to vegetation.”

That’s Jesse Wheeler, vegetation biologist at Acadia National Park. He leads many of the park's invasive species management programs and his team plays a big part in revegetating the summits of Acadia. Throughout its history different approaches have been taken to manage Acadia’s plants, especially on mountain summits. Studies that involve remote sensing and aerial photography have already proven beneficial to park managers like Jesse.

In 2022, John Daigle of the University of Maine and Min-Kook Kim of Marshall University used satellite imagery to analyze mountain summits throughout the park. They determined what areas had seen growth during restoration efforts and what areas were still under stress creating a better picture for Acadia’s present. Paired with Peter’s historical photography, these studies could greatly impact restoration efforts all around Acadia.

{Wheeler}“And so being able to have some scale monitoring of what's going on up there as we're putting forth all this effort and resources is can we track that over time? And I think a great way to do that is using aerial photography.”

The possibilities are endless for Peter’s work with organizations and individuals all over the place wanting a piece of what he’s creating. MGS’ Christian Halstead explains how varied the uses have been for the geological survey’s collection.

{Halsted}: “We all, as soon as we get our hands on a map, whether it’s digital or in paper format, we go and look at our house or our property. So I've had a lot of people call and describe a situation where their grandparents owned a farm somewhere in the last half of the last century and they’d love to have a picture of what that farm looked like in 1950 when their grandparents were working on it or something like that… Quite frankly, we use the photos ourselves within the Maine Geological Survey. Questions around changing sea level and shoreline changes and movement of bluffs and dunes and coastal erosion.”

Whether it’s for ecological research or personal interest, access to these historical photographs helps us better understand our place in history. To some the outcomes of past actions seem so set in stone without visual evidence, so certain. What a landscape looked like before a life-altering fire, mountain summits prior to intensive use, or townships before urbanization. There was a time before these events and structures. They’re not as permanent as many think. Peter Howe again…

{Howe}: I like the term historical ecology because it’s all about bringing together what we might call natural and human histories and really understanding those as totally intertwined, not separate histories but these very interconnected histories that have shaped each other across time.

{Pause} {End/transition music}

Join us for the next episode where we’ll continue the exploration into Acadia’s past through the birds. And the groundbreaking research that happened in the park’s forests.

{Kaspari} “The Warblers of the East were just utterly gorgeous, utterly captivating. They literally looked like Christmas tree ornaments. They were just painted in different ways…”

Thank you for listening to Sea to Trees, a podcast from Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park. Acadia National Park is on the traditional lands of the Wabanaki, People of the Dawn. This show was made by Trevor Grandin, the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellow in Science Communication. Catherine Schmitt is our senior editor. The cover art was created by Sarah Luchini. Special thanks to Peter Howe, Paul Smitherman, Jesse Wheeler, and Christian Halsted for sharing their expertise with us.

This podcast is possible with generous support through The Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellowship, a partnership among Schoodic Institute, National Park Foundation, and National Park Service.

As a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, Schoodic Institute inspires science, learning, and community for a changing world. To learn more, visit schoodicinstitute.org.

Tucked away on the University of Maine campus is a treasury of film that chronicles New England’s landscape from 1946 to 2015. We’ll hear from the researcher who is digitizing thousands of aerial photographs and making them accessible online. What can these photos tell us about the history of Acadia and how can they influence the future of land stewardship? Find out on the season three premiere of Sea to Trees.

University of Maine Sewall Company https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/sewell_aerial/

Episode Tags: acadia, acadia national park, maine, citizen science, nature, science, schoodic institute, research learning center, podcast, podcasts, audio, science communication, national park foundation

Season 3 Trailer

Past, Present, and Future | Trailer

Transcript

Transcript:

{Music}

From Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park comes the third season of Sea to Trees, a podcast that tells the stories of the science happening in and around Acadia. This season we’re exploring some of the groundbreaking research happening in the rocky shorelines, the evergreen forests, and the granite mountaintops.

But it’s more than just research. We’re traveling back in time and looking into the not so distant years ahead to understand the past, the present, and the future of Acadia. In a park so well prepared to study our changing climate…

{Howe}: “I like the term historical ecology because it’s all about bringing together natural and human histories and really understanding those as totally intertwined, not separate histories but these very interconnected histories that have shaped each other across time.”

We’ll take historic flights over Mount Desert Island…

{Howe}: “A great rock, or a farmhouse, or a bridge, or a road intersection.”

Search for amphibians at Sieur de Mont…

{Grandin}: “Oop, here’s another guy. Or is it a worm?” {Monroe}: “He’s like, ‘I’m a worm! I’m a worm!’” *Laughing* {Monroe}: “Ya know, amphibians are really easy to love.”

Trap mice in Schoodic Woods…

{Slabach}: “This is a woodland jumping mouse. You can see these beautiful hind feet and they’re just feisty. All right – bag please, bag please, bag please, bag please, bag please! These guys can turn really easily when they get that back foot on you and so you gotta keep a hold of their tail.”

Listen for birds in historic spruce forests…

{Young}: “I think J18 might be my favorite site. It’s closest to the cliffs and it’s really nice to come out of the woods after two hours and just look at the ocean for a second and go ‘ahhhh.’” {Schmitt}: “Can we go there?” {Young}: “Yeah we can!” *walking through brush* *bell buoy grows louder* {Schmitt}: “Yeah, I can see why you like this site.” {Young}: “You kind of have to stop for a second…”

And watch the sea levels rise with the next generation.

{Schmitt}: “So the projections are another three feet of sea level rise by 2100 and three feet of sea level rise is actually what the storm in January, what that flood height was. That is what the average high tide will be in 2100.”

All that and much more on season three of Sea to Trees.

It takes a walk in the past to understand our present and get ready for the future.

This podcast is possible with generous support through The Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellowship, a partnership among Schoodic Institute, National Park Foundation, and National Park Service. Sea to Trees is hosted by me, Trevor Grandin, this year's Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career fellow in Science Communication.

Check out season three episode one coming October twenty-twenty four.

*drill noises* {Booher}: “That’s as far as that’s going to go. Can I have another screw? Good sound effects, huh?” *drill noises* *student drops nail* {Student}: “Oopsie!”

In Season Three of Sea to Trees, we’re learning about research that delves into the past, seeks to understand the present, and charts the future of Acadia. We’ll walk through the same spruce forests as MacArthur’s warblers, try to understand how human activity is affecting some of the smallest creatures in the park, and illustrate the power of sea level rise with a group of young scientists. What can we learn from the past and present to help our future? www.Schoodicinstitute.org

Episode Tags: acadia, acadia national park, maine, citizen science, nature, science, schoodic institute, research learning center, podcast, podcasts, audio, science communication, national park foundation

Season 2

December 20, 2023

3. Restoration | Wild Bird Chase (part 2)

Transcript

Catherine Devine 00:13 Hey everyone, welcome back to Sea to Trees. I'm your host Catherine Devine. Remember the naturalist from our last episode who was on a mission to record all the bird songs in Acadia, Laura Sebastianelli? This episode starts with her.

Laura Sebastianelli 00:40 you know, you'll see Redwing blackbirds chase off, you know, other birds that they you know, they do not want near their nest, you know. And you'll see that you know, anywhere with little birds chasing off the bigger birds usually a bird of prey or something, you know, they're like, "Get out of here." They're protecting their nest from predators.

Catherine Devine 01:03 My time with Laura was my first time birding. Laura let me try out her parabolic microphone. Great for capturing sounds in the distance.

Laura Sebastianelli 01:15 Okay, go ahead and pop these headphones out

Catherine Devine 01:26 Yeah, it's so clear, and it can hear everything from water.

Laura Sebastianelli 01:30 The water. There are better mics for this situation for ambient soundscape. You would use a different mic that has a wider field of target where a parabola is highly focused.

Catherine Devine 01:47 I popped the headphones on. It felt like the rest of the world dimmed for a moment. It was just me and the birds and the natural world. We stopped by a wetland at the base of Champlain Mountain near the Precipice Trail to see if we could hear the American Bittern. A bird Laura has been trying to record for a while now,

Laura Sebastianelli 02:08 because it's very difficult to walk in this area. I haven't spent a lot of time recording here. I always stop if it's early in the morning because I know that there are American bittern in here, which have a really wonderful sound, but I've never, I've never been able to capture it here. I heard it once here but you know, it wasn't able to record it.

Catherine Devine 02:35 and then... we heard it. This sort of gulping guttural swallow. Laura crept through the marsh weaving through trees and paths spider webs steep into the thick grassy meadow quick and quiet on her feet. She turned and shushed me. She needed absolute silence to record. I watched her collect tape from a distance. She stood absolutely still. Holding her large microphone out in front of her waiting to hear the Bitterns call. She captured the tape she had been searching for. But good tape can always be better tape.

Laura Sebastianelli 03:30 Like any bird that I'm recording, if this is this is good, but so is a chance we can get closer. I don't have headphones on, so I can't like venture out there. But what we can do is follow the trail and see is there's a better vantage point for it. This is stop number one, get anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes and then do very short little thing so this is how we're gonna get here. Well let's see if we can get in another position for getting a closer sound recording.

Catherine Devine 04:02 And for the next hour or so we followed Laura around. Dashing and stopping and waiting and listening. Over and over and over again until she got it. The best, clearest closest recording of the American Bittern that she could muster, but I was a little confused. I didn't quite understand why getting this recording was so important. What's so special about the American Bittern?

Laura Sebastianelli 04:30 There aren't a lot to begin with up here. So, about once you hear the song through the headphones, I hope you do. You'll understand how cool and unusual it is. You hear it gulping and then make vocalizing and it's just it's just it's just a great sound and they're so secretive, otherwise, the you would never find it. I mean, their masterful camouflage.

Catherine Devine 05:10 Laura wasn't trying to record the bittern and for any particular reason. It wasn't that special to her. Laura saw the uniqueness in all birds, in all of nature.

Laura Sebastianelli 05:21 I think listening to birds, inspires people period. Birds inspire us. I think that's part of the connection.

05:31 The American Bittern population along with the population of many birds in and around Acadia National Park, is rapidly declining, mainly due to habitat loss, which unfortunately is a common tale in bird conservation. One of the biggest conservation projects taking place at Schoodic Institute is a partnership with Friends of Acadia and the National Park Service. The project seeks to restore wetland habitat functions, and see if that has an impact on the bird population. It takes place at the Great Meadow, a wetland that's been pretty disturbed. And because of that, it's pretty disturbing. Chris Nadeau, the Climate Change Adaptation Scientist at Schoodic Institute. Give me a quick rundown.

Brooke Goodman 06:16 So the Great Meadow although it looks like this beautiful wetland, when you drive by some of the overlooks - It is a beautiful wetland, it doesn't just look like a beautiful wetland - It's actually a really disturbed landscape. And so water doesn't flow through the wetland in a way it naturally should. And so the water, there's a lot of old roadbeds that go through the wetland that stop the water from flowing through. There's a lot of ditching in the wetland that actually causes the water to leave the wetland faster than it should. And then the big issue right now is that there's a really undersized culvert at the outlet of the wetland that actually allows water out too fast during dry spells. And so the way its just too dry, and during wet periods, it actually doesn't let water out fast enough. And so the wetland floods really deep. And so the park is about to go through a big resource management project to try to fix those hydrologic issues with the water. And so they're going to be breaching some of those old roads to allow the water to flow through, they're going to be plugging those ditches so that the water doesn't drain quickly. And they're going to be replacing that undersized culvert with a much bigger 12 foot culvert to restore the natural hydrology in that wetland. And so what we're interested in from a scientific perspective is whether those hydrologic changes that are going to happen in the wetland will affect the bird community in Great Meadow. And so, you know, birds are one of the biggest resources in that wetland. So a lot of people go to the Great Meadow specifically to bird watch. And so we want to know if they're going to change the way the water moves through the wetland, does that change the bird community? And so to do that, we’re using autonomous recording units, which are just the small recorders that record bird calls at certain times of the day. We've put them out in a few different places in Great Meadow, and then we've put them out in another wetland that's really similar to great meadow. It's called Gilmore Meadow. It has, it's really similar but the hydrology is a little more natural in Gilmore meadow. So we put some recording units out there too as a reference wetland. And this year, what we're really doing is just collecting baseline data before we make any hydrologic changes to see does the bird community kind of differ between those two wetlands and then in the future, we'll go back once the hydrology has changed. We'll put the autonomous recording units out again and we'll see if has the bird community shifted in Great Meadow because of the hydrologic changes.

Catherine Devine 08:47 So researchers at Schoodic Institute are trying to figure out what impact hydrologic changes in Great Meadow will have on the birds and Acadia. This is such a daunting task. This is where Brooke Goodman comes in, the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellow in Science Research at Schoodic Institute.

Brooke Goodman 09:07 I'm in charge of our bioacoustics projects in the park.

09:11 Oh, and by the way, bio acoustics is the study of the production, transmission, and reception of animal sounds. Most of Brooke's work centers on these square box shaped containers called ARU's autonomous recording units. ARU's are these really sturdy recording devices that are used to record animals for long periods of time.

Brooke Goodman 09:32 So I'm holding a Swift One from the Cornell Lab and this is an ARU or autonomous recording unit. And what I can do with this is just put it out in the meadow and I can leave it out for a month or two months or however long as I want. And it will record data for me on an SD card. So it's a really effective way to capture bird data without having to go out into those wetlands every week or something to do a point count, which can be really difficult. So it helps us get a really good snapshot of what birds are in the meadow. And since there's no human out there counting them, we don't need to worry about our presence influencing their vocalization or what's around

10:15 Brooke spends her days going to different spots in Acadia, and setting up these ARUs by wrapping them around tree trunks or posts. In order to capture the birds in the area.

Brooke Goodman 10:24 We chose a bunch of sites to put up ARUs. And it's similar to point count where you want them to be like 350 meters apart, and you don't want them to record the same birds. And you have to figure out how long you actually want to put it out for. So for ours, we're putting it out for around a month on a 24 hour recording schedule. So our ARUs are recording like all day every day collecting a ton of data.

10:49 And this is where the Great Meadow restoration project fits in. Brooke's placed seven ARUs in the disturbed Great Meadow and three ARUs in a healthy wetland called Gilmore Meadow.

Brooke Goodman 11:00 And we're going to compare those two with Great Meadow being in relatively poor condition and Gilmore Meadow being in significantly better condition.

Catherine Devine 11:09 And she's going to use this comparison to try to assess if Great Meadow's restoration project impacts the bird population.

Brooke Goodman 11:15 So one thing that I'm doing is creating a baseline. So right now I'm recording our breeding birds here in the summer. And so it'll take a couple of years for the hydrology change to actually impact Great Meadow and change the vegetation and change the birds that occupy it. So I'm collecting data now. And we're hoping in five or so years to collect data at the same places at the same time in the same way and see how the bird populations have changed. So right now, this is all of our baseline. But this will be what we compare to in five years and see what the restoration efforts have done to the bird community.

Catherine Devine 11:53 She's hoping that a few years down the line, enough data will be collected to see if the restoration project in Great Meadow correlates with any changes of bird populations in the area.

Bik Wheeler 12:02 So the ARUs like through the summer is really looking more at. Like what is the bird community, like in Great Meadow, and in Gilmore, and then so this is like the we don't know what it is right now let's find out. Let's get the baseline. And then after the fact, we find out what it is and we see if it changed or not.

12:26 That was Acadia National Park biologist, Bik Wheeler. We spoke about the importance of using data to create baselines in conservation. Without a point of comparison, it can be difficult to assess the impacts of climate change and restoration efforts.

12:40 A huge issue in conservation is understanding if it worked, right. And so we may be able to measure on a really broad scale like okay, conservation of, of black ducks has been pretty successful because continent wide the population has gone up. But we don't know if it was Great Meadow that did it or not. Right. And so having these targets and these measurable results, I think is really super helpful. And this is I mean, this seems like it's just like methodological. But if we can set up a way that is like, like, follow this recipe and you'll know if your cake is good or bad, right is really key because right now what we have is we don't really have a recipe, and we don't really know what a good cake tastes like. So we're just hoping for the best

13:38 I liked what Bik said. An issue in conservation is that the researchers don't really have a recipe to follow to help out the birds in Great Meadow. But this study is a great step towards figuring out what the necessary components are to make the best conditions for these birds to thrive. When producing this episode, I found myself becoming more attuned to the intricacies of my surroundings. I began to hear birds everywhere. I found myself standing outside the grocery store just listening, seeing how many birds I could hear at once. At first it was just one but like your eyes adjust to light when stargazing. I realized bird watching or bird listening plays by similar laws. The more I looked, the more I listened. The more there were, an exercise and intention, a break from chronic human centered myopia. Remember Bridget Butler from the last episode, the self described Bird Diva and naturalist from Rutland, Vermont? When I was talking to Bridget, this topic of attention kept coming up. And how something as simple as your own noticing can create ripples in the world of conservation.

Bridget Butler 14:47 And so there is this tie in with science as well. That I see in this work where it's creating a personal connection to place, the land and the birds there over time. And I think that's this other key piece is that, especially as we look at global climate change things happening along those lines here in Vermont, we just had a huge flood event that affected all of us greatly. So I think we're seeing that on the ground as well, in our everyday lives, and how can a practice of connecting with birds in this way help us form a deeper understanding of the landscape, and then our role in being stewards of that landscape. And so it does become a personal and emotional thing. I think that's the other piece that's missing in a lot of our science and conservation work right now, is allowing people the space to be in relationship with nature, and not just look at birds or the land as an object or a resource to use or to delight in. It's, it's becoming more relational.

15:59 One of the big challenges in environmentalism is that we're conditioned to feel this disconnect between the, quote, natural world and the, quote, human world. But nothing exists in isolation. No matter where you go, birds are there too. It's taken me a while to notice that and it's incredibly egocentric and human centric. But it's incredibly normal to I like to imagine that one day, more people will care about the birds around them. And consequently, the greater environmental picture to getting others to notice is the biggest challenge.

Brooke Goodman 16:32 One thing I like about Acadia and just getting to talk about to visitors is like people who maybe don't have such easy access to nature go to the National Park to get that access. And this is where I can introduce them to things like birds and like the park rangers can take them on programs. I think that's just like a fun thing about Acadia, like people coming here are might not actually have that access as easy as I did as a kid which I'm very grateful that I did because it got me into this career.

17:02 Thanks so much for listening to Sea to Trees, a podcast from Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park, a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, inspiring science, learning and community for a changing world. Acadia National Park is on traditional lands of the Wabanaki, people of the dawn. A big thanks to this episode's guests. Laura Sebastianelli, Chris Nadeau, Brooke Goodman, Bik Wheeler and Bridget Butler. Sea to Trees is hosted, produced and edited by me, Catherine Devine. Catherine Wang provided production support, and Catherine Schmitt is our senior editor. Our music was written by Eric Green performed with Ryan Curless and Stu Mahan and recorded in Midcoast Maine. The cover art was created by Sarah Luchini. Sea to Trees is possible through generous support of the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellowship, the National Park Foundation, National Park Service, and Schoodic Institute.

Episode 3 begins with naturalist Laura Sebastianelli, who has dedicated her summers to recording all the bird songs in Acadia National Park. We follow Laura on her chase to record the American Bittern, learn why it’s so important to record Acadia’s birdsongs, and talk to all sorts of ornithological experts along the way.

Episode Tags: acadia, acadia national park, maine, citizen science, nature, science, schoodic institute, research learning center, podcast, podcasts, audio, science communication, national park foundation

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