Our research is a collaborative project which brings together scientists from Bowdoin College, Bates College, the University of Southern Maine, and the Penobscot East Resource Center. Members of our team have long and significant experience working on environmental issues related to Maine’s rivers and coastal waterways. Each scientist brings unique expertise and experience to the research. The natural scientists have experience reconstructing historical fish populations (Ames 2004), conducting aquatic food web (Wilson et al. 2006) and vegetation studies (Camill et al. 2010, Lichter et al. 2011), analyzing fish stomach contents for diet studies (Willis 2009), and performing statistical and spatial analyses. The social scientists have contributed to our understanding of the economic benefits of dam removal (Robbins and Lewis 2008, Lewis et al. 2008); the implications of ecological interactions and spatial dynamics for the management of commercial fish populations (Herrera 2006, 2007, Herrera and Holland 2010); and the potential for economic development in rural Maine (Vail 2004, 2010). E. P. (Ted) Ames, of the Penobscot East Resource Center is a lifelong commercial fisherman, fisheries scientist, and advocate for policy reform that matches the scale of fisheries management with the relevant ecological scale of groundfish populations. His work reconstructing historical groundfish populations based on interviews with retired fishermen has provided insight into the community ecology and food-web dynamics of nearshore groundfish populations before they collapsed in the mid-20th century (Ames 2004). In 2005, Ted’s accomplishments were recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship. Our research team has been convening over the past few years to integrate our interdisciplinary research. In 2009, we were awarded a grant from the Maine EPSCoR program to begin a detailed study of the Kennebec-Androscoggin rivers and their common estuary and nearshore marine ecosystem.The research team includes:
- Ted Ames, Coastal Studies Scholar, Bowdoin College; Penobcot East Resource Center
- Phil Camill, Rusack Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Earth and Oceanographic Science, Director of Environmental Studies, Bowdoin College
- Guillermo Herrera, Associate Professor of Economics, Bowdoin College
- Beverly Johnson, Associate Professor of Geology, Bates College
- Eileen Sylvan Johnson, Program Manager/GIS Analyst, Environmental Studies Program, Bowdoin College
- Lynne Lewis, Professor of Economics, Bates College
- John Lichter, Samuel S. Butcher Associate Professor in the Natural Sciences, Environmental Studies Program, Department of Biology, Bowdoin College
- David Vail, Adams-Catlin Professor of Economics, Bowdoin College
- Theodore Willis, Adjunct Research Professor, University of Southern Maine
- Karen Wilson, Assistant Research Professor, Department of Environmental Science, University of Southern Miane