Description: The goal of this project was to identify birding hotspots on Mount Desert Island. To do this, I used data from eBird to determine which birds are most common in each sector. The sectors are areas used by birders during the annual Christmas Bird Count . Birding hotspots are areas that birders go to frequently
Description: The Common Loon (Gavia immer) has historically been used as an indicator species during it's summer breeding season. More specifically, loons have been used as an indicator for heavy metals, biocontamination, and acidity (Canadian Lakes Loon Survey).
Description: According to the University of Hawaii’s Honolulu Climate Change Commission, Oahu is the most at risk from sea-level rise compared to all other Hawaiian islands. By the middle of the century, a report assembled by the commission warned that regular high tide flooding with 3.2ft of local sea-level rise would put 18 miles of coastal road and 4000 settlements at risk (Westfall, 2018).
Description: An estimated 73 million sharks were killed last year, primarily for their fins. Their populations are at critical levels, and they are still being fished out of the oceans at unsustainable rates. Some regional populations of shark species are down to 95 - 99%, which is considered functional extinction.
Description: The USDA reported a shortage of veterinarians in at least 500 counties spanning 44 states. This shortage is mostly in rural areas and therefore has a larger effect on large animals and livestock. American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) reported that only 10% of graduates had an interest in working with livestock.
Description: High number of tourist every summer and the popularity of Bar Harbor are raising the prices of housing on Bar Harbor making it difficult to find affordable houses; especially for people who want to live in Bar Harbor year round, as the incentives to rent out housing to tourists are high. To understand better how to tackle this housing crisis it is important to understand the housing situation in Bar Harbor better, to later be able to find the right locations for future housing development. [show more]
Description: Pollinators such as wild bees and the Western honeybee, Apis mellifera, are important to humans and nature. Seventy-five percent of food crops and 90% of wild flowering plants benefit from animal pollinators (IPBES 2016).
Description: Songbirds use islands for breeding and migrating. Great Duck Island is located 10 miles from Mount Desert Island, Maine; it is about 200 acres large and consists of a variety of habitat types.
Description: Exploring the Past to Build a Resilient Future To understand how climate change is affecting Mount Desert Island we need to look to the past. Our ancestors documented the natural world around them in stories, reports, journals, diaries, and letters, which are cared for in the collections of history museums and libraries. Increasingly, scientists are pulling observations and data from historic records to get a clearer picture of the natural world of the past to understand how the present is changing. [show more]
Description: Great Duck Island (GDI) is a 91-hectare island lying 13 kilometers south of Mount Desert Island in the Gulf of Maine. GDI has a long history of human occupation, and has been farmed, grazed, and lived upon since the early 19th century. Today, approximately 85 hectares of the island are co-owned by TNC and the state of Maine and has been managed as a preserve since 1985. There is a small private inholding on the north end of the island, and the remaining five hectares are owned by the College of the Atlantic (COA). COA manages the Alice Eno Field Station out of the light station on the south end of the island, where students have conducted regular research on the ecology of the island since 1999 (Anderson 2018) [show more]
Description: This story map provides a brief presentation and discussion of the water quality data collected from 43 taps on the COA campus during 2022. While 28 elements were included in the test, the report focuses mainly on lead levels from various campus taps.
Description: The history of the trail system on Mount Desert Island is complex, dense, and vast. There were many people who were vital to the creation of the hundreds of trails that exist and have existed on Mount Desert Island. Both organizations and individuals contributed to the planning, building, and maintenance of the trails that make up Acadia National Park.