The Wrack: monitoring

So looks as if we got a bit "lucky" and missed the brunt of Hurricane Irene as the storm passed to our west dropping large amounts of rain on western New Hampshire and parts of Massachusetts and Vermont. Here are some totals from our System Wide Monitoring Program (SWMP) weather station behind the Coastal Ecology Center.

I am on board the EPA Ocean Survey Vessel BOLD, with the opportunity to do ichthyoplankton (larval fish) monitoring at sea to supplement the nearly weekly ichthyoplankton tows my fellow intern Amanda has been doing this summer at Wells Harbor.  We are interested in comparing the types of larval fish that are present a little way out to sea with those present in the harbor. Darcie Ritch, another summer intern who is working on her master’s degree at Antioch New England, is hoping to use the larval fish data I’m helping to collect on this trip in her masters project. Here is one of the first creatures we caught, a tiny lobster.

The EPA’s OSV BOLD is dedicated to environmental research at sea.  This specific trip goes from Boston to Casco Bay and back, and is focused on collecting water samples to help establish nutrient limits (the maximum quantities of nitrates and phosphates in the water that will still allow healthy animal and plant life and clean water for fishing, kayaking, and other uses) for coastal waters.

To learn more about the OSV BOLD, and to see more photos and some videos of research at sea, check out http://epa.gov/boldkids/!

With the impressive amounts of rain in the last month or so, and some unusually warm temperatures in March and early April, I thought I would share some of the more interesting weather trends we recorded through our System Wide Monitoring Program here at the reserve. March was the wettest and warmest on record for the state of Maine!

Hello again,

Well another strong storm system battered the Maine coast again this past weekend. Here is a brief synopsis of that storm data courtesy of the System Wide Monitoring Program.

All data from 3/13 at 11pm to 3/15 at 3pm was collected on the SWMP Meteorological Station located behind the Coastal Ecology Center.

We had 6.7 inches of rain fall between late Saturday night (13th) into mid afternoon on Monday the 15th. The bulk of the rain (4.7 inches) fell on Sunday the 14th.

We had a max wind gust of 50mph here at the farm. Our average wind speed was 12mph but we had regular gusts between 20-40 mph.

Shaping up to be a wet and windy spring if this keeps up!

Whew! Nothing like some February rain showers huh? It's been a "weird" winter for lack of a more "technical" term.....

Here are some numbers from the most recent "Blast" that occured Thursday Feb 25 through early morning of February 26th 2010. (All data was collected on the SWMP Meteorological Station behind the Maine Coastal Ecology Center.)

Near real time weather data for the Wells Reserve is now available. Give it a try!

The station, located behind the Coastal Ecology Center, has a National Weather Service identifier and is checked and serviced monthly by the reserve's SWMP Tech, Jeremy Miller. The data is considered provisional, but goes through an automated quality assurance and control procedure before it is posted.

The System Wide Monitoring Program coordinates with the Centralized Data Management Office, a NOAA entity in South Carolina. The CDMO website lets you graph or download weather data, plus water quality data, from Wells and all other reserves in the system.

The Wells Reserve couldn't run without its army of volunteers. They help with every aspect of activity here. One task that I never have problem getting volunteers to help with is going out into the field with insect nets and catching dragonflies and butterflies.

In 1999 the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife started a state-wide survey of dragonflies. That survey concluded in 2004. This year starts the first year of a survey for Maine's butterflies. MDIF&W relies on citizen scientists to go out and collect specimens in as many different places in state as possible. To increase our knowledge of what kinds of insects we have at the Wells Reserve, we established several sites to sample here as part of those two programs.

According to the Maine Butterfly Survey website one of the goals of the survey is "acquiring a solid baseline of the distribution and abundance of Maine butterflies."

Because of their short generation times, sensitivity to environmental insults and often narrow habitat requirements, insects can be effective sentinels of environmental change.  As the specter of global warming looms, wildlife biologists and ecologists need to be able to monitor the direction and rate of changes in plant and animal populations.  The use of any group of organisms to monitor population changes requires a firm baseline of information against which changes can be judged.

With over 115 species native to Maine, butterflies contribute a colorful and conspicuous component to our state's biological diversity.  Butterflies play an important role in terrestrial and wetland ecosystems by serving both as pollinators of many wildflowers and prey (both caterpillars and adults) to larger species ranging from dragonflies to birds.

For more information on both these programs, visit the Maine Damselfly and Dragonfly Survey and the Maine Butterfly Survey.

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