The Wrack

Study published in Ecological Indicators demonstrates the potential for using environmental DNA to survey green crabs in estuaries.

Terms like "watershed" and "estuary" are part of our daily lexicon, but have had no equivalents in American Sign Language. To encourage STEM learning in New England’s deaf community, we and our partners are introducing new terms and teaching tools.

Environmental DNA could dramatically change the way reserve scientists survey streams, rivers, and estuaries for finfish and crustaceans.

Wells Reserve is expanding fisheries science and conflict management research thanks to two grants from the NERRS Science Collaborative.

Teachers on the Estuary Returns in 2016

The four New England research reserves are putting teachers on the estuary again this summer by offering free workshops that will give educators data-driven climate change activities to bring back to their classes. Each of the four TOTE (Teachers on the Estuary) workshops, one 3- or 4-day session per reserve, will train a dozen educators in reserve-style environmental monitoring, "coastal blue carbon" concepts, and ways to understand and address climate change.

Please note: The workshop at Wells Reserve will be held Monday, July 11 through Thursday, July 14, 2016. Review of applications will begin May 31, 2016.

Wells Reserve TOTE Application

Wells Reserve TOTE Draft Agenda

Wells Reserve TOTE Promotional Flyer

To learn more about TOTE workshops, see the articles at wellsreserve.org/tote.

Why TOTE?

Teachers often don't get much exposure to estuarine and watershed concepts during their own education, so it can be daunting for them to develop a curriculum (and locate suitable data sets) around these topics. TOTE workshops show teachers how to access and employ custom curricula and data that already meet Next Generation Science Standards or state education frameworks.

This course, launched in 2013, provides guidance in collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing qualitative data and using the results to improve the quality of meetings, foster effective project management, and facilitate collaborative research projects.

Interdisciplinary Methods for Stakeholder Engagement and Collaborative Research

Lessons from the National Estuarine Research Reserve System

Overview

How can busy researchers work with even busier managers to facilitate effective application of science to the complex tasks of coastal management, from strategic planning to the design of best management practices and in day-to-day decision-making?

The NERR System is completing 5 years of research nationally around bridging the gulf (boundary spanning) between science and management. These workshops will review boundary spanning projects and work toward developing a primer of best practices for use in coastal management.

Workshop Goal

To build awareness, capacity, and skills to enable coastal management and research communities to use expert interdisciplinary practices to engage stakeholders in developing and implementing collaborative research projects that link science to coastal management and policy.

Project Period

• September 22 & 23, 2014 in Maine
• January 14 & 15, 2015 in Texas

Three angles of investigation into three waterways flowing through three municipalities have reached one encouraging conclusion: The Merriland River, Branch Brook, and the Little River are ecologically healthy and the people largely responsible, those living in the combined watershed, know and appreciate it.

The design for our Sustaining Coastal Landscapes and Community Benefits project, the first study of its kind, drew from the sciences of ecology, economy, and communications. Reserve staff and their colleagues from Clark University looked at streamside buffers in Sanford, Kennebunk, and Wells to find out how they affect life in the water and how members of the community value them.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 6/15/2014.

When Facilities Manager John Speight watched a pickup truck accidentally drive into what he’d thought was a well-protected propane tank at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm last weekend, his first thought was: “I hear the hiss, so I’m still alive.”

His second thought was: “let’s keep it that way.”

About the Project

The Sandy Dialogues facilitated an exchange of expertise and experience between New Jersey and Maine that culminated in two Maine-based coastal hazard preparedness training workshops. Through this project, the Wells Reserve and its partners learned from New Jersey's Jacques Cousteau Reserve and its stakeholders about the use of decision-support systems, combined with the experience of responding to and recovering from a major storm event.

The Sandy Dialogues stemmed from the earlier Climate Games project in Wells and a sea-level-rise vulnerability assessment done for the New Jersey coast.

Project Period

March to November 2014