UMPI students heading back to the forest
PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Science students at the University of Maine are stepping out of the classroom and back into woods thanks to further funding on their project.
When the Aroostook Band of Micmacs reached out to the school to help determine the best use of their 734 acres of forest land, Dean Costello, Dan Swallow and Nathan Norris, all UMPI juniors, took on the project, funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, with their professors.
UMPI also has a second project with the Micmac tribe.
“The projects were about assessing the vulnerability of tribal assets to climate change so that the tribe can make informed decisions about the assets,” says Dena Winslow, of the Aroostook Band of Micmacs.
Now, with additional funding to extend the collaboration between the college and the tribe, Costello, Swallow and Norris will be spending more days in the Maine woods working.
“We are determining how much carbon the trees will pull out of their air and ultimately get stored as soil organic matter,” said UMPI’s Larry Feinstein, an assistant professor of biology overseeing the project.
The students will continue to look at issues relating to climate change. Norris says they will look at how the tribe can best manage important plants, such as ones used for medicinal purposes, in the future.
For Dean, originally from Long Island, New York, spending time outdoors is a nice change of pace.
“I loved it,” Costello says of his time in the woods, “I’m not from around here … so it’s really nice being outside in the woods. I don’t get to do that much.”
Norris says he is happy the to receive more funding to work with the Micmac tribe and is excited to get back out there.
“It’s a very important project for the effects of climate change on the microclimate of northern Maine,” Norris says, “So it’s great to see more funding going into that.”
