Surf, scientists and students were out in force at yesterday's invigorating Acadia National Park Science Symposium at the Schoodic Institute campus. Among the more than 130 participants and speakers were Rick Bonney of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (below, who invented the term citizen science in 1995 and later helped create ebird), Mark Chandler of the Earthwatch Institute (which is launching a seven-year citizen-science partnership with the institute and Acadia to study ocean acidification and other environmental issues), the MDI Bio Lab's Jane Disney (also below, explaining links between the rise of green crabs and the decline of eelgrass near MDI), College of the Atlantic's Catherine Clinger (science and art), Maine Sea Grant's Catherine Schmitt (science communication), the University of Maine's Sarah Nelson (mercury contamination in dragonfly larvae in Acadia), MDIBL geneticist Karen James (biotrails and DNA barcoding) and others.
Bravo to Abe Miller-Rushing, Seth Benz, Mike Soukup, Sheridan Steele and the whole forward-thinking Acadia-Schoodic team, which is striving to put Acadia and Schoodic at the forefront of science research in the national park system and on the frontier of knowledge. We've worked with them for several years. Pamelia is now part of a dynamic group of Dixon Schoodic Scholars, about whom I'll write more soon.
Abe, Seth, Mike, Sheridan and Co. put on a world-class event. If you missed it, you can watch the talks at livestream.com (http://new.livestream.com/accounts/4350281).
