GIS Center featured in NOAA magazine
Scott Richardson ~ 2009-01-23
The Wells Reserve GIS Center is featured in this month’s Coastal Services magazine. You can read the article online, but you might want to download the PDF to see the fully illustrated version.
The article gives a nice overview of the history and purpose of mapping and technical services at the Reserve. As Tin Smith explains in the article:
We have such a broad geographic mission to protect estuaries, but we can’t be in every community to protect every estuary. Our goal is to help the people in those communities do their jobs better.
Coastal Services is a bimonthly trade publication for the nation’s coastal resource managers. Congratulations, Sue and Tin, on the nice coverage.
Did you read the article? What did you think?
Coastal Fish book is now available
Scott Richardson ~ 2008-09-02
Coastal Fish of Southern Maine & New Hampshire describes 43 fish species that live all or part of their lives along the immediate coast of our region. It provides an easily accessible and reliable reference to a fascinating, important, and often vulnerable coastal fish community.
This book combines results from local research and monitoring with information gleaned from technical journals, books, unpublished reports, and interviews and correspondence with scientists and fishermen. The result is a complete and convenient resource for curious naturalists and fish enthusiasts, a handy reference for the home, the classroom, or the field.
We are working on making the book available throughout the region and will keep updating our list of distributors.
Where to Buy the Coastal Fish Book (listed from north to south)
- The Book Review, Falmouth Shopping Center (US 1), Falmouth ME
- Maine Audubon Society Store, Falmouth ME
- Borders Books, South Portland ME
- Nonesuch Books & Cards, Mill Creek Shopping Center, South Portland ME
- Saco Bay Tackle Company, Route 1, Saco ME
- Nonesuch Books & Cards, Saco Valley Shopping Center, Saco ME
Wiggle Weigle’s Books, Alfred St (Rte. 111), Biddeford ME- Kennebunk Book Port, Shopper’s Village, Kennebunk ME
- Daytrip Society, Dock Square, Kennebunkport ME
- Laudholm Gift Shop and Book Nook, Wells Reserve
- Kittery Trading Post, Kittery ME
- RiverRun Bookstore, Congress St, Portsmouth NH
- and the Laudholm Trust website
Chloe Johnson of The Wire introduces the book here.
Robyn Burnham’s Journal Tribune story on September 30, ”’M’ is for Mackerel,” was featured on the front page above the fold!
Keep your copy up to date: Download the errata (4 Sept 08).
Have you seen the book yet? What do you think?
Twenty years of bird banding
Scott Richardson ~ 2008-08-12
It’s the 20th anniversary of bird banding at the Wells Reserve this year. The master bander who has been at the heart of the program all this time, June Ficker, recently looked back at her 1988 records and provided this summary:
Operated 6 12-meter mist nets from May 27 to August 31 for a total of 14 Wednesdays from 6 to 10:30 am.
Species banded: 19
Birds banded: 69
Gray Catbird: 18
Black-capped Chickadee: 8
American Robin: 8
Eastern Phoebe: 7
Other species banded: American Redstart, Black-and-white Warbler, Black-throated Green Warbler, Cedar Waxwing, Chipping Sparrow, Common Yellowthroat, Downy Woodpecker, Eastern Wood-pewee, Ovenbird, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Red-eyed Vireo, Rufous-sided (Eastern) Towhee, Song Sparrow, Tennessee Warbler, Veery
Visitors observing: 129
One fish, two fish… is that really a bluefish?
Hannah Wilhelm ~ 2008-08-04
Michele Dionne, Director of Research at the Reserve, has an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Celia Chen at Dartmouth College to study how mercury moves through the salt marsh system. When some of her lab crew headed out to catch Atlantic silversides to be tested for mercury content, we got some of these small fish instead, which we originally thought must be herring.
After checking a few reference books, everyone agreed they were actually juvenile bluefish, an unexpected catch since bluefish are generally found in more southern waters when they are young. This find was especially exciting since measuring and identification of several of the fish happened under the watchful eye of some visiting students looking through the window from the exhibit area into the lab.
Tiny Orchids
Hannah Wilhelm ~ 2008-06-10
While walking the Wells Reserve trails this spring, naturalist Paul Miliotis discovered a tiny but beautiful orchid hiding under a skunk cabbage leaf. A group of us we went back to see the orchid, called early coralroot, Corallorhiza trifida, which was almost invisible before we got down on our knees on the boardwalk, and take a picture of its short yellowish stalks with tongue-like flowers. No leaves were visible, and C. trifida doesn’t really need them, because it is saprophytic, meaning that all its nourishment comes through symbiosis with the mycorrhizal fungi that form a vast underground network through healthy forest soils. Even plants that get energy through photosynthesis, such as oak trees and grapevines, gain resilience through their linkages to mycorrhizae. I was surprised but delighted by this find. Although C. trifida is a persistent plant (it is found in moist forests throughout the Northern US and Canada), it is rarely seen.
Live data from Wells Reserve weather station
Scott Richardson ~ 2007-11-30
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.
Questions? [2]