Acadia National Park's Science in 2022: 85 Projects

Park staff tracking wildlife by radio in Acadia National Park. NPS.

2022 was another busy year of science in Acadia National Park: researchers worked on 85 projects. They included technicians, Gero Fellows, Second Century Stewardship Fellows, Scientist-in-Park interns, NPS and Schoodic Institute staff, student teams from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and faculty and students from the College of the Atlantic, the University of Maine and other partners.

Big restorations, a new approach

In 2022 the park began scaling up three large ecosystem restorations:

• the summit of Cadillac Mountain;
• Great Meadow, Acadia's largest freshwater wetland;
• Bass Harbor Marsh, its largest salt marsh.

They build on six years of the Wild Acadia initiative with Friends of Acadia, backed by the science of the Schoodic Institute, the nonprofit that supports the park's Research Learning Center. They are among the largest resource-management projects in the park's history — and new in approach. Instead of recreating the past, they mix actions that resist change (such as invasive plants), accept it (such as heavier rain) and direct it (such as favoring species suited to future climate): the resist–accept–direct (RAD) approach to climate adaptation.

Wildlife

• Birds in decline: an analysis of long-term Christmas Bird Count data showed sharp declines in Acadia's winter birds, and a 2021 analysis of NPS monitoring found surprising changes in summer breeding birds. Understanding why is a growing priority, and wildlife research grew in 2022 — a trend expected to continue.
• Salamanders on roads: how to protect salamanders crossing park roads to breed in vernal pools.
• Invasive fish: how managing nonnative fish might protect native species and reduce harm from mercury pollution.

The shore

• Otter Creek: the Town of Mount Desert, College of the Atlantic, Schoodic Institute and NPS worked on options to improve the health of the harbor at this historic fishing village next to the park.
• Mudflats: park and Schoodic Institute staff continued improving management of threatened intertidal ecosystems, important to Tribes, clam and marine worm harvesters, visitors and educators.

Projects by field, 2022

Examples ranged from snowy owls wintering on the summits (Project SNOWstorm), fall raptor and seabird migration counts at Schoodic Point, and bat monitoring for white-nose syndrome, to eelgrass and Jonah crab studies, microplastics in the sea, subalpine plant restoration on Cadillac, forest futures, the Dragonfly Mercury Project, the Cadillac Mountain reservation system, e-bikes, night skies, emerald ash borer and browntail moth, archaeological collections, and the effects of intense rain on two watersheds.

Publications

Scientists published at least 38 new papers, theses and books using data or fieldwork from Acadia — more than in most years, perhaps because COVID-19 left more time for analysis and writing, or because research in the park has grown over the past decade. Topics ran from tick-borne disease risk and mercury in lakes to visitor experiences during COVID-19, leaf phenology, rocky intertidal communities and climate refugia.

More: Acadia's Science and Research page and its partners in science.

Sources

Based on "2022 Acadia Science Year in Review," Acadia National Park, National Park Service, which lists the year's research permits and publications in full; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The article's Friends of Acadia photograph is replaced by an NPS photograph.