Acadia's Invasive Plant Management Team in 2022

Staff monitor an experimental garden bed. The white structures are temperature and moisture sensors.

The 2022 season in numbers

Acadia National Park's Invasive Plant Management Team (IPMT):

• surveyed more than 780 acres of forest and wetland on Mount Desert Island, the Schoodic Peninsula, Isle au Haut and five other islands managed by the Park Service;
• treated 1.82 infested acres in all, on visits to 76 field sites, targeting 25 species — about 75 percent of the treatment was for glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus);
• put in 1,097 work hours on treatment and surveys.

To picture it: the area surveyed is bigger than four Jordan Ponds, or almost two Eagle Lakes. Gathered in one place, the 1.82 acres of invasive plants treated would cover about one and a half Sand Beach parking lots — or the whole trail of the 3.3-mile Jordan Pond Path.

Great Meadow

The team's work supports Acadia's major restoration projects. The planned restoration of Great Meadow will tackle disturbed hydrology and a loss of plant diversity linked to invasive plants. In 2022 the team surveyed 50 acres of the 116-acre wetland complex and treated eight target invasive species there. Great Meadow took about 10 percent of the team's work hours — and half of all the season's volunteer hours.

In the fall the team and volunteers began collecting seed from native grasses and shrubs in Great Meadow, to be grown for active restoration of the wetland. With Schoodic Institute scientists, the team is studying whether native plantings can suppress glossy buckthorn and other invasive plants there.

Working with others

Collaboration widened the team's reach in 2022.

• Volunteers — especially Wabanaki Youth in Science (WAYS) and the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) — gave more than 220 hours to removing invasive plants, salvaging plants, restoration and forest-health monitoring.
• Forest pests — the team helped state and federal agencies monitor the emerald ash borer, southern pine beetle and hemlock woolly adelgid. After the adelgid's recent discovery in Acadia, the team mapped hemlock stands and pruned branches along busy paths to slow its spread.
• Storm damage — the team resampled 12 forest plots set up in 2021 to keep tracking the effects of carriage-road washouts from a storm the previous June 9.

Sources

• National Park Service, Acadia National Park, Acadia Invasive Plant Management Team 2022.