Outreach and Collaborations

Scientists from PIE LTER are actively engaged in sharing their knowledge and presenting their findings to federal, state, and local agencies, non profit environmental organizations, and the general public. Scientists serve on numerous advisory committees for federal and state commissions and non-profit environmental organizations.

 

Outreach Presentations

Parker-Ipswich-Essex Rivers Restoration Partnership (PIE-Rivers), http://pie-rivers.org/
Conference: Roads, Runoff and Water Management in Northeastern MA, April, 11, 2013
Anne Giblin presentation - Water Resources in the Region: The structure and function of our coastal watersheds and how local actions affect the broader region (pdf)

National Adaptation Forum, Action today for a better tomorrowhttp://www.nationaladaptationforum.org/
Inaugural National Adaptation Forum, Denver, CO, April 2 -4, 2013
Robert Buchsbaum presentation - Climate Change at the Great Marsh: Overview of vulnerable natural communities and species (pdf)

Seagrant Climate Network Workshop 2009, http://coastalclimatewiki.org/Sea-Grant-Climate-Network-Workshop-2009.ashx
Jim Morris presentation - Healthy Coastal Ecosystems - Coastal Wetlands: Can coastal wetlands survive a higher rate of sea-level rise? (link to video)

 

Outreach Programs

Great Marsh Coalition

The Great Marsh Coalition is a group of organizations (including PIE LTER) working to study, manage, protect, educate, and engage the public around the largest contiguous salt marsh in New England. With more than 20,000 acres stretching from Cape Ann to New Hampshire, the Great Marsh is the largest salt marsh in New England. Its vast landscape provides critical habitat for threatened species of plants and animals and serves as an important source of climate resiliency for the region by protecting shorelines from storms and absorbing excess runoff.

Northeast Coastal Acidification Network and The Monitoring Acidification Project

PIE LTER participates in the Northeast Coastal Acidification Network (NECAN) by contributing information and data from our various sampling stations in the Plum Island Sound estuary to help increase our understanding of coastal acidification in the Northeast, United States. The Monitoring Acidification Project (MAP) uses info-rich GIS layers to share the locations of coastal monitoring stations, important metadata about monitoring programs, and contact information to help connect water quality monitoring groups with coastal acidification data-users.

Adopt-A-Herring

Since 2006, Holly Frank, Dr. Martha Mather, and Joe Smith of the USGS Massachusetts Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit , Dr. Michael Armstrong and Kristen Ferry of The MA Division of Marine Fisheries.

Dr. Robert Muth of the UMass Amherst Natural Resources Conservation Department, and Dr. Linda Deegan of the Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, MA) Plum Island Long Term Ecological Research Site have been studying river herring populations in the Ipswich River (located in northeastern Massachusetts). (MA CFWRU is a collaboration between UMass Amherst, MA Division of Marine Fisheries, USGS, and the Wildlife Management Institute).

The Adopt-A-Herring website, https://sites.google.com/site/ipswichriverherring/ describes the research we a re doing regarding river herring restoration, presents an opportunity for interested individuals, organizations, and schools to be involved in river herring restoration efforts, and provides information about our efforts to examine their behavior and habitat use using radiotelemetry.

Science Writers

Each summer the Marine Biological Laboratory supports the Logan Science Journalism Program (LSJP) see http://www.mbl.edu/sjp/, a course for professional science writers (TV, newspaper, journal, etc). These reporters play a critical role in our society, as they try to both educate the public on current scientific research and share the excitement of scientists at their work. They take the concepts they have learned during the course to their home institutions and apply it to local and global environmental issues. An informed public is the cornerstone of a democratic society. Public support for science depends on effective channels of communication between science and the general public. Over the past several years, many course participants have been exposed to ecosystem research, most recently focused at the ARC and PAL LTERs , and the result has been a number of articles in the popular press.
In 2011 the course was held at PIE from May 19-27. Eight journalists participated:

Claudio Angelo (Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil)
Margot Roosevelt (Los Angeles Times)
Asher Price (Austin Statesman, Texas)
Vikki Valentine (National Public Radio, Washington, DC)
Steven Ashley (Scientific American, NY)
Sharon Oosthoek (Freelance, Toronto, Canada)
Jennifer Smith (Newsday, Long Island, NY)
Aleida Rueda (Radio Mexican Institute, Mexico City)

Kate Morkeski, Linda Deegan, David Johnson, and Anne Giblin all participated in the course. Program Director Chris Neill co-chairs the LTER Communications Committee and plans to conduct this program at other LTER sites in the future. Hubbard Brook is the site for 2013.

The PIE LTER will again be a focus for journalists in the Environmental Hands-On Research Course in 2015, May 27 - June 26, see course description.