Even as �ֲ���ý was hitting its goal of carbon neutrality in May 2019, a year earlier than the college’s Committee on Environmental Responsibility (CER) had aimed for, the group was already thinking about its aspirations for 2030.

“We then said, ‘OK, what are the next priorities going to be?’” remembers Associate Professor of Physics Travis Gould. Gould chairs the environmental committee, which comprises 22 students, faculty, and staff from across all areas of the college.

Developed and honed over more than two years, the overarching priority of the Sustainability Roadmap, unveiled this week by President Clayton Spencer and the environmental committee, is to become “climate positive” by 2030.

“This new roadmap is our path forward,” Spencer says. “It presents both large aspirational goals and practical next steps, and it will engage the entire community in helping us make progress, both in infrastructure and behavioral changes.”

Climate positive means the college will sequester more carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions than it emits. (Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas produced by human activities.) While carbon neutrality aimed to balance out the harmful aspects of human activity, this new goal aims to be corrective and restorative.

“What our previous action plan for 2020 did was set us on course toward being what you might call  ‘the least bad,’” says Sustainability Manager Tom Twist, who joined �ֲ���ý in 2015.  “Which was a good choice. But now it seemed logical to us that the next step should be working toward doing ‘more good.’” 

Twist has been instrumental in developing programs across the college to address sustainability issues, including working with students who come up with new and innovative ideas to make �ֲ���ý greener, applying for Green Innovation Grants every year to make them a reality. One of the Green Innovation Grant projects led to student EcoReps successfully making the case to Central Maine Power and Efficiency Maine for about $36,000 in grants to increase the number of electric vehicle chargers on campus. As a result, �ֲ���ý more than doubled the number of EV charging stations on campus in 2021.  

When the CER created the college’s first formal Climate Action Plan in 2010, it set a 10-year goal to reduce �ֲ���ý’ carbon footprint, balancing carbon emissions created by the college by removing an equivalent amount of carbon from the atmosphere. That was achieved by changes in everything from the college’s recycling and composting program to crucial adjustments in the steam plan, moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. 

The nearly 30-page Roadmap details how to reach the new goal, including deeper work in campus culture, engaging all academic departments, and tracking and sharing data more broadly to keep everyone — faculty, staff, and students — involved in the efforts. Every decision around operations, whether in dining services or energy choices, speaks to the ��Dz��峾����’s goal of climate positivity. �ֲ���ý will use water more efficiently, shift to electric vehicles wherever possible and move even further toward renewables. In August 2020, �ֲ���ý entered into a 5 megawatt solar project, one large enough to represent 75 percent of �ֲ���ý’ current electricity use.

�ֲ���ý will also aim high in its future building standards. The CER recommends that all new campus buildings meet at minimum, the American Institute of Architects 2030 Challenge standard, which sets a fossil fuel energy reduction goal of 80% below the average building consumption for that category of building. The stretch goal is to adopt the Passive House design standard, which can see reductions of up to 90% in fuel costs.

Pam Wichroski, �ֲ���ý’ director of capital planning and construction and longtime CER member, has worked to make sure every new building (such as the Bonney Science Center) or renovation is in line with the college’s environmental goals. The last plan made a radical difference in how �ֲ���ý shaped its sustainability efforts. “The 2010 Climate Action Plan had plenty of value,” Wichroski says. “It ended up being surprisingly accurate in terms of how we got to carbon neutrality.” The CER’s hope is that the new Sustainability Roadmap inspires and leads �ֲ���ý even further.

The goal for 2020 was ambitious, but the 2030 goal is even more so, out of necessity. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group composed of scientists worldwide, regularly sounds alarms about the world’s environmental future. In 2021, the IPCC warnings got even more dire. It said the planet was on course for a hotter, more dangerous climate future, with total global warming likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next two decades. Unless there are radical adjustments to human activities, the report said warming could exceed 2 degrees Celsius within the 21st century.

Those shifts may not sound monumental ​​(in Fahrenheit, that’s 2.7°F to 3.6°F) but scientists say even warming at the lower end of that estimate will lead to more extreme weather, including deadly heat waves and droughts, rising seas, and widespread suffering among the world’s most vulnerable. 

For the CER, the imperative to act institutionally was obvious. ”�ֲ���ý is already having a net positive impact in a whole host of fields, whether in student life, or research, or our surrounding community,” the Roadmap says. “The Climate Positive goal is to bring our environmental footprint in line with that overall approach. We want to take in more greenhouse gases than we emit and actually be restorative for our climate, our ecosystems, and our people.”

Their efforts won praise from President Spencer. “The CER has done a deeply impressive job of engaging the entire �ֲ���ý community in the process, leveraging the commitment and creativity of individuals across the college,” Spencer says. “It is a powerful example of the impact that a motivated and mission-driven set of diverse stakeholders can have, and it offers a compelling model for the college as it works to address other institutional challenges.”

Growing up in coastal Maine, Essie Martin ’21 has seen the effects of climate change firsthand, both on ecosystems and on the communities that rely on the ocean for their livelihoods. 

That experience inspired Martin, a geology major from Newcastle, to study natural science and sparked her interest in aquaculture, a form of food production that, done responsibly, could mitigate the effects of overfishing and climate change. 

Martin will move closer to her goal thanks to a highly competitive Harry S. Truman Scholarship, funding graduate study for students with demonstrated leadership potential and a commitment to public service. 

The federally funded award, sponsored and administered by the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, provides up to $30,000 for graduate study, as well as leadership training, career and graduate school counseling, and federal government internship opportunities. 

Martin, one of 62 Truman Scholars in 2020, is the first �ֲ���ý student to receive the scholarship since Jay Surdukowski ’02 in 2001. In applying, she worked closely with Robert Strong, lecturer in English and director of national fellowships at �ֲ���ý.  

“Essie has used her time at �ֲ���ý to acquire the knowledge and skills that will advance progress in aquaculture and help her address issues of vital importance to her home state of Maine,” says �ֲ���ý President Clayton Spencer. “These issues are among the most troubling effects of climate change in Maine, where commercial fishing — one of the state’s largest industries — is threatened by rapidly warming ocean waters.”

Martin plans to earn a master’s degree in aquaculture, the farming of marine organisms.  Aquaculture is a broad field: Practitioners could raise fish in specific ocean waters, or in tanks on land or in the water; or grow mollusks on seabeds or on rope; or cultivate kelp. 

It’s an alternative to traditional fishing, which is threatened by a set of intersecting issues. In the Gulf of Maine, not only are , but overfishing over the decades, particularly for , has contributed to decreasing biodiversity. As a consequence, most fishing industry effort tends to focus on a single catch — in Maine’s case, lobster, an industry that employs many of Martin’s high school classmates. 

“The resulting specialization can lead to environmental degradation and make economies more vulnerable to climate change,” Martin says. 

Martin sees aquaculture as a way to fight climate change and to sustain local communities. Growing kelp, for example, “provides income for the fishermen and food for the people on the coast and elsewhere, but then it also helps mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon,” Martin says. “It’s a similar deal with shellfish. Oysters filter the water.” 

That fusion of environmentalism and concern for people’s well-being led Martin to apply for the public service–focused Truman. She hopes not only to develop expertise in ocean science and aquaculture but help governments oversee the industry as it becomes more common. (Maine already supports farmed salmon and mussels, among other seafoods.) 

“In order for aquaculture to be part of the solution and not just another failed project, we really need good policy and good regulation,” Martin says. “That stems from understanding science, systems, and species.” 

That means including fishers, as well as scientists and policymakers, in policy and aquaculture development. 

“It’s really important for everyone to have a seat at the table if we’re going to write good policy,” she says. 

Martin’s undergraduate experience has already given her a strong science and public service background. She developed strong relationships with her professors, gaining classroom and field research experience. 

“It’s really nice to have a small department where you can form individual relationships,” she says. 

One of those professors was Whitehouse Professor of Geology Dyk Eusden ’80. During Short Term in 2019, Martin and two other students teamed with Eusden to map bedrock in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. 

Eusden came to appreciate in Martin the qualities of a future Truman Scholar, including deep and wide-ranging engagement in current issues, ideas, and the world around her, as well as the ability to negotiate the twists and turns of a difficult project.

“Essie showed great interest in our project, had a keen set of eyes for field geology, and was passionate about the progress and map we were making,” says Eusden. 

“It’s really important for everyone to have a seat at the table if we’re going to write good policy.”

“She would often point out to me wildflowers that she knew, discuss politics during the long walk in the woods back to the car from atop the Mahoosuc Range, or tell me stories of her family in Newcastle.” 

Outside the classroom, Martin serves as environmental director for the �ֲ���ý Outing Club, working to minimize the environmental impact of the club’s activities; as a student EcoRep she organizes the twice-yearly EcoService Day. 

She’s also gotten a head start on aquaculture itself, working as a research intern in summer 2019 at a , studying the effectiveness of cultivating oysters in abandoned lobster pounds in Bremen, Maine.

Environmental justice, the idea that environmental policies and initiatives should involve and be fair to all people regardless of race, national origin, or income, has been a vital part of her environmental education. 

It “permeates every level — Commons conversations, classes people are taking, the maps I was making in an environmental studies class,” Martin says, referring to a geographic information systems course that included mapping food deserts, indigenous tribes in Maine, and the damage from the Mount St. Helens volcanic explosion.

Absorbing and exploring these ideas from teachers and peers “have helped me go down this path,” she says. 

Funded by her Truman, Martin hopes to earn a master’s degree in aquaculture, then pursue a doctorate in oceanography, working to advance both the aquaculture industry and the policy surrounding it. 

“It means a great deal that the Truman Foundation believes enough in the research I want to pursue to award me a scholarship and welcome me into the amazing community of Truman scholars,” Martin says.

It’s safe to say that whoever is running the �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain Conservation Area (and, nearby, the college’s Coastal Center at Shortridge) has a lot on their plate.

Any director of the site has “to have their eye on student learning, faculty engagement, and coastal research,” not to mention “what signage is needed to keep dogs off the beach,” says Darby Ray, who as head of �ֲ���ý’ Harward Center supervised the conservation area director for a number of years.

Since 2008, that director has been Laura Sewall, who is retiring this summer, to be succeeded by marine scientist Caitlin Cleaver, who starts work on Aug. 16.

“Laura has been a tireless advocate for �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain,” says politics professor Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir, an associate dean of the faculty who now oversees the area’s management. “She has been incredibly creative and enthusiastic about working with our faculty and students who do research there.”

With Seawall Beach in the distance, the Sprague river and marsh are shown from the summit of Morse Mountain. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

In its 600 acres located about an hour from campus on the Phippsburg peninsula, �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain incorporates two salt marshes, two rivers, a rare stand of dune pitch pines among its many trees, and the eponymous small mountain. Accessed through the conservation area but not part of it is Seawall Beach, a real beauty that’s the last undeveloped barrier beach in Maine.

�ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain is owned by a nonprofit corporation, protected in perpetuity from new development, and managed by �ֲ���ý under the eyes of The Nature Conservancy, which holds conservation easements on the area.

It’s valued by locals and tourists for its beauty, and by scientists, including several from �ֲ���ý, as a place to observe how diverse ecosystems are responding to unprecedented natural change.

“Laura has, with great finesse and diplomacy, balanced the needs and interests” of those stakeholders, says Ray, and in doing so has given the research mission primacy at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain.

Laura Sewall, who retires this summer as director of the �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain Conservation Area, observes the area from a small plane in June. (Brittney Lohmiller for �ֲ���ý College)

A writer who holds a doctorate in visual psychology from Brown University, Sewall has deep family roots in the peninsula. A former professor at Prescott College in Arizona, she is the author of the book Sight and Sensibility: The Ecopsychology of Perception (1999), which her publisher describes as “the first definitive guide to the new field of ecopsychology.” She has also served as a lecturer in environmental studies at �ֲ���ý.

Sewall’s retirement plans include more book work. She wants to finish a volume on perception that until now has been relegated to her spare time. In addition, encouraged by interest from an academic publisher, she’s working with �ֲ���ý faculty and alumni on a compilation of research from �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain. That’s where we start our interview.

Who are the faculty taking part in the �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain book?

Don Dearborn and I are co-editors. Joe Hall, Mike Retelle, Bev Johnson, Brett Huggett, Dyk Eusden, Don, myself, and a few alums are all contributing chapters. There are three still to be written. Then we’ll meet at Shortridge to synthesize the climate understanding or awareness we’ve gotten from our individual observations and disciplines, so we can write a summary chapter that will make a strong statement about coastal climate adaptation.

Laura Sewall (center) and, to her left, former �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain director Judy Marden ’66, lead alumni and friends on a hike at the conservation area during Reunion 2019 in June. (Theophil Sylso/�ֲ���ý College)

What attracted you to the �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain job?

Oh, boy, there is so much. One is the place itself, Morse Mountain. I live next door to it on what was my grandmother’s property, and in visiting her summer house from Arizona, I kept looking into the marsh and thinking, If only I could take care of the marsh with students. And so 10 years later, in 2008, my predecessor, Judy Marden ’66, said, “Laura, I’ve got a job for you.”

This was an opportunity like none I’d had for bringing a regional awareness to stewardship.

You’ve worked with �ֲ���ý geologist Beverly Johnson and her students on measuring “blue carbon” — carbon stored in the marshes. It amounts to hundreds of tons each year.

I think the most important thing I’ve learned was how valuable the salt marshes are, including the degree of carbon storage.

Professor of Geology Beverly Johnson uses a sediment elevation table to measure the height of the Sprague Marsh, part of the �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain Conservation Area, in August 2018. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Robert Costanza, an ecological economist who’s well-known for developing valuations for different ecosystem types, estimates that per hectare because of ecosystem services, which include things like storm buffering, water filtration, fisheries support. That makes the Sprague Marsh, at 74 acres, worth $5.8 million per year. This doesn’t even include carbon storage.

You have a strong history of engaging �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain with initiatives or organizations that have similar interests.

In my first four or five years I attended a lot of meetings pertaining to coastal issues — professional conferences, and meetings with state agencies and environmental NGOs.

People saw that the director of the �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain Conservation Area was showing up, and so opportunities to engage in various projects opened up. And it made �ֲ���ý more visible as a partner in environmental work in Maine.

This pitch pine dune woodland at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain is a globally rare ecosystem and possesses a rare beauty, as well. (Laura Sewall/�ֲ���ý College)

In fact, the Northeastern Coastal Stations Alliance was your brainchild — and one of the people who helped get it off the ground was your �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain successor, Caitlin Cleaver, who was then at the Hurricane Island Center.

That’s the partnership I’m probably most proud of. It’s a , ranging from Shoals Marine Lab, on Appledore Island off Kittery, to the College of the Atlantic stations off Mount Desert.

It’s a loose, grassroots organization with a great mission. The idea is to collaborate on basic monitoring so that we can track changing conditions in the near-shore zone across the expanse of the Gulf of Maine.

What other accomplishments at Shortridge and �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain are you proud of?

The Shortridge Summer Residency for students has proven to be a solid use of the facility. They’ve done field research, and shared that work with the public and policy makers.

Seen in 2015, Professor of Geology Mike Retelle reviews time-lapse photography of beach erosion with Ian Hillenbrand ’17 and Nicole Cueli ’16 at the college’s Coastal Center at Shortridge, adjacent to �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

They’ve done thesis work, been artists-in-residence, been interns for local land trusts. More than 60 students have done the residency since 2009. Shortridge has been busy overall — 560 �ֲ���ý people used it during the last academic year.

Also, I’m really proud of the way the two gatekeepers, the caretaker, and I have coordinated our work and been a really good team.

How is rapid climate change affecting �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain?

It’s mostly about higher tides. So the causeway across Sprague Marsh floods more frequently than it used to — we now warn people that high tide may cover the causeway and they should expect to wait or wade.

There has also been quite a bit of erosion on the dune front along Seawall Beach — about 11 meters in the center of the beach since 1992. Mike Retelle has been tracking that. I’ve seen a lot of erosion up in the marsh.

The dune pitch pines are dying back. It would be hard to say without putting in wells to measure hydrology and salinity, but their root system is the closest to the seawater.

“People love �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain, and I think everyone who’s a stakeholder has felt �ֲ���ý has taken good care of it.”

Some parts of the marsh are healthy and luxuriant, and in other areas you now see muddy patches among the vegetation — little hillocks of plant growth with mud around them. I’ve been told by a salt marsh researcher from the University of New Hampshire, David Burdick, that it’s an early sign of conversion to mudflats.

The �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain bylaws require us to let nature take its course. So we’re able to observe without interference — the hemlocks are slowly dying because of hemlock wooly adelgid, and we need to witness it.

Holding a hemlock branch infested with invasive and destructive hemlock woolly adelgids, Assistant Professor of Biology Brett Huggett observes hemlock trees during a Short Term 2015 field trip at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

I created a sign to educate visitors about the die-off. You walk up the mountain from the marsh and see a dying mess in the forest. It’s a visible sign of climate change, and it’s a teachable moment.

You’ve brought some of Beverly Johnson’s research techniques to the marsh near your own home — a sediment elevation table to measure changes in the level of the marsh surface, and a system for monitoring vegetation changes over time.

Bev and I installed the sediment elevation table right in front of my house in the Sprague Marsh, and I do a vegetation transect in that area every year. Both provide measures to help us predict the response of the marsh to sea level rise. We installed three additional SETs, along with vegetation transect sites, further up the marsh as well.

How has this job helped you make sense of your life?

I have always been purpose-driven. In my life, I chose every step along the way because I saw a more interesting purpose or a closer way to take care of some bit of the Earth.

Seen in December 2017, Isobel Curtis ’17 works on a project to establish forest survey plots at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain. The project is part of a multi-group effort to monitor significant Maine ecosystems in the face of climate change. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

That’s what �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain has been — a great opportunity to take care of a place. This has given me the opportunity to satisfy that yearning.

It’s also been satisfying to feel that I’m of service to the community there. People love �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain, and I think everyone who’s a stakeholder has felt like �ֲ���ý has taken good care of it during my tenure and Judy’s, too. That feels really good. A big part of that has been the opportunity to educate, too — both students and the public.

You have quite a family history in this region — your house is on property that once belonged to your great-great-grandparents. Did you know the conservation area well before you became director?

When I was teaching in Arizona, I would finish up in May and I’d come back here. In the early evenings, I’d ride my bike over the mountain, which was, of course, against the rules. I didn’t know that — I saw very few people and no one ever stopped me. I certainly knew Seawall Beach, and the Sprague Marsh from paddling into it, but that was about it.

One of two rivers within the �ֲ���ý-Morse Mountain Conservation Area, the Morse River flows into the ocean near Popham Beach. (Brittney Lohmiller for �ֲ���ý College)

Your great-great-grandmother, Emma Sewall, was one of Maine’s earliest female photographers. She photographed working people, including workers in the salt marshes.

My sister Abbie Sewall is also a photographer, and she took many of Emma’s glass plates and published them in a book, Message Through Time. Emma also wrote a little book, The Rivers and Marshes of Small Point, Maine. It’s funny to think that I’m simply following in her footsteps, like my sister — both of us carrying Emma’s work into this era.

The midcoast Maine town of Damariscotta, a popular destination for both tourists and retirees looking to resettle, was also a field-trip destination for a new Short Term course this year.

The downtown is a little gem whose charms include quirky-but-useful amenities and architecture dating back to the 1840s. Water views abound, as the densely built-up downtown is bordered on three sides by the Damariscotta River.

An especially striking view is from a parking lot sandwiched between the river and the downtown. Just steps from the main street, this spacious riverfront lot has been an essential asset to the town for more than 50 years.

But if no action is taken — perhaps even if action is taken — that parking lot could morph from essential asset to fatal weak point before another 50 years have passed.

Students, faculty, and guests of the course “In Search of Higher Ground” pose with the Damariscotta River in the background on May 1, 2019. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

The Damariscotta is a tidal river. As climate change drives up sea levels, high tides are getting higher. And when the river rises enough to flood downtown, it will come right across that parking lot.

So if you’re going to discuss a town’s response to sea level rise, what better place to do it than the local ground zero? That’s why, for their Short Term course “In Search of Higher Ground: Sea Level Rise, Flooding, and the Future of the Eastern Seaboard,” �ֲ���ý professors Lynne Lewis and Francis Eanes got their students together with local officials at the parking lot to discuss the town’s flood-response strategy.

Damariscotta, whose parking lot is already subject to flooding during extremes of tide and weather, was one of a few Maine destinations for the class. (The local authorities, by the way, plan to raise the lot by three feet and edge it with a new seawall. A second seawall will protect the north side of downtown. The total cost would have run about $1.8 million according to a estimate from 2015, when construction was considerably cheaper.)

Following the local excursions, the centerpiece of the course was a 10-day trip to the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina, where the battle with high water is much further along. The class visited research centers, took tours on land and sea, and met with experts in diverse disciplines. They learned the dichotomy between “green” adaptations to rising water that mimic and support natural systems, and “gray” adaptations like seawalls and bulkheads.

A member of the “In Search of Higher Ground” class, Henry Colt ’19 poses at the wastewater treatment plant by the sea in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Six feet tall, Colt marks the level sea water could reach during a northeaster in the year 2060 according to one scenario. (Lynne Lewis for �ֲ���ý College)

The class saw the double-deck piers that the U.S. Navy is building at its base in Norfolk, Va., a city especially hard-hit by rising seas. And they visited Nags Head, a town on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where authorities are spending $43 million to “renourish” the beloved-but-eroding beach with a layer of sand, four and a half feet thick, pumped in from the sea floor a mile or more off the coast.

Focusing on economic and social vulnerabilities to sea level rise, “In Search of Higher Ground” was explicitly an experiential course, designed to put the students where the action is and then inform their responses to it.

Though coastal flooding is just one subset of the problems caused by climate change, its ramifications are mind-numbingly complex — including the loss of critical wildlife habitat, the loss of homes, businesses, and public infrastructure, and the monetary and social costs of relocating communities.

Francis Eanes and Lynne Lewis pose in Damariscotta, Maine, during the May 1 visit by their “In Search of Higher Ground” class. Eanes is a visiting assistant professor of environmental studies and Lewis is the Elmer W. Campbell Professor of Economics at �ֲ���ý. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

So maybe the best thing you can say about sea level rise is that it’s an educational cornucopia. The road trips included visits with environmental economists, engineers, biologists, oceanographers, physicists, government officials, and more. With each new conversation, “I would see different students light up like, ‘Oh, like that’s what I’m really interested in,’” says Eanes, himself a visiting assistant professor of environmental studies who studies urban issues and food systems.

“The experiential piece is the springboard to taking a deeper dive into the more technical stuff,” he explains. “The topic is interesting to everybody, but different people will gravitate toward different methods” for coming to grips with it. The class, Eanes notes, was mostly underclass students, and more than half of the group were ES majors.

The trips were as educational for the two �ֲ���ý professors as for their dozen students. “We could help students process and answer some questions, but most of the time I didn’t know the answer,” says Lewis, herself an environmental economist and the Elmer W. Campbell Professor of Economics. “We were learning right along with them.”

Inevitably, some members of the class approached the field trip ready to offer ideas. But that changed as they encountered the facts and the people on the scene. One student told Lewis, “I went in with my preconceived ‘You need to do this and that.’ And I realized that that’s not right.”

Bulldozers spread sand near a beach house at Nags Head, N.C., part of a $43 million beach “renourishment” project. Sand is dredged from the ocean floor and pumped more than a mile from an offshore “borrow” site to the beach. (Lynne Lewis for �ֲ���ý College)

“You can watch the PowerPoint and think you understand,” says Koharu Aoki, a first-year student from Tokyo. “And then you get to see the real thing and it is totally different.”

Still, the impulse to march in brandishing advice is understandable when you consider the political, social, and cultural gridlock that humanity has imposed on this self-inflicted crisis. “We can’t fight each other and the rising ocean” too, says Kassie Wilson ’21 of Westford, Mass., a newly declared environmental studies major who took the course.

The �ֲ���ý group heard from several sources that in negotiating response strategies with certain stakeholders, they often had to avoid the words “climate change” in favor of less politically polarized language, such as “recurrent flooding.”

Bob Faunce, the now-retired county planner who helped Damariscotta design its response strategy, mentioned the impact of Republican Paul LePage, Maine’s governor from 2011 till this year, who halted state climate-change adaptation plans soon after taking office.

“Not being able to discuss [climate change] at the state level has been very difficult,” Faunce said. “The next dollar I get from the state [for adaptation] will be the first dollar I’ve gotten from them.” (Funding for the Damariscotta project has come from federal and private sources.)

The Navy has added a second deck to some piers at Naval Base Norfolk to accommodate higher water levels and expedite the handling of cargo. (Lynne Lewis for �ֲ���ý College)

Still, the field trips afforded examples of ingenuity and realism that gave the visitors from �ֲ���ý some cause for optimism. Norfolk, facing one of the fastest rates of sea level rise in the nation, displayed a matter-of-fact effectiveness that was particularly admirable.

Deputy Resilience Officer Kyle Spencer told the class about the system of sensors around the city that, through the street navigation app Waze, show drivers which streets are flooded and impassable.

“He makes things happen,” says Lewis — “basically saying, ‘Well, here’s what I need. Nobody’s giving it to me, so I’m going to figure out how to do it, and I’m bringing people together to talk about it.’ It was pretty impressive.”

Norfolk also exemplified a principle common to many of the most effective approaches to the problem. “There’s this paradigm shift of, ‘We’re going to live with water, not try to keep the water away,’” says Eanes. “Trying to wall ourselves off from the water is not actually the most effective strategy, from a geophysical standpoint or from a psychological community standpoint.”

A “living shoreline” in rural Mathews County, Va. A rock sill, center, dissipates wave energy coming from the left while allowing water through to support marine plant and animal life. (Lynne Lewis for �ֲ���ý College)

Instead, there’s increasing emphasis on infrastructure like flood parks, recreation areas that can also be used to contain floodwaters; and “living shorelines,” features like artificial reefs, wetlands, and dunes. These are “human constructions, and often will involve some sort of gray or hard infrastructure,” says Eanes. “But they’re using natural processes to absorb some of the increasing intensity of storm events.”

The measures that people like Spencer are “doing and thinking about are very creative,” Lewis says. “People are very aware that these might be Band-Aids, temporary solutions, but it’s what we’ve got right now.”

Offering some generational context, Eanes points out that the daily news hasn’t given college-age students much reason to expect creative solutions to large-scale problems, especially involving climate change. “The baseline that they are working from is that institutions and approaches that we’ve had for decades are not commensurate with the scale of the problem,” he suggests.

“People are very aware that these might be Band-Aids, but it’s what we’ve got right now.”

“And then to see that, ‘Oh, actually communities all over the place are working on this’ is a relief,” he says, even if the focus is on accommodating high water in the short term, and not mitigating climate change in the long term.

People leading the response to water that threatens their communities are “making decisions in political, social, and economic situations that we can’t know just from being at �ֲ���ý and learning about it,” Dianna Georges ’22 of Clifton, N.J., said during a class meeting after the trip.

“Some people the class encountered are used to living with water, while for others it’s a new experience,” Lewis points out. “Adaptation is very localized and very context- and geography-specific.”

She adds, “No one is really talking about managed retreat. At least not yet.”

�ֲ���ý students hear about flood response planning from Damariscotta Town Manager Matt Lutkus, center left, and former county planner Bob Faunce, center right, during their May 1 visit. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

A year ahead of its announced commitment, �ֲ���ý College has become carbon neutral.

Measured against a 2001 baseline, �ֲ���ý has eliminated 95 percent of its campus greenhouse gas emissions, and will purchase carbon offsets for the remainder. In its Climate Action Plan, announced nine years ago, �ֲ���ý committed to hitting this important milestone by 2020.

Reaching the goal early is a measure of the college’s determination and leadership in combating climate change, and in sustainability overall. Out of some 700 U.S. colleges and universities to sign a carbon-neutrality pledge in 2007, �ֲ���ý is one of only seven to date that have reached that goal.

“This achievement shows �ֲ���ý at its best,” says �ֲ���ý President Clayton Spencer. “Our mission statement calls for responsible stewardship of the wider world, and at this point in our history on this planet, there is no higher need than addressing climate change.

“More important, we have met this goal through shared effort, commitment, and creativity by the entire college community with students leading the way.”

Broadly speaking, �ֲ���ý worked on three fronts to shrink its carbon footprint: reducing energy consumption through efficiency measures; strengthening the culture of sustainability on campus; and switching to renewable energy sources — most important, Renewable Fuel Oil (RFO), a wood-derived liquid that’s now the primary fuel for the college’s central heating plant.

“These efforts are a win-win for �ֲ���ý: The college has reduced waste and achieved carbon neutrality in a manner that makes sound financial sense.”

Largely because of the impact of RFO, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education ranked �ֲ���ý fourth in the world for its clean energy program in 2017.

“�ֲ���ý has successfully integrated behavioral change into the everyday patterns of the college and adapted innovative energy solutions into the very core of campus operations,” says Geoff Swift, vice president for finance and administration and treasurer.

“Together, these efforts are a win-win for �ֲ���ý: The college has reduced waste and achieved carbon neutrality in a manner that makes sound financial sense.”

From its baseline in 2001, �ֲ���ý chipped away at its carbon emissions, gaining major strides after 2005 by purchasing green electricity and, starting in 2017, by using Renewable Fuel Oil in its campus boilers.

“I chose �ֲ���ý because of its sustainability programs,” says Tamsin Stringer ’22 of Bloomington, Ind. Stringer is a member of both the college’s EcoReps, a student task force for green initiatives on campus, and its Committee on Environmental Responsibility, a faculty, staff, and student group that charted �ֲ���ý’ course toward carbon neutrality.

Stringer attended the CER meeting earlier this month where senior staff revealed that �ֲ���ý would achieve neutrality ahead of schedule. “I felt proud to be going to �ֲ���ý,” she says. “The fact that a school can take an initiative like that and uphold its commitment is just really inspiring to me.”

Tom Twist, �ֲ���ý’ sustainability manager, estimates that nearly two-thirds of the emissions reduction is attributable to, first, �ֲ���ý’ switch to renewable sources of electricity, in 2005; and second, to efficiency and conservation measures overseen by college energy manager John Rasmussen.

EcoReps, a student task force for green initiatives on campus, have been integral to the college’s march toward carbon neutrality. In 2017, these EcoReps, Isa Moise ’19, Beanie O’Shea ’18, Hannah Slattery ’18, and George Fiske ’19, posed for a portrait to demonstrate the proper use of new waste systems on campus. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

All told, these efficiency measures have reduced the college’s utility bills by more than $1 million annually. These include the replacement of virtually all campus lighting with LED lamps; enhancing building insulation and replacing windows across campus with better-sealed units; and acquiring technology that enables much more precise, and therefore energy-saving, monitoring and control for HVAC and other electrical draws.

The remaining emissions were eliminated mostly by converting to fossil-free fuels, notably the adoption of the new fuel oil for the steam plant that heats most of the campus — more than a million square feet of interior space. RFO, produced by the Canadian firm Ensyn, is created from forest industry byproducts in a chemical reaction that, once started, is largely fueled by its own byproducts.

In 2017, the college started burning RFO in one of the steam plant’s three boilers. This year, �ֲ���ý converted a second boiler, ensuring that RFO is virtually the only heat source for buildings served by the central plant.

�ֲ���ý is the only U.S. educational institution using RFO for heat, and one of only three U.S. institutions of any kind that heat with it.

Key to the college becoming carbon neutral is using Renewable Fuel Oil for heat, and �ֲ���ý is the only U.S. educational institution doing so. Here, scaffolding surrounds the new RFO tank in January 2017. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Harder to quantify but essential to �ֲ���ý’ achievement is a campus culture dedicated to sustainability, as well as social justice, which for many at �ֲ���ý go hand in hand.

The academic curriculum includes an interdisciplinary environmental studies program that integrates the natural sciences and humanities, and immerses students in community-engaged research and action.

Students drive a number of environmental organizations on campus — notably the EcoReps, overseen by sustainability manager Twist, a program that gives its members both the practical and interpersonal skills to make things happen on campus and in life after �ֲ���ý.

The greenhouse gas emissions chart that the college has used to track progress toward neutrality, for example, was created by EcoReps, Twist points out.

Previously, aside from a professional assessment performed in 2009, “it was just a blank map. We had no idea where we were. So we had students work on it for two years, and they filled it in,” Twist explains. “And they actually did a better job than the paid consultants.”

Students are “basically embedded in every single sustainability project that we’re doing, and they’re doing real work,” says Tom Twist, the college’s sustainability manager, seen during a recent meeting of the Committee on Environmental Responsibility. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

As far back as 2014, if not longer, �ֲ���ý faculty have invited students to play a role in the carbon-neutrality effort through their work in class.

For instance, for their capstone project in environmental studies, two 2018 graduates conducted research into carbon offsets — verified programs that ameliorate atmospheric carbon through various means — that informed �ֲ���ý’ current neutrality plan. (�ֲ���ý is purchasing offsets that support the capture of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as it escapes from landfills, diverting it for energy production.)

“I haven’t seen any other school trust its students as much as we do with sustainability work.”

“I was very excited about this wealth of information that we had at our fingertips and about our realization that we had many affordable options to reach carbon neutrality,” says one of those alumnae, Caitlin Keady of Kamloops, British Columbia.

“I felt empowered by this work and by the knowledge that with a bit of research and a few late nights I could help change the way �ֲ���ý prioritizes sustainability,” says Keady, who will start working toward a master’s in environmental engineering this fall. “I acquired a vast range of skills as an EcoRep, from leadership and presentation techniques to data analysis and report writing. I grew a tremendous amount as an aspiring professional in this field.”

EcoReps George Fiske ’19, Brent Feldman ’17, and Katharine Gaillard ’19 install solar panels at the college’s Coastal Center at Shortridge in October 2016. The center is now 100 percent solar. (Tom Twist/�ֲ���ý College)

“I haven’t seen any other school trust its students as much as we do with sustainability work,” says Twist. “They’re basically embedded in every single sustainability project that we’re doing, and they’re doing real work.”

He adds, “You hear tons of bad news about climate change every day, but you don’t hear a lot of coverage on what to do about it, and that makes people very depressed and hopeless. We’re showing students a viable pathway for how to do this.”

In fact, the entire campus community benefits from �ֲ���ý’ inclusive approach to green action. “In terms of sustainability,” he says, “�ֲ���ý has a really deep bench.”

“�ֲ���ý has stepped up, taken responsibility for its carbon footprint, and done so in a way that should be a model for other institutions.”

Initiatives like the Green Innovation Grants program keep the interest high among staff, faculty, and students alike. And the CER, legislated into existence in 2007 and currently chaired by physics professor Travis Gould, “is in a unique position to address higher-level sustainability policy,” says Twist.

“That was the group that leveraged what we knew about carbon neutrality and suggested that we advise senior staff that we were within striking distance of neutrality.”

“�ֲ���ý has stepped up, taken responsibility for its carbon footprint, and done so in a way that should be a model for other institutions,” says Gould. “It’s been a process of years, and I want to recognize the contributions of faculty — in teaching, research, and leadership — that helped get us to this point. This really has been a collective effort.”

A recent poll of the �ֲ���ý campus community showed that virtually the entire student body, and 96 percent of staff and faculty, supported the college’s attainment of carbon neutrality by 2020.

Slightly more than half of first-year students polled by the college Admission office said that they — like Tamsin Stringer — were attracted to �ֲ���ý by its commitment to environmental sustainability.

Like Tamsin Stringer ’22, an EcoRep from Bloomington, Ind., seen attending a meeting of the college’s Committee on Environmental Responsibility, many current students choose to attend �ֲ���ý for its sustainability programs. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

After peaking in 2003, �ֲ���ý’ greenhouse gas emissions dropped dramatically in 2005, the year the college began sourcing all of its electricity from wind power. In 2007, the year �ֲ���ý joined the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, emissions were less than half of the 2003 high-water mark.

Between campus-wide efficiency measures and the sharp reduction made possible by the switch to RFO, emissions plummeted again starting in 2015 — all this despite the addition of some 200,000 square feet of building space to the campus since 2001.

�ֲ���ý is relying only minimally on the purchase of carbon offsets to attain carbon neutrality. The college will spend about $7,000 annually to offset fossil-fueled heat in certain buildings and travel to and from campus, including air travel for student study abroad and faculty research trips.

We try to reserve the NESCAC Chill Poll, an occasional rundown of the coldest campuses in the conference, for big-time, below-zero cold, which �ֲ���ý hasn’t seen the last couple of days.

But we don’t want to give the cold shoulder to our frozen Midwest neighbors, who are in the grips of historic cold, thanks to the infamous polar vortex. Carleton College in Minnesota, for example, hit 34 degrees below zero on Jan. 31.

So, simpatico with our neighbors to the west, we ran a NESCAC Chill Poll on Jan. 31, and here are the results: The winner was Hamilton, at 7.2 degrees below zero, followed by Colby (minus 6), �ֲ���ý (minus 5.3) and Williams (minus 5).

The infamous Midwest cold is due to the well-reported weakening of the polar vortex, allowing cold air to surge south in various places around the world.

Just where the cold air busts loose “is a matter of chance,” says Raj Saha ’03, a lecturer in environmental geophysics at �ֲ���ý who is teaching “Climate Change and Modeling” and the “Polar Environment” this semester.

Raj Saha ’03 shows his students this animation, which shows the Arctic air (pink/purple shading) and winds (white lines) barreling into the Midwest on Jan. 31.

The dividing line between Arctic air to the north and warmer air to the south is the jet stream; as it meanders southward, brutal cold air follows, in this case to the mid-latitudes.

It may seem ironic, he says, but “the cold spell is most likely a byproduct of global warming,” Saha says. “Some recent studies show that this extra meandering is being driven by sea-ice loss in the Arctic.”

This time, the coldest cold missed New England, unlike in February 2015. “New England gets the moderating influence of the ocean Gulf Stream to the east, so it usually does not get hit as hard by the polar vortex,” Saha said.

Raj Saha ’03 (left), a lecturer in environmental geophysics at �ֲ���ý, works with Ian Wax ’19 (center) and Salim Ourari ’18 on a pair of climate-related projects in summer 2016. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The temperature spread between chilly Hamilton and warm Tufts (3.2 degrees) was just 10.4 degrees on the 31st. Often, there’s a bigger spread between the coast and the hinterlands on cold nights.

The constant breeze played a part in the uniformity, preventing both warm air from escaping into the atmosphere and cold air from pooling in traditional cold spots near the ground.

“The persistence of the wind was a big reason why we didn’t ‘maximize’ the coldness of the air mass,” explains Greg Postel ’90, hurricane and storm specialist at The Weather Channel.

Greg Postel ’90 is a hurricane and storm specialist at The Weather Channel.

Saha says that he and his students talk about the polar vortex in “almost every class.”

As for the media’s presentation of polar vortex stories, “I see two things that stand out: as a singular entity, and lots of scientifically informed comments on the other side.”

With each polar vortex episode, “the latter voice has become louder and the skeptic voice has become fainter. I am hoping this is a good sign.”

Here’s who was coldest on the morning of Jan. 31:

Temperatures are taken from Weather Underground reporting stations at or close to each campus. On-campus reporting stations are noted.

“I want to share with you a series of stories that ground a set of questions that inform my work as an environmental writer,” Elizabeth Rush told a �ֲ���ý audience on Oct. 27.

“I want to focus on these questions because I believe, simply put, that answers change over time and that we ought to learn the questions instead.”

Rush, an author who is exploring human adaptation to climate change, gave the annual Otis Lecture in Olin Concert Hall.

For Rush, giving the lecture was a homecoming of sorts. She taught at �ֲ���ý from 2015 to 2017 as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities; while here, she wrote much her most recent book, . �ֲ���ý, she says, is a “special place where both intellectual curiosity and community are equally honored.”

Elizabeth Rush laughs as geology professor Beverly Johnson introduces her to students in her course on global change, including the impact of greenhouse gases on global climate, sea level, and ocean acidification. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

As Rush explained to her audience, she’s beginning a big new project.

Supported by a , she’ll head to Antarctica for the 2019 field season to research a new book about ice loss on the continent. Specifically, Rush will accompany three research teams studying the role the Thwaites Glacier will play in the upcoming years.

To access the glacier, Rush will embark on a 50-plus-day journey across the Drake Passage on the research vessel Nathaniel Palmer.

The Thwaites Glacier, she explained, has been nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier” because its melting destabilizes the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, and its .

“Thwaites is one of the most remote regions in the world,” she said. “Only 28 people in the history of the planet have ever been there.”

Upon receiving news of her grant, Rush called a male geologist. “I asked him, ‘You know what I should do to prepare?’ And he told me, ‘Pack as if you’re going to the moon.’ But I’ve never been to the moon before. I went, instead, to the library.”

In the library, Rush noticed that the “overwhelming majority of books written about Antarctica in English were written by white men, many of whom set out to conquer the continent in its various forms.

“While women have travelled to this continent before as scientists and artists and writers, as electricians as cooks, on their experience, their intimate experience of the journey had rarely made it into those Antarctic narratives.”

While at �ֲ���ý to deliver the Otis Lecture, Elizabeth Rush speaks with students in Associate Professor of Geology Beverly Johnson’s course on global change. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

So Rush reached out to Erika Blumenfeld, “a wonderful Antarctic photographer and current artist and resident for NASA,” who told her all she needed to know about the unique experience of being a woman on the ice.

“She told me to bring baby wipes, because showers are infrequent, and more tampons than you think you will ever need,” Rush said. “Bring soda crackers, and, possibly, also bring a satellite phone in case the boat doesn’t have one.”

None of what Blumenfeld told her was in the wilderness adventure stories Rush had read in the library. Yet as a child, reading these stories helped inspire Rush to spend time outside and fostered her interest in environmental advocacy, she said.

Rush approached this dilemma by pointing to two essays. In the first, “” writer and biologist Ethan Linck argues that mere enthusiasm for outdoor recreation will not fight climate change.

In the second essay, “,” Louis Geltman, a lawyer, whitewater rafter, and the policy director for Outdoor Alliance suggests that “stoke” can also mean to help feed a fire, and that outdoor recreation fosters passion for environmental conservation and activism.

(It’s a concept Philip Otis might have greatly agreed with. Deeply committed to environmental issues, Otis, a member of the Class of 1995, died attempting to rescue an injured climber on Mount Rainier in 1995.)

Elizabeth Rush wrote much of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore while at �ֲ���ý on a postdoctoral fellowship in the humanities. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“As I prepared my remarks for you all tonight,” said Rush, “I was thinking about how to make ‘stoke’ into something larger and also, in an even broader sense, how to expand the idea of who belongs in the environmental conversation in the first place.”

Rush then asked her audience to consider the groups of people who are excluded from the North American narratives of adventure and exploration.

“There are so very many that ‘us’ leaves out,” she said, “from the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples exterminated through genocidal projects across the Americas, to those whose ancestral roots reach back to Africa and Asia and native America. Too often, that ‘us’ excludes those who didn’t have the money to launch an expedition or escape to the wilderness on the weekends.”

For Rush, questions of inclusion, exclusion, and climate change came into sharp focus in 2012, when deadly and destructive Hurricane Sandy struck while she was teaching at the College of Staten Island in New York.

As it’s believed that the storm’s fury , Rush was able to see first-hand how climate change affects people on U.S. soil today, not a century from now.

“Many of my students were missing, displaced, or worse by a seemingly unimaginable amount of water,” Rush said.

“It just rushed into the neighborhood over the informal levee system that separated the city from the seas. It entered all at once and very suddenly, and it pulled many homes off their foundations and dragged them into the surrounding tidal marsh.”

In 2015 at �ֲ���ý, author Elizabeth Rush, then a �ֲ���ý postdoctoral fellow, prepares to give a Language Arts Live reading. At left and right are faculty members Rob Farnsworth and Robert Strong. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Many of her students lived in low-income areas, and many were forced to leave school due to the flooding, yet this part of the story wasn’t reported by the mainstream media.

“As I watched the story unfold in the context of New York City after Sandy, I began to realize that the coverage of the storm and all it gestured toward was incomplete,” she said.

“I began to understand that sea-level rise was already disassembling some of the most vulnerable communities in one of the most powerful cities in the world.”

As these stories of climate change are becoming increasingly common, Rush encouraged her audience to question the kind of stories that they hear and tell. Who is being included in these narratives, and what voices are being left out?

One day on a beach in North Carolina, someone asked Ari Friedlaender ’96 if he’d like to go count whales in Antarctica.

Two decades and 32 trips later, he’s become an authority on Antarctic marine mammals, specifically minke and humpback whales, and how climate change affects them. Like fellow researcher Doug Krause ’99, Friedlaender often gets to know his subjects by putting video cameras on their backs.  

Friedlaender reaches out to people as much as he reaches out to whales — his work has been featured extensively in , , and , just to name a few. The reason, he says, is that we’re more inclined to want to protect what we know.

The Researcher

Friedlaender is an associate researcher at the Institute of Marine Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In the gloom of a sudden snow squall, Ari Friedlander ’96 searches for minke whales in Andvord Bay in Antarctica. In that moment, “it was calm and smooth and a bit eerie.” (Carolyn Van Houten/National Geographic)

The Research

Friedlaender’s specialty is whales. He’s made a career out of tagging and tracking them in Antarctica, and his team also studies them off California, Cape Cod, and southeast Alaska.

At the moment, he’s focused on minke whales, the smallest of the baleen whales. His team tags them, sometimes attaching video cameras, to figure out how they eat, where they go, and how they interact.

Minke whales “evolved to live in sea ice,” he says. “They’re pretty cryptic, pretty elusive. They’ll be most impacted by climate change, because one of the manifestations of that is that sea ice is decreasing.

“We’re trying to understand how they use the sea ice habitat and to predict what the future holds for them.”

Antarctica on Repeat

Friedlaender has made 32 trips to Antarctica, totaling two to three months a year.  

A hexacopter drone documents four members of the 2018 minke expedition team as they look for whales in Charlotte Bay in the Antarctic Peninsula. (Duke Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab)

From Here to There

“I grew up on the coast in New England, and I was always fascinated with the ocean,” Friedlaender says. “From a young age, I was encouraged to go out and observe things in nature — in fact, my mom started me taking notes in a field notebook every time I went to the beach when I was young.

“I did a degree in biology and a minor in anthropology at �ֲ���ý. �ֲ���ý gave me the opportunity to learn to be a scientist and gave me the tools to go into the world and start doing science on my own. [Professor of Biology] Will Ambrose was a really important person for me because he was incredibly encouraging of the things I was interested in.

“He taught me how to think. I think that was the most important lesson I learned at �ֲ���ý — learning how to think like a scientist and how to ask questions.”  

Baptism by Ice

After he graduated, Friedlaender went to North Carolina to study stranded whales. One day, as he was dissecting a dolphin on a beach, a researcher approached him and mentioned that the Australian Antarctic Division needed “someone to go to the Antarctic to count marine mammals.”

Friedlaender accepted, flew to Australia, and boarded a ship.

“It takes about six days to get to the ice from Tasmania, and we had horrible seas,” he recalls. “We probably had 30 to 35-foot seas and 50 to 60-knot winds. The ship was rolling all over the place, but as soon as we got into the sea ice, everything calmed down.

A minke whale breaches in Antarctica’s Paradise Bay. (Ari Friedlaender/photo)

“The first month I went down there, the average air temperature was between minus 20 and minus 40, and we didn’t see very many whales at all. But just being in that environment and feeling the cold, you feel absolutely minuscule and unimportant. It’s also such a vibrant place and such an amazing natural wilderness that you can’t help but be overcome by it.

“Getting off the ship, I said to the woman who had hired me, ‘Okay, now you’ve got to deal with me because I’m here and I’ve got to go back.’”

What the Camera Shows

Friedlaender is one of the first scientists to study Antarctic marine mammals extensively — he was at the vanguard of the evolution from simply counting whales to tagging and tracking them, learning a tremendous amount about individual animals.

Putting video cameras on the bodies of minke whales — the process involves to the creatures on an inflatable boat, then using a long pole to suction-cup a video tag to their skin — has led to two important revelations, Friedlaender says.

The first is that minke whales are more social than scientists thought. “You can see five or six whales swimming really quickly to find krill and all feeding at the same time and going really fast in different directions,” he says.  

The second is that they’re fast eaters — a “lunge” to swallow a mass of tiny krill takes about 10 seconds. “They accelerate, open their mouths, and take in a huge gulp of water, and the tissue on the other side of their throat can expand to hold a huge amount of water,” Friedlaender ways. “With their tongues they push the water out of their mouths, and the krill get stuck in their baleen.”

Tourists and Science

Friedlaender spends most of his time in Antarctica on boats. Sometimes it’s a government research vessel. Other times it’s a tourist boat, taking visitors to the Antarctic Peninsula for a few weeks at a time.

“We utilize those platforms to do science, but also to engage and communicate with the public while we’re doing our science,” he says.

The Sea Ice Problem

Minke whales live among sea ice, which offers both protection from killer whales and sources of krill, which grow up underneath pieces of sea ice and feed penguins, birds, and seals as well as whales.  

Melting ice, therefore, opens minke whales to predation and diminishes an important food source. (It’s actually good in the short term for another whale, the humpback, which does better in the open ocean — though in the long term, it’s bad for everyone.)

Minke whales are social creatures, feeding on krill in relatively large groups. (Ari Friedlaender/photo)

“That lack of sea ice is going to decrease the amount of krill that’s available for all the animals there, and the system is going to change very dramatically,” Friedlaender says.

Total Removal

Living and working in Antarctica “can be the greatest thing in the world, but also extremely challenging,” Friedlander says.

“The physical landscape is unbelievable and beautiful and hostile and very unforgiving. It’s completely void of human elements. To be in a place that’s very wild and truly natural is a real gift, but it’s remote. You’re on a small boat with a small number of people.

“Luckily, we’re able to stay connected with people through phone and internet, but we’re definitely removed from things. You can immerse yourself in this environment.”

Blue Ice

On some glaciers, falling snow gets compressed into the ice and air bubbles , which means that the ice, like the ocean, is blue.

An iceberg near Marguerite Bay. (Ari Friedlaender/photo)

“We get a lot of overcast days down here, and even when it’s overcast, the ice is glowing,” Friedlaender says. “Icebergs have this blue color that doesn’t fade.”

Friendly Critters

“The number of penguins and whales and seals is remarkable,” Friedlander says. “They’re completely curious — they haven’t grown up with humans being a threat to them.

“Seeing wildlife that hasn’t had that interference with people in a negative way is kind of refreshing.”

Making Connections

Much of Friedlaender’s Antarctic work involves outreach. He frequently welcomes media outlets from around the world, he works with museums and educators, and he’s published a book of photography from the continent.

Ari Friedlaender deploys a multi-sensor suction cup tag on a humpback whale in Antarctica’s Wilhelmina Bay. (Courtesy of Ari Friedlaender)

“I’ve honestly grown to be less objective,” Friedlaender says. “I want to see people do better, and I want to see these animals survive and the ecosystems sustain themselves. It doesn’t affect how we do the work because science is science, but the connection that I have to the place and to the animals has grown immensely the more I learn about them.

“People are more likely to want to protect things that they care about. I feel more of a responsibility to communicate and promote what we’re doing and learn about these animals broadly, because that’s what makes people care, and that’s what’s going to help change people’s behavior and allow these animals and ecosystems to survive.”

Read more about �ֲ���ý alumni in Antarctica

�ֲ���ý Club of Antarctica: If glaciers could talk, what would they say?

�ֲ���ý Club of Antarctica: If you give a seal a camera

�ֲ���ý Club of Antarctica: Fossils, and beach volleyball on a glacier

�ֲ���ý Club of Antarctica: The secrets of the lakes

Media outlets including the and covered climate-change whistleblower Joel Clement’s talk at �ֲ���ý on Wednesday.

Clement is the former Department of Interior climate policy chief who says the Trump administration retaliated against him and fellow scientists for speaking out about climate change.

In, reporter Steve Collins describes how Ryan Zinke, Trump’s Department of Interior secretary, went about transferring various staffers, like Clement, to new jobs “in the hope of driving them to quit.”

Joel Clement, formerly the top climate policy expert in the U.S. Department of Interior, meets with Sarah Sachs ’18 prior to his �ֲ���ý talk on March 14. Sachs, who interviewed Clement for her environmental studies thesis, “Scientific and Political Implications of Climate Science Censorship under the Trump Administration.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Clement “got new marching orders to work in a government office that dispersed royalties from the oil and gas industry – in Oklahoma,” a job for which he had no training. “Climate change was no longer a priority.”

It should be, of course, says Clement, who spoke in the Olin Arts Center. The warming planet “is not something you believe. It just is.”

Clement filed a and resigned in October.

Peggy Rotundo, a former state lawmaker who directs strategic and policy initiative for the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, told reporter Steve Collins that Clement’s “principled courage” reminds her of how Sen. Edmund Muskie ’36 famously put his faith in science as he advanced his landmark legislation, the “Clean Air and Clean Water acts that transformed the nation’s environment almost a half-century ago.”

With a �ֲ���ý alumna playing a central role, the college has joined The Nature Conservancy and state agencies in a long-term effort to monitor significant Maine ecosystems.

You could call it a story with seven plots — forest survey plots, that is. Small circles of terrain within larger tracts of protected land, the plots represent distinct ecosystem types. The aim is to give researchers, through periodic inventories of plants and soil, an ecological baseline for comparing conditions in unprotected woods.

The Maine Natural Areas Program, The Nature Conservancy, and other organizations have designated numerous such plots in Maine, maintaining information about them in the state Ecological Reserve Monitoring Database. And now �ֲ���ý is making its own contribution to this valuable resource.

Isobel Curtis ’17, assistant to the director at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain, points out a so-called witness tree intended to help locate the center of a forest survey plot. The “W” mark stands for “witness” and faces the plot center. The witness tree is a spruce, but the plot is located in the hemlock grove at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College).

Since last fall, as part of a portfolio of research and outreach projects she has conducted as assistant to the director, Isobel Curtis ’17 has been the point person in creating forest survey plots at the �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain Conservation Area, plots that will be represented in that shared ecological reserve database.

“It will be great to add �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain to the information that we currently have,” says Nancy Sferra, director of stewardship and ecological management at The Nature Conservancy.

Managed by �ֲ���ý and used primarily for research, the 600-acre preserve in coastal Phippsburg encompasses a variety of forest systems. For example, there’s a stand of Eastern hemlocks that’s of interest to researchers because it’s infested with the destructive hemlock woolly adelgid.

Established in 2000, Maine’s Ecological Reserve System protects and monitors wild ecosystems meeting certain criteria. “These are meant to be a benchmark of natural conditions — sites that don’t get harvested, so instead natural processes can take their course,” Sferra says. The Nature Conservancy, in turn, designated areas within its reserves to serve a similar function.

This pitch pine dune woodland at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain is a globally rare ecosystem and possesses a rare beauty, as well. (Laura Sewall/�ֲ���ý College)

�ֲ���ý’ participation in the ecological reserve program is especially important, Sferra says, because the coast is underrepresented in the database. Correlating BMMCA data with data from similar plots elsewhere will, in effect, increase the sample size that is available to researchers and increase the statistical significance of their findings.

A double major in environmental studies with a focus on ecology and in biology —she studied the woolly adelgid infestation for her senior thesis in that field — Curtis undertook the BMMCA Forest Survey in her role as assistant to conservation area director Laura Sewall.

The forest survey, says Sewall, serves a variety of purposes. One, of course, is contributing to the statewide reserve effort, “and by virtue of that, we also invite researchers from other institutions.”

Second, the plots will facilitate efforts by �ֲ���ý researchers. “Having baseline data for distinct types of coastal forests sets the stage for long-term monitoring and study,” she says, “and in particular will help advance our understanding of climate impacts to coastal systems.”

Isobel Curtis ’17 en route to inventory a forest survey plot in December, before the snow flew. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The plots are circles about 15 meters in diameter (or about 36 meters when the subject trees are especially big). To make them findable, there’s a marker at the center of each plot, and geographical coordinates for that point are recorded. Within the plots, Curtis and Sewall assessed tree health and density, the types and quantities of other plants, and soil types and condition. In keeping with established practice, the plan is to re-inventory the plots about every decade.

The seven �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain plots represent:

• a pitch pine dune woodland, which is globally rare;
• a pitch pine woodland, in soil over bedrock instead of sand;
• two spruce-fir sites, doubly represented because it’s the dominant habitat type at the conservation area;
• an early successional forest;
• a red maple wetland;
• and the hemlock grove.

As for the hemlocks, while no one would argue that the woolly adelgid infestation at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain is a good thing in and of itself, it’s also true that studying that situation for her thesis gave Curtis an entrée for her work as �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain’s assistant director.

This hemlock branch at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain shows the presence of woolly adelgid. Note the tell-tale white woolly masses on the undersides of the twigs. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

Biology professor Brett Huggett, a plant physiologist who studies how trees respond to different types of stress, discovered the pest at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain in 2015. With Huggett as her thesis adviser, Curtis assessed the severity of the infestation, finding that some 60 percent of trees had the bugs but their density per tree was generally light.

That hemlock study led Curtis to another project at the conservation area, as she discovered that there was no formal habitat map of the entire conservation area — a surprising gap considering both the amount of research that �ֲ���ý does there and the fact that the property has been protected under Nature Conservancy easements for about 40 years. (�ֲ���ý manages the conservation area with oversight by TNC and the �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain Conservation Corporation.)

With an internship from the environmental studies program, Curtis used her senior-year Short Term to create a comprehensive habitat map that she hopes to make publicly available. “The thinking was, if we know what is out there — for instance, we do know there are interesting features such as vernal pools — that might help stimulate further student research,” she says. “And it’s just a great resource for the land managers to have.”

The moss shows what happens when a stone is too big to roll. The setting is a patch of spruce-fir forest at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain. (Isobel Curtis ’17/�ֲ���ý College)

With a strong representation from the geology department, research at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain tends to focus on the salt marsh and the beach. For instance, geologist Mike Retelle has a longstanding project conducting topographic surveys of the beaches at BMMCA and nearby. Geochemist Beverly Johnson and her students study the potential for carbon storage and sequestration in the salt marsh.

Yet, Curtis says, “there’s not a whole lot of understanding of what is in the upland forested regions,” which are particularly vulnerable to climate change.

Sewall hired Curtis as her assistant in August 2017, and the recent �ֲ���ý graduate quickly became an expert in the conservation area’s woodlands. In addition to the ecological reserve work, Curtis worked with �ֲ���ý students on developing a management plan for the adelgid-ridden hemlock grove; developed a “story map” of the entire property displaying locations of previous research; and throughout, engaged with the public about the forest at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain.

As part of doing a inventory at a forest survey plot, Isobel Curtis ’17 samples a tree core at �ֲ���ý-Morse Mountain in December. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Curtis found that straight scientific studies have been the rule over the years at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain — although one student, Ellie Kreischer ’03, made beautiful oil paintings to illustrate her investigation of the zonation and moisture preferences of marsh plant species. “It was really rich in information, but took a completely different form,” Curtis says. “That was really cool to see.”

For Curtis, her time at �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain has served two ends. She points out that, one way or another, much of the research done there speaks to climate change — from Johnson’s investigations of “blue carbon” to the beaches being transformed by rising Atlantic waters.

“Climate change is the biggest problem of my generation,” Curtis says. And �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain, still in something like a wild state compared with so much of the Maine coast, is proving its value as a laboratory for studying its real-world effects.

The better we monitor those changes, Curtis says, the better we can “understand how to anticipate them and mitigate them and prepare ourselves for them. Understanding how it will impact that peninsula, in particular, is going to be very valuable.”

“The other side of that is education, and getting people as involved and invested in protecting the environment as possible,” she says. “Actually connecting students to the landscape that they’re studying — so not just giving them a data set, but allowing them to go into that space, observe it in its complexity, and hopefully come away with a land ethic.”

This marker is helping to identify a permanent survey plot that a student created in the �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain pitch pine dune woods in 1996. (Laura Sewall/�ֲ���ý College)