People

SAUNNA NRT faculty and trainees span a wide variety of academic disciplines and areas of research expertise.  Our faculty come from the following research or academic units at 91¸£Àû:

We encourage interested students to review the faculty profiles below to determine how their research interests align with those of potential advisors.  All SAUNNA NRT faculty (including the principal investigators) are willing to serve as advisors and are happy to speak with prospective trainees.

Principal Investigators

(SAUNNA NRT PI) – Ecosystem Ecology: terrestrial-aquatic linkages, freshwater resources (Associate Director of CCI, SBE)

Paul Mayewski (Co-PI) – Earth & Climate Sciences: atmosphere-cryosphere linkages, paleoclimate (Director of CCI, ERS)

Lee Karp-Boss (Co-PI) – Marine Sciences: biophysical interactions in the ocean across multiple sclaes, plankton ecology (SMS)

Darren Ranco (Co-PI) – Anthropology: environmental justice and tribal governance, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) (Chair of Native American Programs, ANT)

Kathleen Bell (Co-PI) – Economics: environmental economics, socio-environmental systems (SOE)

Senior Faculty

– Glaciology: cryosphere-marine linkages (ERS, CCI)

– Climatology: climate modeling, data analysis, visualization, and integration (Maine State Climatologist, CCI, ERS)

Keith Evans – Economics: marine natural resource economics, cooperation in the commons (SOE, SMS)

– International Law: Arctic law, legal anthropology, policy sciences, Arctic governance, law of the sea, maritime law (Center for Oceans and Coastal Law, University of Maine School of Law, CCI)

– Paleoecology/Biogeography: climate change, extinction, and biotic interactions through time, from species to communities to ecosystems (SBE, CCI)

– Environmental Studies: socio-ecological systems and health (water, sanitation, Indigenous and Arctic communities) (CCI)

Trainees

Cohort 1

– co-produced knowledge of rapidly changing tidewater glacier-fjord systems

– integrated Arctic tourism management

– integrated Arctic freshwater resource management and impacts of climate change on Arctic lakes

– integrated Arctic freshwater resource management and plausible scenario planning

– post-colonial subsistence living, fisheries, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Indigenous sovereignty, cross-cultural environmental relationships and communication

Cohort 2

– paleoecology and eDNA, environmental anthropology, knowledge co-production, traditional ecological knowledge, and high-latitude systems

– understanding changes in glacial dynamics in the Southern Greenland region using both historic and current aerial imagery

– new Arctic lake formation along the Greenland ice sheet, examination water quality through chemical and biological measurements

– algal community ecology, under-ice algal dynamics and effects on further seasonal development in Greenland lakes

– climate-informed bio-economic modeling for the Maine Lobster Fishery, examination of adaptation strategies and resilience in the fishery through a bio-economic and socio-ecological systems (SES) analysis

– climatology of extreme meteorological and climatological events in Maine and the Arctic, reanalysis to examine extreme events and how teleconnections such as the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations affected the development of these events

Cohort 3

– lake ice phenology and thermal stratification of Arctic lakes in Southwest Greenland

– risks and uncertainties for marine and coastal ecosystems under complex multiple stressors

– meltwater flux and glacier dynamics associated with supraglacial lake drainage

Cohort 4

– biodiversity and climate change, with an emphasis on seabirds as indicators of environmental shifts

– glacier dynamics and ice-ocean interactions

– nitrogen cycling in glacier-fed lakes

– ecological dynamics of fish environmental and sedimentary DNA (sedDNA) in Maine lakes

– nitrogen cycling and microbial metabolisms in glacially fed lakes and rivers in Greenland

– aerial remote sensing techniques for quantifying spatial variations of snowpack