The Maine Woods, vast and largely unsettled, are often described as unchanged since Henry David Thoreau's journeys across the backcountry, in spite of the realities of Indian dispossession and the ...visible signs of logging, settlement, tourism, and real estate development. In the summer of 2014 scholars, activists, members of the Penobscot Nation, and other individuals retraced Thoreau's route.
Inspired partly by this expedition, the accessible and engaging essays here offer valuable new perspectives on conservation, the cultural ties that connect Native communities to the land, and the profound influence the geography of the Maine Woods had on Thoreau and writers and activists who followed in his wake. Together, these essays offer a rich and multifaceted look at this special place and the ways in which Thoreau's Maine experiences continue to shape understandings of the environment a century and a half later.
Contributors include the volume editor, Kathryn Dolan, James S. Finley, James Francis, Richard W. Judd, Dale Potts, Melissa Sexton, Chris Sockalexis, Stan Tag, Robert M. Thorson, and Laura Dassow Walls.
Logging in the northern forest has been romanticized, with
images of log drives, plaid shirts, and bunkhouses in wide
circulation. Increasingly dismissed as a quaint, rural pastime,
logging remains ...one of the most dangerous jobs in the United
States, with loggers occupying a precarious position amid unstable
markets, expanding global competition, and growing labor discord.
Examining a time of transition and decline in Maine's forest
economy, Andrew Egan traces pathways for understanding the
challenges that have faced Maine's logging community and, by
extension, the state's forestry sector, from the postwar period
through today. Seeking greater profits, logging companies turned
their crews loose at midcentury, creating a workforce of
independent contractors who were forced to purchase expensive
equipment and compete for contracts with the mills. Drawing on his
own experience with the region's forest products industry,
interviews with Maine loggers, media coverage, and court documents,
Egan follows the troubled recent history of the industry and its
battle for survival.
After the Revolutionary War ended, the new American nation
grappled with a question about its identity: Were the states
sovereign entities or subordinates to a powerful federal
government? The War of ...1812 brought this vexing issue into sharp
relief, as a national government intent on waging an unpopular war
confronted a populace in Massachusetts that was vigorously opposed
to it. Maine, which at the time was part of Massachusetts, served
as the battleground in this political struggle.
Joshua M. Smith recounts an innovative history of the war,
focusing on how it specifically affected what was then called the
District of Maine. Drawing on archival materials from the United
States, Britain, and Canada, Smith exposes the bitter experience of
Maine's citizens during that conflict as they endured multiple
hardships, including starvation, burdensome taxation, smuggling,
treason, and enemy occupation. War's inherent miseries, along with
a changing relationship between regional and national identities,
gave rise to a statehood movement that rejected a Boston-centric
worldview in favor of a broadly American identity.
The title for this work comes from the Puritan minister Increase Mather, who used the colorful metaphor to express his concern about the state of English Protestantism. Like many New Englanders, ...Mather’s fears about the creeping influence of French Catholicism stemmed from English conflicts with France that spilled over into the colonial frontiers from French Canada. The most consistently fragile of these frontiers was the Province of Maine, notorious for attracting settlers who had “one foot out the door” of New England Puritanism. It was there that English Protestants and French Catholics came into frequent contact. The Spice of Popery: Converging Christianities on an Early American Frontier shows how, between the volatile years of 1688 to 1727, the persistence of Catholic people and culture in New England's border regions posed consistent challenges to the bodies and souls of frontier Protestants. Taking a cue from contemporary observers of religious culture, as well as modern scholars of early American religion, social history, material culture, and ethnohistory, Laura M. Chmielewski explores this encounter between opposing Christianities on an early American frontier. She examines the forms of lived religion and religious culture—enacted through gestures, religious spaces, objects, and discreet religious expressions—to elucidate the range of experience of its diverse inhabitants: accused witches, warrior Jesuits, unorthodox ministers, indigenous religious thinkers, voluntary and involuntary converts. Chmielewski offers a nuanced perspective of the structured categories of early American Christian religious life, suggesting that the terms “Protestant” and “Catholic” varied according to location and circumstances and that the assumptions accompanying their use had long-term consequences for generations of New Englanders.
A time series of organic carbon export from Gulf of Maine (GoM) watersheds was compared to a time series of biological, chemical, bio‐optical, and hydrographic properties, measured across the GoM ...between Yarmouth, NS, Canada, and Portland, ME, U.S. Optical proxies were used to quantify the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and particulate organic carbon in the GoM. The Load Estimator regression model applied to river discharge data demonstrated that riverine DOC export (and its decadal variance) has increased over the last 80 years. Several extraordinarily wet years (2006–2010) resulted in a massive pulse of chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM; proxy for DOC) into the western GoM along with unidentified optically scattering material (<0.2 µm diameter). A survey of DOC in the GoM and Scotian Shelf showed the strong influence of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence on the DOC that enters the GoM. A deep plume of CDOM‐rich water was observed near the coast of Maine which decreased in concentration eastward. The Forel‐Ule color scale was derived and compared to the same measurements made in 1912–1913 by Henry Bigelow. Results show that the GoM has yellowed in the last century, particularly in the region of the extension of the Eastern Maine Coastal Current. Time lags between DOC discharge and its appearance in the GoM increased with distance from the river mouths. Algae were also a significant source of DOC but not CDOM. Gulf‐wide algal primary production has decreased. Increases in precipitation and DOC discharge to the GoM are predicted over the next century.
Key Points
River export of DOC has increased to the Gulf of Maine (GoM) over the last 80 years
The GoM has yellowed in the last century with increased colored dissolved organic carbon (CDOM)
Optical scattering from unidentified submicron particles is elevated in CDOM‐rich river water
Understanding the role of fire in the Earth system, and particularly regional controls on its frequency and severity, is critical to risk assessment. Charcoal records from lake sediment and fire-scar ...networks from long-lived tree species have improved our understanding of long-term relationships between fire events and climate. This work has primarily focused on historically fire-prone ecosystems and regions. In the northeastern USA, where wildfire has been relatively infrequent in historical times, fire-risk assessments have incorporated little-to-no pre-historical data and little is known about long-term fire-climate relationships. We developed coupled, high-resolution records of moisture variability and fire from three ombrotrophic peatlands in Maine using testate amoebae and analysis of microscopic charcoal. Water-table depth reconstructions among the three sites were generally coherent, with high-magnitude dry and wet events corresponding within the uncertainty of age-depth models. At all sites, there was a significantly higher probability of fire events during high-magnitude droughts. However, although prolonged droughts were widespread and associated with higher probability of fire, the fire events were rarely synchronous among sites, with the exception of ~550 years before present (yr BP) when all three sites experienced both drought and fire. While fire has been relatively uncommon in the northeastern USA during the past century, our records clearly highlight the potential vulnerability of the region to future drought and fire impacts. Results also demonstrate the utility of coupled records of fire and climate in understanding regional fire-climate dynamics.
Microplastic fibers (MPF) are a ubiquitous marine contaminant, making up to 90% of global microplastic concentrations. Imaging flow cytometry was used to measure uptake and ingestion rates of MPF by ...blue mussels (Mytilus edulis). Mussels were fed a diet of Rhodomonas salina and MPF concentrations up to 30 MPF mL−1, or 0.374% of available seston. Filtration rates were greatly reduced in mussels exposed to MPF. Uptake of MPF followed a Holling's Type II functional response with 95% of the maximum rate (5227 MPF h−1) occurring at 13 MPF mL−1. An average of 39 MPF (SE ± 15, n = 4) was found in feces (maximum of 70 MPF). Most MPF (71%) were quickly rejected as pseudofeces, with approximately 9% ingested and <1% excreted in feces. Mussels may act as microplastic sinks in Gulf of Maine coastal waters, where MPF concentrations are near the order of magnitude as the experimental treatments herein.
•Mussels take up MPF in a quantifiable and predictable manner.•MPF depress the mussel's filtration rate of microalgal prey at levels >3 MPF mL−1.•Most MPF within the body resided in the digestive gland, with less in the gill.•MPF are lost through pseudofeces and feces, with 60% of body load gone in 9 h.
Microplastics (MP) are found in marine sediments across the globe, but we are just beginning to understand their spatial distribution and assemblages. In this study, we quantified MP in Gulf of ...Maine, USA sediments. MP were extracted from 20 sediment samples, followed by polymer identification using Raman spectroscopy. We detected 27 polymer types and 1929 MP kg−1 wet sediment, on average. Statistical analyses showed that habitat, hydrodynamics, and station proximity were more important drivers of MP assemblages than land use or sediment characteristics. Stations closer to one another were more similar in their MP assemblages, tidal rivers had higher numbers of unique plastic polymers than open water or embayment stations, and stations closer to shore had higher numbers of MP. There was little evidence of relationships between MP assemblages and land use, sediment texture, total organic carbon, or contaminants.
Display omitted
•Sediments from the Gulf of Maine were extracted and analyzed for microplastics.•Concomitant site data for each station were analyzed versus MP assemblage.•Habitat, hydrodynamics, and station proximity were important drivers of MP assemblage.•Land use and sediment characteristics had little effect on MP assemblage.•Methods must be less time and labor intensive for feasible largescale monitoring.
As a result of reductions in sulfate deposition and changing climate, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations have increased in many lakes situated in forests of northeastern North America and ...northern Europe since the 1990s. Although this increase is well documented, the associated ecological implications remain unclear. In particular, DOC strongly influences the vertical temperature structure of lakes, with increasing DOC often leading to a shallower epilimnion. We investigated the effect of increased DOC concentrations on lake thermal structure using fossil diatom records from six remote Maine lakes. Sedimentary diatom profiles from three pairs of small (<0.5 km
2
) lakes were compared, with each pair containing one lake with a documented significant increase in DOC and the other experiencing no change in DOC since the early 1990s. Lake thermal structure was inferred from changes in the relative abundance of
Discostella stelligera
and
Aulacoseira
species, two diatom taxa that are associated with changes in thermal stratification. The three lakes without increasing DOC showed no change in diatom-inferred mixing depth over the past few decades. Of the lakes with documented increases in DOC, two showed the highest turnover in diatom community structure over time. Profiles from both of these lakes also indicated directional change in diatom-inferred mixing depth over the past 20 years, but the direction of change differed. This study demonstrates that recent increases in DOC have the potential to alter the physical and biological structure of lakes, but that these responses may differ across lakes.
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