The Wrack

Whew! Nothing like some February rain showers huh? It's been a "weird" winter for lack of a more "technical" term.....

Here are some numbers from the most recent "Blast" that occured Thursday Feb 25 through early morning of February 26th 2010. (All data was collected on the SWMP Meteorological Station behind the Maine Coastal Ecology Center.)

This will be the last blog entry at laudholm.org.

We began this experiment in late 2005 as an attempt to get news and information out to members and supporters more quickly. Four years and nearly 200 entries later, we can see that we have largely succeeded.

Project Summary

Researchers manipulated densities of the invasive snail Littorina littorea at two sites, one in the Little River estuary and another in the Webhannet River estuary, to investigate the effect of grazing on plant production and sediment accumulation. They found that under more stressful conditions for saltmarsh cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora)  poor drainage or greater flooding, for example  the impact of snail grazing on biomass becomes apparent: Where snails eat cordgrass faster than it can grow back, less cordgrass is available to capture sediment and the marsh surface does not build up as quickly. In contrast, the impact of snails is not significant under more favorable conditions for cordgrass.

The Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve was recognized recently by the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, which presented the Wells Reserve with its 2009 Visionary Award. The Council praised the Wells Reserve for sustained excellence in science, communication, partnerships, education, and stewardship of the Gulf of Maine ecosystems.

Ten years after first setting foot onto the worldwide web, Wells Reserve and Laudholm Trust recently strode into a major redesign of our websites. We hope the result has caught your attention.

About the Project

In 2008, a group of citizens and conservation groups met to discuss the possibility of returning native migratory fish runs to the Mousam and Kennebunk Rivers. Out of these discussions a plan was formulated to gather information about the historic and current condition of these fish and to begin to spread the word to the local communities. In 2009, Maine Rivers hosted a conference where river stakeholders came together to discuss the rivers and share knowledge. At the same time, the Wells Reserve began monitoring the current status of migratory fish in the rivers.