The Wrack
The Wrack is the Wells Reserve blog.
What I Didn't Know About Wells Reserve (And Why It Matters)
Posted by
| December 1, 2025
| Filed under: News
A note from our new Reserve Executive Director
A few months into my new role at Wells Reserve, I stumbled across a number that stopped me in my tracks.
As a scientist, curiosity comes with the job. I wanted to understand the research legacy of this place: the data we've collected, the partnerships we've built, and the discoveries that have emerged from our salt marshes, forests, and estuaries.
What I found was a story of scientific impact far bigger than I realized.
And it's a story worth sharing.
The number that surprised me
The National Estuarine Research Reserve Association (NERRA) recently pulled together a system-wide count: since the reserve system began in the 1970s, all 30 National Estuarine Research Reserves combined have produced roughly 2,200 peer-reviewed publications.
Here at Wells, we've produced more than 70 scientific papers since 2002 alone. As a scientist, that kind of productivity makes you sit up and take note.
And peer-reviewed papers are just the tip of it. Over that same period, Wells Reserve staff and our research partners have also produced dozens of book chapters and technical reports and have supported and co-authored work led by outside scientists who use our long-term datasets, our trained staff, and our land as a living laboratory.
Why this happens here
Once I started digging into why Wells produces so much research, the answer became clear: this reserve was built to collect lots of data about our coasts and ask questions across an unusually wide range of disciplines.
Make no mistake, Wells has a really productive team of coastal scientists and we also do research across a wide array of disciplines, such as:
- Coastal and marine ecology — tracking how species, water quality, and ecosystems in the Gulf of Maine are shifting over time
- Coastal habitat restoration — studying what it actually takes to bring salt marshes, dunes, and shorelines back to health, and what works
- Social science — understanding how people use, value, and make decisions about the coast, because coastal management is ultimately about human behavior too
- Environmental education — researching how people learn about science and stewardship, not just delivering programs but studying what makes them effective
Many research institutions specialize. Wells Reserve does the opposite, and I think that breadth is a superpower of ours. When you're set up to study the ecology and the community and the classroom, you end up with a lot more questions worth asking and people to tackle them.
Why this science matters for Maine
Maine's coast is changing — warming waters, shifting fisheries, eroding shorelines, more frequent flooding, growing development pressure. The decisions communities, towns, and state agencies make about all of that are only as good as the science behind them.
Consistent, place-based research at Wells means we're not guessing about what's happening to this stretch of coastline. We have data. We have trends. We have scientists who have watched this specific marsh, this specific stretch of beach, this specific estuary long enough to know what "normal" looks like and what doesn't. That's an asset for Maine that took decades to build and can't be recreated quickly somewhere else.
Why I'm telling you this
I think you should know what's happening on this land beyond the trails and the visitor center. We always say this is YOUR reserve. I would like to add that this is YOUR science. Importantly, it is science that's shaping how Mainers understand and respond to a changing coast.
I'm looking forward to learning more, and to sharing more of it with you as I do.
— Dr. Jennifer Seavey, Reserve Executive Director
