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Full-Text Articles in Environmental Health and Protection

Tony The Trash Turtle, Brianna Frankina May 2018

Tony The Trash Turtle, Brianna Frankina

Environmental Studies Student Projects

Pollution is both a global and local issue. Tony was created from marine debris found at Freddy Beach and East Point Sanctuary. If you look at Tony's shell, you will notice that it is constructed from pieces of plastic straws. If you want to support Tony and keep straws off the beach, you can pledge to skip the straw! Tony is a reminder that we must all be responsible and clean up our trash when we go to the beach!


Saving Santa's Workshop, Chase Kaupin, Elise Grabowski Dec 2017

Saving Santa's Workshop, Chase Kaupin, Elise Grabowski

Environmental Studies Student Projects

Our book is a story about an elf encouraging children to go eco-friendly in order to help the environment. Santa delivers gifts such as a reusable water bottle to get children involved. By helping the environment, Santa's workshop is going to be saved from melting ice caps! The goal of this book was to get children involved to help the environment.


Ella Savesthe Beach, Leena Aly, Maddie Hodgdon Dec 2017

Ella Savesthe Beach, Leena Aly, Maddie Hodgdon

Environmental Studies Student Projects

The intention of this project is to start educating children on the consequences of polluting our planet with seemingly harmless waste such as plastics. Many do not realize how small plastic objects can be fatal to many animals. We asked elementary school children to collect trash as part of their participation. Then the trash was used to make a poster featuring Ella the crab. This poster is paired with a children’s story book, where Ella and her animal friends are featured dealing with the consequences of littering. The story book depicts how people’s behavior in natural areas can harm innocent …


Esmerelda's 1600 Feathers, Corinne Casey, Ellen Wise, Kendall Ericksen Dec 2017

Esmerelda's 1600 Feathers, Corinne Casey, Ellen Wise, Kendall Ericksen

Environmental Studies Student Projects

ESA’s 1,600 Feathers is a children’s story that was created in response to a Congress letter from August 2017 addressed to several members of the Committee on Natural Resources and Agriculture. This letter requested for the 1973 Endangered Species Act to be “modernized” in order to reduce the economic burdens it imposed on farmers and ranchers. They argued the existing ESA was a “clear failure” having only accomplished recovery and delisting of 42 out of the 1,652 plant and animal species under its protection. The intentions of our story were to highlight the endangered and threatened species that have successfully …


Colin The Cormorant, Chelsey Jankauskas, Samantha Schultz Dec 2017

Colin The Cormorant, Chelsey Jankauskas, Samantha Schultz

Environmental Studies Student Projects

Colin the Cormorant was an art project created to represent the effects of pollution on local organisms, such as Colin the Cormorant. We hope by seeing this sculpture people think twice about how they dispose of their trash. Colin is made from trash collected at Fortunes Rocks Beach in Biddeford Pool. We chose to make a cormorant because we frequently see cormorants around the Biddeford Pool area and they are a seabird that has been impacted by various types of pollution (garbage, air pollution, etc.).


Baby Bay And The Big, Loud Ocean, Kelcey Salois, Dominique Mellone Dec 2017

Baby Bay And The Big, Loud Ocean, Kelcey Salois, Dominique Mellone

Environmental Studies Student Projects

This is a children's book that depicts some of the serious effects of noise pollution on marine organisms, especially larger mammals such as Baleen Whales. Through this little story about a baby whale and his mom, trying to find the rest of their pod amidst an ocean filled with noise pollution, we hope to spread awareness about this problem and provide hope to younger generations that if we work hard enough at protecting our oceans, we can provide a much nicer and safer life for the creatures that live within it.


Ocean Optimism, Jenna Pannone, Madison Mark, Crista Kieley May 2017

Ocean Optimism, Jenna Pannone, Madison Mark, Crista Kieley

Environmental Studies Student Projects

In our class, Intro to Environmental Issues, we focused on marine mammals for a section. We chose to highlight two cases, the Hawaiian Monk Seal and the Vacquita, in which severely endangered species may have a chance at survival due to the work of highly dedicated individuals and organizations. We wanted to raise awareness of these species, the work being done, and the power we have to create change.


Nestling Sex Ratios Do Not Support Long-Term Parity In Two Species With Different Life-History Strategies, Noah G. Perlut, Steven E. Travis, Catherine A. Dunbar, Allan M. Strong, Derek M. Wright Mar 2014

Nestling Sex Ratios Do Not Support Long-Term Parity In Two Species With Different Life-History Strategies, Noah G. Perlut, Steven E. Travis, Catherine A. Dunbar, Allan M. Strong, Derek M. Wright

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

To maximize fitness, breeding adults may respond to environmental processes by adjusting their progeny’s sex ratios. R. A. Fisher in 1930 hypothesized that frequency-dependent selection would result in equal investment in sons and daughters over the long term, yielding a balanced sex ratio if the costs of raising a son and daughter are equal. Diverse hypotheses have tried to explain population and brood-by-brood deviations from this mean as well as annual variation by focusing on adult sex ratios, resources, abiotic conditions, and female and male quality. We collected data in 2002-2010 to explore population-level variation in nestling sex ratios in …


Minor Fitness Benefits For Edge Avoidance In Nesting Grassland Birds In The Northeastern United States, David G. Perkins, Noah G. Perlut, Allan M. Strong Jul 2013

Minor Fitness Benefits For Edge Avoidance In Nesting Grassland Birds In The Northeastern United States, David G. Perkins, Noah G. Perlut, Allan M. Strong

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Grassland birds are often affected negatively by habitat fragmentation. Outcomes include greater nest predation and brood parasitism, decreased colonization rates of small, isolated patches, and greater nest density in remnant core habitats. These effects have been well documented in the Midwest, but little is known about fragmentation and edge effects on grassland birds in the fragmented agricultural fields within the forested landscapes of the northeastern United States. From 2002 to 2010, we assessed how edges and edge types affected nest-site location and daily nest survival (DNS) of Savannah Sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis) and Bobolinks (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) breeding …


Evaluating The Roles Of Visual Openness And Edge Effects On Nest-Site Selection And Reproductive Success In Grassland Birds, Alexander C. Keyel, Allan M. Strong, Noah G. Perlut, J. Michael Reed Jan 2013

Evaluating The Roles Of Visual Openness And Edge Effects On Nest-Site Selection And Reproductive Success In Grassland Birds, Alexander C. Keyel, Allan M. Strong, Noah G. Perlut, J. Michael Reed

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

In some species, habitat edges (ecotones) affect nest-site selection and nesting success. Openness, or how visually open a habitat is, has recently been shown to influence grassland bird density and may affect nest-site selection, possibly by reducing the risk of predation on adults, nests, or both. Because edge and openness are correlated, it is possible that effects of openness have been overlooked or inappropriately ascribed to edge effects. We tested the roles of edges and visual openness in nest-site selection and nesting success of two grassland passerines, the Bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) and Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis), …


The Functions And Values Of Fringing Salt Marshes In Northern New England, Usa, Pamela A. Morgan, David M. Burdick, Frederick T. Short Feb 2009

The Functions And Values Of Fringing Salt Marshes In Northern New England, Usa, Pamela A. Morgan, David M. Burdick, Frederick T. Short

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Although large salt marshes of the northeastern United States have been studied extensively, very little is known about the smaller, fringing marshes in this area, despite the fact that they are a common habitat type. We compared the functions and values of five fringing salt marshes (FM) to those of five meadow marshes (MM) along the southern Maine/New Hampshire coast. Specifically we compared their primary production, soil organic matter content, plant diversity, sediment trapping ability and wave dampening properties. Also explored were the relationships between these functions and several physical characteristics at each site, including soil salinity, percent surface slope, …


Grassland Songbird Survival And Recruitment In Agricultural Landscapes: Implications For Source-Sink Demography, Noah G. Perlut, Allan M. Strong, Therese M. Donovan, Neil J. Buckley Jul 2008

Grassland Songbird Survival And Recruitment In Agricultural Landscapes: Implications For Source-Sink Demography, Noah G. Perlut, Allan M. Strong, Therese M. Donovan, Neil J. Buckley

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Population growth and decline are particularly sensitive to changes in three key life-history parameters: annual productivity, juvenile survival, and adult survival. However, for many species these parameters remain unknown. For example, although grassland songbirds are imperiled throughout North America, for this guild, only a small number of studies have assessed these parameters. From 2002 to 2006, in the agricultural landscape of the Champlain Valley of Vermont and New York, USA, we studied Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis) and Bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) demography on four grassland treatments: (1) early-hayed fields cut before 11 June and again in early- …


A Comprehensive Wetland Program For Fringing Salt Marshes In The York River, Maine, Pamela A. Morgan, Jeremy Miller, Christopher Cayce Dalton, Michele Dionne May 2007

A Comprehensive Wetland Program For Fringing Salt Marshes In The York River, Maine, Pamela A. Morgan, Jeremy Miller, Christopher Cayce Dalton, Michele Dionne

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

The overall goal of this project was to assist the Town of York, Maine, in its efforts to monitor and protect the fringing salt marshes along the York River. In particular, the project focused on potential impacts to the marshes due to shoreline development pressures. Specific objectives included (1) gathering baseline data about the marshes (2) developing a set of indicators to be used in future monitoring, and (3) generating management recommendations.


Grassland Songbirds In A Dynamic Management Landscape: Behavioral Responses And Management Strategies, Noah G. Perlut, Allan M. Strong, Therese M. Donovan, Neil J. Buckley Dec 2006

Grassland Songbirds In A Dynamic Management Landscape: Behavioral Responses And Management Strategies, Noah G. Perlut, Allan M. Strong, Therese M. Donovan, Neil J. Buckley

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

In recent decades, earlier and more frequent harvests of agricultural grasslands have been implicated as a major cause of population declines in grassland songbirds. From 2002 to 2005, in the Champlain Valley of Vermont and New York, USA, we studied the reproductive success of Savannah Sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis) and Bobolinks (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) on four grassland treatments: (1) early-hayed fields cut before 11 June and again in early- to mid-July; (2) middle-hayed fields cut once between 21 June and 10 July; (3) late-hayed fields cut after 1 August; and (4) rotationally grazed pastures. Both the number of …


Assessing The Health Of Fringing Salt Marshes Along The Fore River And Its Tributaries, Pamela A. Morgan, Lucas Curci, Cayce Dalton, Jeremy Miller Aug 2005

Assessing The Health Of Fringing Salt Marshes Along The Fore River And Its Tributaries, Pamela A. Morgan, Lucas Curci, Cayce Dalton, Jeremy Miller

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Casco Bay has experienced two significant oil spills in recent history - the Tamano Tanker spill in 1972 and the Julie N spill in 1996. In addition, the Fore River and its tributaries have experienced numerous small spills over the years, including the August 2002 fuel oil spill (2,900 gallons) and the April 2003 jet fuel spill (6,000 gallons). The impacts of these spills on the fringing salt marshes that line the edges of the Fore River and its tributaries are not well understood. Are these salt marshes resilient enough to withstand these impacts and still act as healthy marshes …


Ecological Functions And Values Of Fringing Salt Marshes Susceptible To Oil Spills In Casco Bay, Maine, Pamela A. Morgan, Michele Dionne, Richard Mackenzie, Lucas Curci Feb 2005

Ecological Functions And Values Of Fringing Salt Marshes Susceptible To Oil Spills In Casco Bay, Maine, Pamela A. Morgan, Michele Dionne, Richard Mackenzie, Lucas Curci

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Casco Bay is the largest oil port in Maine and northern New England, handling over 20 million tons of crude oil and oil products annually. The susceptibility of the Bay’s estuarine habitats, especially its fringing salt marshes, to potential spill events was the impetus for this study. Although much has been learned to date about the effects of oil spills on estuarine habitats around the world, there is a real need for site-specific knowledge of the structures and functions of local habitats so that resource managers can be prepared in the event of a spill. Our study focused specifically on …