Page 11 - The BellTower - Spring 2016

FACULTYHIGHLIGHTS ACADEMIC HIGHLIGHTS
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1. Deboullie Mountain and the surrounding area may reveal information about climate change. 2. A scientist examines vegetation on rocks at Deboullie.
3. A team of scientists stand over a lichen-covered rocky opening at Deboullie.
Deboullie Climate Change Study
UMFK Assistant Professor
of Biological Sciences and Environmental Studies Dr. Peter Nelson, began a climate-mon- itoring lichen “treasure hunt”
at Deboullie Mountain this past summer to asses climate change’s impact on “rare and threatened” vegetation communities in rock glaciers.
Dr. Nelson, along with Drs. Judith Roe and Larry Feinstein from the University
of Maine at Presque Isle, coordinated the study, which has scientists examining plant life beneath and surrounding five rock gla- ciers at Deboullie. Dr. Roe wrote the grant proposal for the study.
According to the proposal, the study has the potential to yield useful results: “In order to better inform land management and understand the impact of climate change on the rare and threatened rock glacier plant and lichen communities, we propose to conduct a comprehensive sur- vey of the plant and lichen species and the
abiotic environmental conditions found on the five Deboullie rock glaciers.”
“We’re not studying the rocks or the geomorphology, per se. That’s been done,” Nelson said. “These places are much more similar to arctic and alpine environments.” He explained that plant life near the Deboullie rock glaciers is uncommon to most low lying environments in Maine.
“So there are these unique little islands of arctic and boreal plants, and there aren’t other places like this except the few mountaintops in Maine - Katahdin and Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. Those are much higher elevation, so we have these mini mountaintops growing on boulder fields, and we’re wondering why are they there.”
The scientists will use data logging equipment to monitor the environmental conditions of the rock glaciers. The data loggers are small devices, about the size of a nickel, and plug into a computer to dis- play data.
“We’re going to measure the humid-
ity and temperature through time, up and down these rock glaciers and between rock glaciers, to see whether those environ- mental variables are different between and within rock glaciers. If there is a variation in a single rock glacier, does the vegeta-
tion change in a way related to that cold/ wet or hot/dry gradient? The reasons that lichens and mosses are good at measuring these things is they don’t have roots. They are like sponges. They hydrate, and when it gets dry they dry out, so they’re just subject to the whimsy of the local environ- ment,” Dr. Nelson said.
“I like lichens because they are diverse. There are many species - over 12,000 in the world... There are thousands of chemi- cal compounds (that comprise lichens) found nowhere else in nature. We really don’t understand the full capacity of those compounds,” he added.
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