Wild blueberry fields in Down East Maine are warming faster than the state as a whole, according to a new University of Maine study on the effects of climate change on the barrens over the past 40 years. 

The difference in rising temperature rates suggests the need to develop specific wild blueberry management strategies, such as irrigation and fertilizer use, to mitigate the effects of climate change on Down East fields, rather than using tactics devised from statewide climate patterns, according to researchers. 

Rafa Tasnim, a Ph.D. student of ecology and environmental sciences, led the study that explored changes in climate change patterns, particularly in temperature and precipitation, at Down East wild blueberry fields in the past 40 years of growing seasons from 1980–2019, then compared them to aggregate changes in climate measured for the entire state. Yongjiang Zhang, an assistant professor of applied plant physiology, and Francis Drummond, professor emeritus of insect ecology and pest management, collaborated on the study, the first to assess climate change patterns for a fruit spanning different fields in a single production region. 

Their findings also revealed that rising temperatures in Down East wild blueberry fields over the past four decades fueled increased potential evapotranspiration, or the combined loss of water through the plant’s process of transpiration, and evaporation of water from the Earth’s surface. The continuation of this could threaten water use by blueberries in the low-water holding capacity soils in which they grow. The coupling effects of warming and increased potential evapotranspiration could hurt wild blueberry health and yield, according to researchers. 

Most of the 18,000 hectares of wild blueberry fields in Maine reside in the Coastal Climate zone, which has been experiencing faster warming than the interior and northern climate zones. 

The variation in climate across the three zones could result in wild blueberry fields experiencing the effects of climate change differently, according to Tasnim and her colleagues. The notion brings the efficacy of using statewide climate statistics in management practices into question, prompting the researchers’ study. 

The University of Maine will train future Arctic scientists to help address the socio-environmental challenges resulting from the world’s most rapidly changing environment with a nearly $3 million award from the National Science Foundation.

The new UMaine initiative, Systems Approaches to Understanding and Navigating the New Arctic, is funded by the NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program, which encourages the development and implementation of “bold, new, potentially transformative models” for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduate education training. 

This is UMaine’s third NRT award; the first two are the One Health and the Environment initiative and Enhancing Conservation Science and Practice. All align with the University of Maine System Research and Development Plan and emphasize workforce development.

The new Arctic initiative to train graduate students in the interdisciplinary field of Arctic systems science is led by Jasmine Saros, associate director of UMaine’s Climate Change Institute and a professor of lake ecology. Its focus is on the interconnected nature of environmental and social changes in the Arctic and Northern Hemisphere. 

“UMaine’s Climate Change Institute has been an internationally recognized leader in polar science for more than four decades. This new training program builds off of our legacy to advance understanding of the interconnected impacts of Arctic change on people and ecosystems, both in the Arctic and in Maine,” according to Saros, one of more than a dozen UMaine professors who have been conducting research in the Arctic in recent years.

Saros also co-leads the international working group, the Kangerlussuaq International Research Network (KaIRN), which focuses on recent climate-driven environmental changes in the West Greenland ice sheet, and terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

Over the next five years, the program is expected to train nearly 60 master’s and Ph.D. students, including 20 funded trainees in ecology, Earth sciences, anthropology, economics and marine sciences. Their training will include an interdisciplinary curriculum, Arctic field experience, and research focused on changes in Maine, southwest Greenland and the Arctic–North Atlantic.

The new graduate training program to foster systems perspectives to address the Arctic’s complex changes builds on UMaine’s strengths and expertise in polar biophysical research, cross-cultural perspectives and integration of knowledge systems, Arctic law and policy, and socio-environmental systems research.