As spring arrives, we suggest we take a moment to reflect on the winter that was. It was a strange winter; record-breakingly strange. Bicycles and muck boots replaced snow shovels, salt buckets, skis and snowshoes this year. Squirrels chirped. Songbirds and ducks enjoyed the unusually snow-free landscape and ice-free water. Even some garden plants were fooled into emerging mid-winter.
Acadia’s carriage roads were muddy, prone to run-offs, and vulnerable to damage from bikes, strollers and footsteps. The carriage roads were closed earlier than anyone can remember, probably earlier than ever.
Of course, the winter of 2014-15 was strange, too, although giant piles of snow and never-ending shoveling seem like distant memories. With more than 90 skiable days on Acadia’s carriage roads (compared to only a handful this year), volunteer cross-country ski groomers were very busy.
From record snowfall to just the opposite, weather and life in Maine have always been unpredictable. But the old unpredictability is yielding to a new unpredictability that is a characteristic of our changing climate.
In the 1920s, postmen took mail from Northeast Harbor across the bay to the Cranberry Isles on a horse-drawn boat that had been fitted with skis to traverse the frozen ocean. Mail boats to the Cranberries have not donned skis since.
Winters used to be long, summers short. In coastal Maine, the growing seasons — the time from the last spring frost to the first fall frost — are now more than two months longer than they were 100 years ago.
Inevitably, in a state with a culture and economy so connected with nature, our changing climate affects our most treasured places, traditions and communities. Some plants and animals, and some businesses and individuals, have done well with these changes; others have fared poorly.
Visitor seasons begin earlier in the spring and last later into the fall — good for tourism and many businesses. Those same longer seasons are inviting some not-so-welcome guests, like ticks carrying Lyme and other diseases. We have longer bicycling seasons, but shorter seasons for ice-fishing, skiing, and snowmobiling. Another pest — the hemlock wooly adelgid — appreciates those warmer winters, too. We have sighted it a half dozen times or so on Mount Desert Island. At some point, probably after a winter like this one, it will almost certainly arrive in abundant numbers and begin to take out our hemlocks.
This year, we celebrate the centennial of Acadia National Park and the National Park Service. The centennial theme calls for us to celebrate our past and inspire our future. A part of celebrating our past means recognizing the changes that have taken place and actions that people have taken to shape that change and preserve some of our most treasured places, traditions and communities. Inspiring our future means we illustrate and explain these changes to climate and their effects on the resources — here at Acadia and other parks of the national park system — we protect and preserve for the enjoyment of today’s and future generations. We believe that using the best available science and managing for change are the responsible steps to take as we begin a second century of stewardship of our national parks. What steps do you think we, as a Maine community, should take together?
To learn more about how climate change is affecting Acadia National Park and the rest of Maine, and how you can participate in science to understand the changes taking place, visit nps.gov/acad/learn/nature/environmentalfactors.htm.
Abe Miller-Rushing and Kristi Rugg both work for the National Park Service at Acadia National Park, Miller-Rushing as the science coordinator and Rugg as the graphics ranger.