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Abstract
Twelve Maine hospitals have ceased offering obstetric services since 2009 – nine since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, large swaths of the state are over an hour-long drive from the nearest hospital with a maternity unit. While the health and community impacts of maternity unit closures are being documented more and more, less attention has been directed to possible environmental ramifications. This paper is intended to begin that conversation by providing a rough estimate of passenger vehicle carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions associated with the increased travel burden for obstetric patients following three Maine maternity unit closures. I estimate that the closure of three hospital-based maternity units in 2023 could have equated to adding 14 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles to Maine roads over the following year. Together, these closures may have led to an extra 60.07 metric tons of climate-warming CO2e emissions resulting from additional mileage driven by pregnant people seeking care. I call for further research on the environmental dimensions of (reproductive) healthcare access and suggest consideration of alternative models of maternity care that may be more environmentally and socially sustainable.Ìę

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Introduction
Twelve Maine hospitals have ceased offering obstetric services since 2009 – nine since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (Figure 1). As a result, large swaths of the state are over an hour-long drive from the nearest hospital with a labor and delivery (L&D) unit¹ (Figure 2). This rapid erosion of hospital-based obstetric services has significant implications for the health and wellbeing of impacted communities. Living a long distance from care represents a significant barrier to accessing both acute and routine, preventative reproductive health services (DiPietro et al. 2021). Both living far from care and losing a local provider are associated with higher risk for a range of adverse outcomes for pregnant person and infant, including unplanned out-of-hospital birth, preterm birth, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission, and maternal mortality (Kozhimannil, Hung, & Henning-Smith 2018; Minion et al. 2022; Wallace et al. 2021). Additionally, when a community loses health services, there are impacts beyond those on the immediate patient population; people lose their jobs, community morale is affected, and medical mistrust can be exacerbated (Klein et al. 2002; Statz & Evers 2020).

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While the health and community impacts of maternity unit closures are being documented more and more, less attention has been directed to possible environmental ramifications. This paper is intended to begin that conversation. Here, I use hospital data and carbon footprint and greenhouse gas equivalency calculators to estimate additional carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions resulting from extra miles driven by obstetric patients seeking hospital care in the aftermath of three Maine maternity unit closures. Further consideration of potential environmental impacts and mitigation strategies follow.

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Background
Rural maternity care is in steep decline across the country. Following centuries of effort by the medical establishment to eradicate traditional midwives and foster dependence on obstetricians and hospital birth, the centralization of hospital-based care has left millions of U.S. women living in counties with no midwifery or obstetric services (Stoneburner et al. 2024). While hospital-based obstetric services have been centralizing to population hubs for decades, in more recent years smaller hospitals have begun to shutter their maternity units at a faster rate. Even in 2012, less than half of rural U.S. women lived within a 30-minute drive of the nearest hospital offering obstetric services (Hung et al. 2016). Between 2006 and 2020, over 100 rural hospitals and 400 hospital maternity units closed their doors (Simpson 2020; Sonenberg & Mason 2023). The most remote areas experienced the greatest loss in local obstetric services. Today, over half of rural U.S. counties have no hospital-based obstetric services (Kozhimannil et al. 2020). The result is a significant “travel burden” for rural parents: that is the time and distance spent travelling to access care.

Scholars have previously pointed out that modern birthing people can face a suffocating “double discourse” (Gurr 2015). Both science and the state work to monitor and manage every stage of the reproductive life course, especially conception through birth. Public concern surrounding the maternal-fetal transmission of toxicants has put pregnant and parenting individuals’ actions under the microscope (see LappĂ©, Hein, and Landecker 2019; cf. EWG 2005). In the U.S., the overturn of Roe v. Wade opened the door to new levels of reproductive surveillance and the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes. Meanwhile, there is stark medical neglect. Instead of experiencing care in medical settings, patients too often have their preferences ignored and concerns brushed aside; those on the rural periphery face an increasingly sparse healthcare landscape; and marginalized communities struggle to access quality, culturally appropriate reproductive health services even in more metropolitan areas. This is what social scientists call “stratified reproduction” (Colen 1995). While the U.S. has the highest maternal death rate overall of all high-income countries – more than double that of Canada – Black, Indigenous, low-income, and rural populations are disproportionately affected. Non-Hispanic Black and Indigenous individuals are three to four times more likely than non-Hispanic white individuals to die of pregnancy-associated causes (Gunja et al. 2024; Kozhimannil et al. 2020). Maternal mortality is nearly two times higher in rural compared to urban areas (Harrington et al. 2023). Disparities persist in severe maternal morbidity (potentially life-threatening childbirth complications) and infant mortality (Ehrenthal et al. 2020; Jang & Lee 2022; Kozhimannil et al. 2019; Kozhimannil et al. 2020). In this context, the dual forces of control and neglect can be viewed as a tacit elimination strategy for certain populations, selectively impeding social reproduction (Gurr 2015; Nelson 2011).

Climate change is another leading threat to social reproduction as it impacts human health across the lifespan. Pregnant and postpartum people and their infants are among the vulnerable populations facing unique and added risks. The World Health Organization (2023) suggests that climate hazards such as extreme heat may be associated with increased risk of developing pregnancy complications such as gestational diabetes and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. Longer, hotter heatwaves, air pollution from wildfire smoke and fossil fuel emissions, and other climate disasters are associated with preterm birth, low birth weight, and stillbirth (Bekkar et al. 2020; Harville et al. 2021; Kuehn & McCormick 2017; Maher, 2019). Climate change also brings the promise of more prevalent viral, zoonotic, and vector-borne diseases² that are especially dangerous for people with compromised or developing immune systems like pregnant people, infants, and young children (Maher, 2019). Additionally, when social conflicts or stress arise as a result of disasters or resource scarcity, women and children bear the brunt of downstream effects like gendered and sexual violence (Maher, 2019; WHO, 2023). All these threats can overlay and exacerbate preexisting health disparities.

As healthcare systems grapple with these growing harms, they are also large producers of greenhouse gas emissions, excess waste, and other pollutants. One analysis estimated that the Canadian healthcare system’s greenhouse gas and other pollutant emissions are linked to an annual loss of 23,000 “disability adjusted life years” (years of poor health, disability, or early death) in that country (Eckelman, Sherman, & Macneill 2018). The U.S. healthcare sector accounts for up to 10% of national emissions (Mercer 2019). The specific environmental footprint of obstetrics and gynecology is understudied, but one systematic review found room for significant mitigation through reducing reliance on single-use health and hygiene products³ and making energy efficiency improvements in obstetric and gynecological surgery (Cohen et al. 2023).

Telehealth is often suggested as a means for addressing both issues associated with travel burden: vehicle emissions and poorer health outcomes (Cohen et al. 2023; Hung et al. 2023). Of course, when it comes to maternity care, telehealth can only help mitigate travel burden for prenatal and postpartum patients; a video call cannot replace skilled, hands-on assistance during birth. Beyond the evident limitations, Hung et al. (2023) found that U.S. communities located farthest from care facilities also had the least digital access, representing “dual barriers” to care for the most disadvantaged families. Telehealth must be viewed as an (incomplete) stopgap measure for centralizing maternity care rather than a silver bullet.

Methods
This exploration takes as example the three maternity unit closures that occurred in Maine in 2023; those of Northern Maine Medical Center, Rumford Hospital, and York Hospital. Northern Maine Medical Center is an independent acute care hospital located on the Maine-New Brunswick, Canada border in the town of Fort Kent (Aroostook County). Rumford Hospital, in the town of Rumford (Oxford County), is a critical access hospital associated with the Central Maine Healthcare system. York Hospital, in the town of York (York County), is an independent acute care hospital affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital, located very near the Maine-New Hampshire border. These cases represent closures in northern, western, and southern Maine, respectively (Figure 3).

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Results
I found that the combined additional mileage would have generated about 60.07 metric tons of climate-warming CO2e emissions⁴ over the year following the closures. There are inherent shortcomings of equivalency calculators and of the very attempt to translate obstetric travel burden into carbon emissions, which are discussed further in the following section. Recognizing the over-simplifying nature of such a task, these estimated emissions nonetheless warrant some illustration. According to the EPA, the release of 60.07 metric tons of CO2e is equivalent to adding 14 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles to Maine roads that year or filling up a sport utility vehicle’s⁵ gas tank about 407 times (Table 1). That is the amount of CO2e emissions generated by consuming 139 barrels of oil. It is also the amount of carbon sequestered by 60.3 acres of forest in one year. These estimates represent the possible impact of just one state’s maternity unit closures in a single year – a small snapshot out of the hundreds of closures that have occurred nationally over the past decade.

Limitations
The calculations provided here are preliminary and include significant limitations. I made several simplifying assumptions, including that patients aren’t crossing the border to seek care in Canada, that no patients drove electric vehicles (EVs), and that obstetric patients didn’t choose to split their care (i.e. see a family practitioner for prenatal care at one facility and deliver at a different facility). I don’t know the actual addresses of the hospitals’ patients and I didn’t thoroughly investigate the population size or demographics of the various localities in order to more accurately estimate health facility catchment areas, patient numbers, and drive times. Another limitation is that birth counts don’t account for patients who made trips to the hospital to receive prenatal/obstetric care but didn’t give birth – that is, pregnancies ending in later abortion or miscarriage. Additionally, in these calculations I only had 2020 hospital survey data available. If more recent birth counts (from 2021 or 2022) were significantly different, they would have produced different mileage totals and therefore different emissions numbers. All these limitations should reaffirm the imprecise, exploratory nature of the estimates provided here.

There are also limitations to the very idea of the carbon footprint. In the process of reducing complex, contingent situations and deeply felt experiences – in this case, those of families seeking care in a sparse and shifting medical landscape – to formulas and numbers for the sake of comparison, we risk losing context, nuance, and empathy (Isenhour, O’Reilly, & Yocum 2016). With growing awareness of the climate crisis, personal carbon footprints have been assigned not only to living individuals but also to their potential offspring. One consequence of this kind of thinking is a brand of “eco-natalism” that shames others for their reproductive choices or even explicitly seeks population reduction strategies (Rush 2023; cf. Haraway 2015). This is an example of models and quantifications being granted outsized power to the extent that they overshadow lived realities and obscure other possible futures. In this light, I hope that my calculations are understood to be neither objective nor apolitical. While I did make choices to avoid falsely inflating emissions estimates, the very act of creating them was undertaken with subjective intent: to draw wider attention to the fact that healthcare access and climate change are not siloed issues.

Discussion
It is important to emphasize that this paper only explored patient passenger vehicle emissions rather than attempting a holistic ecological footprint analysis. Consistent with this narrow scope, I didn’t account for hospital staff and provider drive times that may have been impacted by the maternity unit closures (e.g., did former employees find new jobs with longer commutes or stay at home following the closure?). I also didn’t attempt to estimate or make commensurable the energy savings and reduction in medical waste that likely resulted from the three maternity unit closures. As previously noted, from facility demands to single-use medical supplies and anesthetics, obstetric practice is resource intensive. It is entirely possible that, all told, even a rural hospital’s decision to shut down its L&D unit has more positive than negative environmental effects, despite the travel burden imposed on its obstetric patients.

For this very reason, the solution to the complex issue of vanishing maternity care – and its attendant environmental considerations –Ìęcannot be to force the establishment of more hospital-based L&D units, especially in places where they have already been demonstrated financially or logistically unsustainable. Policymakers and health system administrators should certainly prioritize “stopping the bleed” of obstetric services. There are already efforts underway to train and recruit more providers to practice in rural areas. Other meaningful policy actions on this front might include raising Medicaid rates for maternal health services provided in federally designated Maternity Care Health Professional Target Areas (MCTAs); offering at-risk maternity hospitals a standby capacity payment to keep their L&D units open; or requiring a set public notice period and specific protocol (such as ensuring all patients’ adequate transfer of care) before hospitals end maternity services (see CHPQR 2024 and Snipe 2023). However, a longer-term vision should be of alternative models of maternity care that are designed to serve smaller and more dispersed populations – and to be more environmentally friendly.

Midwife-led, community-based birth centers, for example, can operate with lower overhead costs and – if they are reflective of the populations they serve – a high level of local buy-in and support (e.g., Van Wagner et al. 2007 and Karbeah et al. 2022). They also require fewer staff, which is significant as staffing shortages are among the most cited reasons for maternity unit closures (Hung et al. 2016; Kozhimannil et al. 2022). Hospital-based L&D units require on-call anesthesiologists in addition to obstetricians, L&D nurses, etc. A birth center or homebirth midwifery practice can have exactly as many providers as the community demands, down to solo practitioners. We might imagine a future where every community holds its own birth center or homebirth midwife and, as a result, maternity care close to home is the default option. Policymakers could bring us closer to this future by addressing restrictions on direct-entry and nurse-midwives’ independent practice and ensuring the care they provide is adequately reimbursed by both public and private health plans. New birth centers could also be granted an expedited and/or discounted Certificate of Need application process, exempting them from some of the more burdensome bureaucratic requirements that can keep smaller providers out of the market (see Snipe 2023).

Midwives have a long tradition of skillfully filling gaps in rural medical infrastructure (Dawley 2000). Research reliably shows midwife-attended community birth to be as safe as hospital birth (with superlative outcomes in measures like c-section rates and maternal satisfaction and empowerment) even in rural settings (Cheyney 2008; Davis-Floyd et al., 2009; Jolles et al., 2020; MacDougall & Johnston, 2022; Nethery et al., 2018). In their study on the role of birth centers in building rural health infrastructure and community resilience, Jolles et al. write that “as the infrastructures of standard, hospital-based maternity care in rural communities deteriorate, the birth center model of care has demonstrated its role as a durable model capable of stable and predictable capability to provide high-quality health care” (2020, p. 433). The case of Inuit communities that have successfully “rematriated” birth after decades of maternal evacuation policies – including creating local midwifery education programs – shows that community-based and culturally-centered maternity care can improve outcomes even in the most remote settings (Van Wagner et al., 2007; 2012). In Maine, a robust network of local providers could work closely with existing higher-level obstetric facilities and medical transport services, ensuring fast and efficient interprofessional collaboration and/or transfer of care in the case of higher-risk pregnancies or emergent complications; a type of regionalization strategy focused on making abundant care⁶ a reality for rural communities.

A turn to community-based maternity care could have environmental benefits beyond reducing reliance on fossil fuel-powered vehicles. Compared to a hospital L&D unit which is generally “on” 24/7, including an equipped operating room, a community birth center can easily run in a more energy efficient manner (Cohen et al., 2024). This is as simple as the fact that birth centers are typically smaller facilities with fewer electronic devices and can turn off the lights when no patients are present. Further, the midwifery model of care that operates in community birth centers is broadly understood to be more environmentally friendly than the technocratic model typically seen in hospital settings (Davis-Floyd 2001; O’Connell et al. 2024). Midwives generally rely on fewer medical and surgical interventions, meaning less overall waste, energy usage, and greenhouse gas emissions from avoidable procedures and anesthetics (Altman et al. 2017). Even within a hospital setting, births attended by midwives have up to 40% lower risk of c-section compared to those attended by obstetricians; vaginal births have less than half the environmental impact of c-sections (Cohen et al. 2024; Souter et al. 2019). Looking at midwife-attended homebirths, environmental waste becomes “negligible” (Paxton, Donnellan-Fernandez, & Hastie 2023).

There are also trickle-down benefits of the midwifery model of care. Parents choosing homebirth or attended by a midwife in any setting are more likely to breastfeed/chestfeed⁷, which is more sustainable than feeding commercial human milk substitutes on every measure: avoiding packaging waste, energy use, and pollution from industrial formula manufacturing and shipping, and minimizing habitat loss, methane emissions, and water usage associated with large-scale dairy farming (Andresen et al. 2022; Wallenborn & Masho 2018)⁸. In short, an intentional transition to midwife-led, community-based maternity care could improve outcomes while significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, waste, and energy usage throughout the continuum of care. In this way, abundant healthcare could be abundantly earthcaring, too (Merchant 1995).

Conclusion
This paper is intended primarily as a provocation for further research and discussion on the multifaceted interrelationship between (reproductive) healthcare and the environment. Environmental issues can jeopardize already precarious health and healthcare access for individuals in rural or otherwise underserved areas. Extreme heat, pollution, disease, and disasters all carry special risks for pregnant people and infants. Climate-related disasters such as flooding and fires also threaten both healthcare facilities and the critical transportation infrastructure that people utilize to reach care (e.g., Tarabochia-Gast, Michanowicz, & Bernstein 2022; Johnson et al. 2018). As the need for high-quality reproductive and other health services grows, therefore, issues of access will likely continue to grow alongside. As this paper has noted, healthcare services and transportation can also contribute to anthropogenic climate change and other environmental concerns. Just and sustainable solutions will likely involve not less, but more care for our health, kin, communities, and environment.

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Endnotes

¹ I use the terms “maternity unit” and “L&D unit” interchangeably throughout to refer to hospital facilities providing birth services, including designated obstetric beds and infant bassinets.

² Viral disease is illness caused by a virus (e.g., COVID-19). Zoonotic disease is illness or infection that can be transmitted between animals and humans. For example, avian influenza, or bird flu, is a viral zoonotic disease. Vector-borne disease is transmitted to humans and animals through living organisms like mosquitoes, fleas, or ticks (e.g., Lyme disease).

³ Single-use/disposable products include hypodermic needles, syringes, gloves, surgical sponges, bandages, catheters, postpartum pads and cold packs, etc.

⁴ Emissions estimates for mileage driven by a 2020 Subaru Forester SCV-7 4WD.

⁵ Again, using the gas tank capacity of a 2020 Subaru Forester.

⁶ Concept drawn from Birth Center Equity, an organization that funds BIPOC-led community birth centers to “grow abundant community birth infrastructure”.

⁷ “Chestfeed” is a gender-neutral term for feeding human milk to an infant at the parent’s chest, preferred by some parents.

⁸ Andresen et al. (2022) found that the environmental impact of four months of exclusive formula feeding was 35-72% higher than four months of exclusive breastfeeding/chestfeeding, depending on the type of impact measured and the lactating parent’s diet.

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Appendix A: Maine hospitals

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Resource scarcity is a driving narrative element in the genre of speculative fiction. The treatment of the world’s resources is a pressing concern amidst the climate crisis, the outbreaks of viruses like bird flu and Covid-19 variants, global wars and conflicts, and an increasingly technologically driven world. This article examines how Canadian authors portray environmental collapse and resource scarcity, looking specifically at similarities and differences in how non-Indigenous and Indigenous authors discuss resources. Using Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven as examples of speculative fiction written by non-Indigenous Canadians, and Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves, and Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow as examples of speculative fiction written by Indigenous writers. I explore some of the major anxieties of Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors through their literature in relation to our current world and the ways they depict the future¹. These novels point to Indigenous communities being better equipped to survive apocalypse because they have already done so. I examined how traditional knowledge is a driving force in the survivance of the Indigenous communities in Dimaline and Rice’s novels². Teaching the next generations to hunt and prepare food, as well as respecting the earth who provides it, is integral to the long-term survival of Indigenous communities. Finally, food and water are very rarely discussed in Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, indicating a privileged perspective that allows the author to not overtly address aspects of survival. Additionally, I will consider what it means to be privileged with resources during an apocalypse, examining the individual versus communal values of survivors. In the case of speculative fiction, privilege is complicated by considering how Indigenous communities may not have access to unlimited resources. This analysis of resource scarcity and food ethics is situated within contemporary Canadian food and water discourse.

Discourse surrounding resource access has changed throughout the timeline of the publication of each of these novels, spanning from 2003-2018. Canada’s current discourse surrounding food has come to include an understanding of the environmental, systemic, and personal impact of food production and access. Canada’s National Pathways document, published in July 2023, outlines the country’s resource concerns and the steps being taken towards adopting healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable food systems. Under the “Context and Vision” header, Canada claims strength in their food systems but acknowledges the impact of the global pandemic and the climate crisis as having exposed and worsened inequities. Canada’s National Pathways report echoes discussions taking place globally around the importance of sustainable food systems. For example, the UN Food Systems Summit aims to incentivize world leaders towards achieving the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. These goals include ending poverty and hunger, supporting clean water and sanitation access, responsible consumption and production, overall sustainability of our treatment of land, water, and life. As demonstrated through the need to incentivize world leaders to invest in the future of the planet, access to resources cannot be untangled from a capitalist growth mindset. According to the Bank of Canada, the increase in global trade has incentivized the uptake of new technologies and production to stay relevant in the global trade landscape; inspiring companies to invent new products and technologies to maintain their market share. The National Pathways document does not explicitly address the industrialization and technological increase in food production, but it refers to economic advancements and building consumer trust amongst growers and consumers.

Canada’s National Pathways document speaks directly to the country’s treatment of Indigenous communities, who disproportionately face food insecurity. On average across all of Canada over a ten year period, 38.3% of First Nations households on-reserve experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. On October 9, 2024 Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority reported that, “First Nations families are spending nearly a quarter of their monthly income on basic foods.” Additionally, there are 31 long-term drinking water advisories on public systems on reserves in 29 communities as of November 7, 2024³. These statistics inform Canadian cultural attitudes towards food sovereignty, agency, access, and knowledge. Furthermore, the ways in which Canadian authors engage with resources in their novels, whether their characters are directly working to secure food or whether they’re privileged in not having to think about such things.

Margaret Atwood, a non-Indigenous Canadian author, published the first novel in the MaddAddam trilogy Oryx and Crake in 2003. The novel follows the aftermath of a bioengineered pandemic with some chapters taking place before the fall of mankind. The novel follows the only anticipated human survivor, Jimmy. Jimmy has been given the vaccination for the virus, and the responsibility of looking after the surviving non-human beings, Crakers. The Crakers were bio-engineered by Crake, the antagonist of the novel who created the virus and left Jimmy, known as Snowman to the Crakers, responsible for dealing with his creation.

Atwood’s chapters set before the pandemic allude to the intersecting factors that led to the fall of mankind. The global destruction of the environment, the unchecked powers of multinational corporations, and the faltering human ethics were all enactments of human exceptionalism, capitalism, and individualist values. The final demonstration of these values was Crake’s belief that an ecological utopia could be created through mass genocide and re-population of life via bioengineered beings. We might read the world depicted before the collapse as an extension of Atwood’s anxieties, with the majority of power lying in massive biotechnology companies, where the government falls to the wayside of industry. Atwood speculates that the end of the human-inhabited world was already situated to happen through structural flaws leading to the decline of the environment, inspiring biological warfare and escalating the timeline of decline.

Crake’s inclination towards biotechnological advances led to the unchecked destruction of the planet. The beings that he created are immune to his disease, and are designed to be free from flaws such as greed and violence. The pandemic in Oryx and Crake is an act of biological terrorism, created at a company called RejoovenEsense, whose work engaged with extending the human lifespan and preserving youth. Crake creates this virus with the transhumanist hope that he might reset the world and repopulate it with Crakers. Crake’s beliefs align with the transhumanist belief, “that science and technology can allow us to transcend the limitations of human life providing longer, better lives and even immortality” (Yoo 662). The Crakers are an extension of the transhumanist impulse to enhance, develop, and improve the human condition using technology.

Resources in Oryx and Crake are depleted, requiring technological advancements to produce enough food to feed the population. The novel grapples with the tension of technological advancement and reality: what is real when every food, feeling, and experience is produced, manufactured, and curated? Atwood writes of the Earth’s decline that,“ as time went on the coastal aquifers turned salty and the northern permafrost melted and the vast tundra bubbled with methane, and the drought in the midcontinental plains regions went on and on, and the Asian steppes turned to sand dunes, and meat became harder to come by” (Atwood 24). The earth that Atwood depicts is entrenched in the climate crisis, anticipating a future where food and water resources are scarce.

Atwood’s anxiety about “real” food is complicated by the technologies that have shifted the ways of producing food from the field to the lab. With the introduction of lab grown meat, the environmental and ethical impacts are less clear. When Jimmy is shown a ChickieNob, in the “NeoAgriculturals” department at Crake’s prestigious university, Watson-Crick, it is described as a “large, bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing” (Atwood 202). The question of empathy and autonomy are distinctly challenged when the subjugation of animal bodies changes as the need for “sustainability” increases. Stephanie Lance coined the term, “post-industrial slaughterhouse,” to explain how Atwood’s biotechnology meat production is an extension of power exerted over animal bodies by deeming them unrecognizable, and therefore making their suffering unfamiliar (Lance 60). Lance defines the post-industrial slaughterhouse as a rhetorical space “which utilizes advancements in science to redefine how animal bodies are “slaughtered,” and how the manipulation of those bodies alters how we perceive human-animal relationships” (Lance 61). Atwood works within this rhetorical space with the naming of the corporations: OrganInc Farms, NooSkins, and HelthWyzer. The corporation’s names utilize words like “organic” and “new” to allude to the work that they do with animal bodies, think “organ” and “moo,” with a green-washed human oriented appeal.

Lance argues that the “advancements” in the novel work toward justifying capitalist narratives that harm humans, nonhumans, and the environment. Where Atwood has eradicated the horrors of the factory farming system as we know it, Lance’s anxieties seem to lie in the unknown about how animals will be treated within the capitalist value system when there is a greater push toward the technological reconceptualization of large-scale farming. Lab-grown meat may eliminate traditional slaughterhouses and the exploitation of human labor in that space, providing more food and nutrients using fewer resources, but it also perpetuates the devaluation of animals and nature by normalizing the idea that they are a product for consumption. In the novel, the entire lifecycle of the animal occurs in a laboratory with the goal of prolonging their life to harvest their parts for food. Atwood’s depiction of pigoons, creatures created as organ donors to produce human body parts, is an example of this exploitation. The geneticists who created pigoons for human organ harvest hoped that “none of the defunct pigs ended up as bacon and sausages: no one would want to eat an animal whose cells might be identical with at least some of their own” (Atwood 24). The class of workers in the compounds who created food and science technologies are not exempt from consuming their creations, and do so with moral trepidation as the line between human and animal blends. The reconfiguration of the suffering of the pigoons is less obvious than the suffering witnessed in current large-scale agricultural facilities and Lance considers whether animal welfare hinges on perceivable suffering, and what it means when “humane” meat is the goal, rather than a respect for other beings.

Beyond the ethics of “real” and lab-grown food production, food access emerges as an indicator of wealth in Oryx and Crake, dividing the pleeblands (cities) from the Compounds (the biotechnology company living quarters). Food serves as an indicator of power through access. Only wealthy people have real butter and real meat, and the rest of the population consume artificial, or lab-created, food items. When visiting Crake’s University, Jimmy indulges in popcorn with butter. In response to Jimmy’s excitement and his recognition that his less prestigious university, Martha Graham Academy, does not have real butter, Crake responds, “Nothing but the best at Watson-Crick” (Atwood 223). Crake cements the expectation that the social and academic elite have access to the best food, while others do not.

We can see Atwood’s anxieties come to fruition in the post-pandemic chapters of the novel where the bioengineered animals, pigoons and rakunks, have re-claimed the land. Food scarcity is a concern for Snowman, the suspected only surviving human being, because environmental collapse has made access to fish, non-bioengineered animals, and vegetables scarce. Jimmy also lacks the ability to fish or hunt, and resorts to scavenging and using the Crakers’ skills to provide him with food. Atwood’s Oryx and Crake enacts an othering of nature through scientific advancements cultivating an opposition between nature and man, allowing for nature to be used to depletion.

Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 novel, Station Eleven, similarly eliminates the majority of the population through biological decline and relies heavily on scavenging from already available food sources. Mandel’s novel oscillates timelines and locations, demonstrating different attitudes about food and water resources through the lens of individuals and communities, spanning years before the virus until 15 years after. The novel follows Kirsten and her troupe of nomadic performers, The Travelling Symphony, who stage Shakespeare plays for communities of survivors. In the aftermath of the virus, life has sprouted in unlikely places — the Severn City airport has turned into the Museum of Civilization, a place where the electric world is eulogized. Settlements around Lake Michigan house quirky communities and occasionally dangerous survivors. All of the survivors have adopted various beliefs and values, holding on to relics from the past with greater importance because of the collective trauma endured by the loss of life and electricity. Kirsten’s troupe uses Shakespeare as their anchor to humanity, while the Prophet, a leader of a kidnapped clan of children, uses a fictional comic book called Station Eleven.

Mandel’s engagement with the climate crisis and food scarcity provides an underlying tone to her primary theme of the survival of art and culture in a changing world. The climate crisis in Station Eleven is less prevalent than in Oryx and Crake because the novel’s pre-pandemic world is not so explicitly dysfunctional. The characters are all described as seemingly middle class. They have careers, live comfortably in their homes and apartments, and travel the world for various reasons. The destruction of the environment, unchecked corporate power, and faltering human ethics as described by Atwood in Oryx and Crake are not emphasized in Station Eleven.

Reuben Martens suggests that Emily St. John Mandel engages in “petro melancholia,” a love of the petroleum world so much so that she grieves losing it. Other scholars suggest that Mandel’s novel does more than grieve the luxuries of a petroleum world, she paints it as a utopia, or a “petrotopia” (Smith 10). Station Eleven includes a chapter titled,Ìę “An Incomplete List,” which eulogizes and emphasizes society’s reliance on cheap energy as a driving force in the creation of contemporary western culture (Mandel 31). Mandel laments, “No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities” (Mandel 171). The grid failure in Station Eleven is not due to overconsumption of oil, but rather to the fragility of the electrical grid (Smith 10). Mandel’s depiction of the collapse of mankind centers human resilience in a way that absolves them of responsibility for the collapse.

At the beginning of the novel and the flu pandemic, we see Mandel’s characters grappling with what survival looks like. She writes, “Jeevan’s understanding of disaster preparedness was based entirely on action movies
 He started with water, filled one of the oversized shopping carts with as many cases and bottles as he could fit
 The next cart was all toilet paper. The cart after that was more canned goods, also frozen meat and aspirin, garbage bags, bleach, duct tape” (Mandel 21-23). Jeevan had access to a grocery store moments after hearing the news of the deadly Georgia virus, one within walking distance of his brother’s apartment. This alludes to the food security privilege that Jeevan and his brother Frank had before the virus. Jeevan has access to a deep line of credit which enables him to pay for carts full of groceries. Additionally, Jeevan’s purchase of as much food and water as he could carry indicates an individualistic attitude about survival. He isn’t concerned with the rest of the community who may rely on the grocery store for resources, and he likely has no idea who or how many people there are to be concerned for. Mandel emphasizes this sentiment, writing, “All evidence suggested that the center wasn’t holding — Was this actually happening? They asked one another — but personally they had food and water, they were at least momentarily secure and not sick” (Mandel 193). Jeevan and Frank were isolated together, and therefore their survival was their main concern. In times of crisis, not knowing one’s neighbors or community members allows for isolation, individualism, and the stockpiling of resources.

In contrast with Jeevan and his brother Frank, the community of survivors at the Severn City airport work communally to survive. On the third night of their isolation, the survivors break into the Mexican Restaurant in the airport and share a meal. They are more concerned about stealing from the airport than they are about being stranded with strangers. Their concerns are eased by a character who puts down his credit card to cover the expenses, assuming that modern currency still holds value. The survivors trusted one another and invested in the survival of the group. Mandel writes that, “By Day Three, all of the vending machines in the airport are empty
 On Day Four the food from the Mexican restaurant ran out, also the food from the sandwich place in Concourse C” (Mandel 242-243). The community prevails through experimentation with farming and hunting. Fifteen years later, the Severn City airport community accommodates more than 300 members. Mandel notes, “In former times, when the airport had had fewer people, Clark had worked all day at the details of survival; gathering firewood, hauling water to the restrooms to keep the toilets operational, participating in salvage operations in the abandoned town of Severn City, planting crops in the narrow fields along the runways, skinning deer” (Mandel 259). Mandel does little work to discuss the logistics of acquiring seeds to sow, learning how to hunt, butcher, and preserve food. This knowledge isn’t entirely excluded from the concerns of the characters, and suggests an increased likelihood of success within a community versus individuals who are confined by the limits of their knowledge. During an early conversation between Frank and Jeevan, Frank asks,

“‘But what would be out there? 


‘I don’t know, a town somewhere. A farm?’

“A farm? Are you a farmer? Even if it weren’t the middle of winter Jeevan, do farms even work without electricity and irrigation systems? What do you think will grow in the spring? What will you eat there in the meantime?’

‘I don’t know, Frank’

‘Do you know how to hunt?’

‘Of course not. I’ve never fired a gun.’

‘Can you fish?’

‘Stop it’ Jeevan said” (Mandel 183).

Alone, the brothers had very little experience or knowledge about food production. Their modern existence was entirely separate from the food systems that provided for them, leaving them without the ability to farm, hunt, or fish. With regard to the Travelling Symphony, there are few depictions of their everyday survival. They scavenge, notably for production props, rather than food items. It is assumed that the Symphony hunt deer and rabbit, and access water from the freshwater lake that they perform around. The omission of detail about the Travelling Symphony’s day-to-day survival indicates that they seemingly lack concern about resources. Luckily, “the Georgia Flu was so efficient that there was almost no one left” (Mandel 192), therefore the characters in Station Eleven have access to the remaining processed and preserved food in the world, and earned time to learn how to hunt and grow their own food.

Traditional knowledge sharing is a central theme of Georgian Bay MĂ©tis writer Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (2017). Dimaline’s novel focuses on an Indigenous community’s survival amidst a government sanctioned hunt to extract their bone marrow. The apocalypse of the novel is both structural and biological. The climate crisis has caused such psychological distress that non-Indigenous people have lost the ability to dream and require the bone marrow of dreamers, Indigenous people, to survive. This form of bodily extraction follows the over-extraction of natural resources from the earth, resulting in waterways that are “polluted to muck,” and “grey and thick like porridge” (Dimaline 24). Dimaline’s novel follows a family of survivors whose biological families have gone missing. Miigwans leads his kin: French, Wab, RiRi, Chi-Boy, Slopper, Rose, and their elder and connection to the language, Minerva. Without their shared knowledge of Indigenous history and language, French wouldn’t know to take pride in his nickname, which comes from “[his] people— the MĂ©tis.” He boasts, “I came from a long line of hunters, trappers, and voyageurs” (Dimaline 21). French’s pride in the survival and success of his people positions his own survival as communal, a result of traditional knowledge passed down through generations.

Extractive capitalism is the basis for the conflict that paves The Marrow Thieves’ speculative future. The ailment that causes non-Indigenous people to lose their ability to dream is a result of polluted water and resource scarcity. As Christine Turner suggests, water is a major place of colonial extraction and subjugation. The surviving Indigenous people have a relationship with water, and the earth more generally, that aligns with the Metis and Cree concept wahkohtowin, meaning “kinship,” “family,” or “relation” (Tuner 1). Characters in The Marrow Thieves discuss the earth as “her,” and recognize the interconnectedness of their bodies and the world around them. Turner explains that, “wahkohtowin describes kinship between Metis people, where “people” denotes not only humans but bodies of water and the beings who subsist on or in those bodies of water” (Turner 3). This kinship is demonstrated in The Marrow Thieves when French is hunting alone and sees a moose for the first time. He raises his gun, and notices the moose turn towards him. He imagines the world that has shaped the moose, “like he had watched all of this happen” (Dimaline 49). He contemplates the benefits of taking the animal’s life, thinking to himself, “This was food for a week. Hide and sinew to stitch together for tarps, blankets, ponchos. This was bones for pegs and chisels” (Dimaline 49). Ultimately, French decided that the kill would be superfluous, wasteful. French asks himself, “Could we travel with this meat before it rotted? No. And could we smoke and dry it? No” (Dimaline 49). French’s concern for waste is more pressing than his desire for food to eat at that moment. He recognizes the kinship between himself and the moose, both beings struggling to survive.

The Marrow Thieves depicts Indigenous futurism, a way of thinking that allows people to imagine and build futures where their traditions, culture, language, and autonomy are centralized in all of society, not just Indigenous communities⁴. Indigenous futurism may look like a widespread understanding to only take what is needed from the earth, striving for balance. Non-Indigenous futurity is positioned as the default, valuing capitalist growth at the cost of the environment and other beings. Indigenous futurity does not “require the erasure of now-settlers in the ways that settler futurity requires of Indigenous people,” (Tuck and Gaztambide-FernĂĄndez 80). I disagree with this statement, citing Canada’s violent resource extraction and “the facilitated replacement of Indigenous people and ultimately (cultural) genocide, or simply death, often for fossil fuel extraction on their Native lands” (Martens 196). Canadian policy demonstrates values that are entwined in capitalist consumption and directly oppose the survival of Indigenous communities. Indigenous futurity may require the erasure of non-Indigenous people, or at least a major upheaval of individualistic consumerist capitalist ideologies that currently drive non-Indigenous governments and economies to wreak havoc on the Earth’s resources.

The problem of non-Indigenous-state-imposed ideologies and infrastructure is a driving force in Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow, published in 2018. The novel is set in a remote Anishinaabe community in Northern Ontario and follows Evan Whitesky and his community after a power outage caused by the breakdown of a hydro dam. The outage leads to a winter of trying to sustain food supplies, which challenges the community’s reliance on infrastructure and reinforces traditional ways of surviving. Colonialism has forced many Indigenous communities to adopt non-Indigenous-state-promoted infrastructures of energy production and distribution, which as Rice discusses, often fail and prove to be unreliable. Reuben Martens explains that this forced uptake was done “through the promise to fulfill the social aspirations of the colonized, yet with a complete disregard (inertia) as to how this affects local communities, ecosystems, and political structures” (Martens 196). Food plays a massive role in this novel, as a means of physical survival and as a way to preserve cultural survival through knowledge sharing.

The first scene of Moon of the Crusted Snow depicts a moose hunt, setting the stage for understanding how Evan Whitesky engages with the natural world. He offers gratitude to “the Creator and Mother Earth for allowing him to take this life” (Rice 5). There is an awareness of the gravity of taking a life, just as French understood the gravity in The Marrow Thieves and decided against shooting the moose. There is also a sense of necessity because “food from the south was expensive and never as good, or as satisfying, as the meat he could bring in himself” (Rice 3). When Evan takes inventory of the animals he has hunted, he notes,

It was more than enough for his own family of four, but he planned to give a lot of the meat away. It was the community way. He would share with his parents, his siblings and their families, his in-laws, and would save some for others who might run out before winter’s end and not be able to afford the expensive ground beef and chicken thighs that were trucked or flown in from the south (Rice 6).

Even before the total collapse of infrastructure, there is an expectation that food from the south is inaccessible. It is expensive, and it is flown or driven in, which means that any bad weather may result in food shortages. The community anticipates failure and had proactively stockpiled food and fuel in case of emergencies like the one they’re facing. Preparation like this would likely not occur to non-Indigenous communities who have not faced systemic failures as frequently or as harshly as Evan’s community has.

Grace Dillon explains that the novel echoes traditional social structures, where generally the elders are taken care of first, and the rest of the resources are split up amongst those in need. Even with enemies, there is an expectation of love and generosity in taking care of one another. Rice writes,

The Anishinaabe spirit of community generally prevailed
Survival had always been an integral part of their culture. It was their history. The skills they needed to persevere in this northern terrain, far from their original homeland farther south, were proud knowledge held close through the decades of imposed adversity (Rice 48).

This spirit of community and survival was passed on through generations because the elders taught survival skills to the newer generations. Evan’s father taught him to hunt, and Evan plans to teach his children when they come of age. Evan’s parents, and the elders of the community, while afraid of the possibility of starvation, still center storytelling as a means of survival to process and share information. One elderly character, Aileen, is known throughout the community for her stories. She shares her knowledge of old medicine ways with Evan’s partner, Nicole, and prides herself on telling stories to anybody who visits her. She is a pillar in the community for traditional knowledge sharing and survival. Aileen, just like Minerva in The Marrow Thieves, is a resource for Indigenous youth to gather knowledge about the past and learn about ways of surviving.

Grace Dillon coined the term ‘Native Apocalypse’ which she describes as already having taken place. In a conversation with Evan, Aileen echoes this sentiment, saying,

Our world isn’t ending. It already ended. It ended when the Zhaagnaash came into our original home down south on that bay and took it from us. That was our world. When the Zhaagnaash cut all the trees and fished all the fish and forced us out of there, that’s when our world ended […] But we always survived. We’re still here. And we’ll still be here, even if the power and radios don’t come back on and we never see any white people ever again. (Rice 149–50)

In this novel, the resilience and ability of Indigenous communities to survive “apocalypse” over and over again makes them the most knowledgeable about how to keep their people fed, safe, and alive. Kirsten Bussiere argues that apocalyptic narratives have the ability to exemplify hope for the future. She believes that the annihilation of the government, organized medical care, and modern infrastructure has allowed the community in Moon of the Crusted Snow the opportunity to begin again, opening the possibility of utopia (Bussiere 55). Without non-Indigenous imposed infrastructure, Indigenous communities are able to organize medical care systems, food and firewood distribution, and other community services free from legal or physical barriers. Communities are able to build infrastructure around their needs and the communities goals.

In examining how Canadian dystopian fiction authors portray resource scarcity and food ethics, there is a divergence between non-Indigenous and Indigenous narratives. Atwood and Mandel reflect non-Indigenous anxieties surrounding the loss of technological infrastructure and a reliance on artificial solutions to sustain resource-depleted societies. Whereas, Dimaline and Rice present Indigenous communities grappling with the ongoing realities of resource scarcity while emphasizing traditional knowledge, generosity, kinship, and resilience as pathways for survival. These narratives highlight the complexity between privilege, survival, and the ethics of resource consumption in speculative futures. The perspectives of these novels work to emphasize the necessity of addressing systemic inequities in contemporary food systems, as echoed in Canada’s National Pathways document, and the global movement for food sovereignty. Indigenous writers, in particular, challenge readers to reconsider the interconnectedness of humans, the environment, and non-human beings, offering criticism of extractive capitalism. Indigenous authors also offer hope, rooted in the necessity of community perseverance. This research, while focussed on food and water access depicted in four novels, works to connect speculative fiction, real-life policy, and apocalyptic events that have systemically affected Indigenous communities. The resource-driven survival of the characters in these novels reflect the authors broader concerns for the climate crisis, economic inequality, and cultural resilience. Their narratives urge readers to question the sustainability and ethics of our current systems and imagine alternative futures grounded in equity, sustainability, and respect for the Earth and its inhabitants.

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Endnotes

¹ My identity as a non- Indigenous white cisgender woman has shaped my understanding of this research.

² Published in Gerald Vizenor’s Native liberty : natural reason and cultural survivance, “Native survivance is an active sense of presence over historical absence, the dominance of cultural simulations, and manifest manners. Native survivance is a continuance of stories” (Vizenor 1).Ìę

³ As of February 8, 2025, there are thirty-three long-term drinking water advisories on public systems on reserves in thirty-one communities.

⁴ Coined by Anishinaabe scholar Grace Dillon.

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Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Virago Press, 2013.

Bank of Canada. “How Canada’s International Trade Is Changing with the Times.” Last modified September 27, 2017.

Bussiere, Kirsten. “Beginning at the End: Indigenous Survivance in Moon of the Crusted Snow.” Foundation 49, no. 136 (2020): 47–58. ProQuest. https://library.umaine.edu/auth/EZproxy/test/authej.asp?url=

Canada, Government of. “Canada’s National Pathways Document.” Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 2023.

Dimaline, Cherie. The Marrow Thieves. Dancing Cat Books, 2017.

Glover, Jayne. “Human/Nature: Ecological Philosophy in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” English Studies in Africa 52, no. 2 (2009): 50–62.

Hopkins, Patrick D., and Austin Dacey. “Vegetarian Meat: Could Technology Save Animals and Satisfy Meat Eaters?” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 21, no. 6 (2008): 579–96.

Lance, Stephanie. “The Cost of Production: Animal Welfare and the Post-Industrial Slaughterhouse in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” MOSF Journal of Science Fiction 4, no. 1 (2020): 60–74. EBSCOhost.

Mandel, Emily John. Station Eleven. Picador, 2015.

Martens, Reuben. “Petromelancholia and the Energopolitical Violence of Settler Colonialism in Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow.” American Imago 77, no. 1 (2020): 193–211. Project MUSE.

Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority. “SLFNHA Releases New Food Affordability Report.” Last modified October 27, 2022.

Rice, Waubgeshig. Moon of the Crusted Snow. ECW Press, 2018.

Smith, Bradon. “Imagined Energy Futures in Contemporary Speculative Fictions.” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 6, no. 2–3 (2019): 136–54. EBSCOhost.

Tuck, Eve, and RubĂ©n Gaztambide- FernĂĄndez. “Curriculum, Replacement, and Settler Futurity.” Journal of Curriculum Th eorizing, vol. 29, no. 1, 2013, pp. 72– 89. journal.jctonline.org.

Turner, Christina. “Water as Wahkohtowin in Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 33, no. 3–4 (2021): 98–124. EBSCOhost.

United Nations. Sustainable Development Goals. United Nations. .

Zanella, Patrizia. “Witnessing Story and Creating Kinship in a New Era of Residential Schools: Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 32, no. 3 (2020): 176–200.

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^1.  Husson University, Bangor ME., 04401
^2.  91±ŹÁÏ, Orono ME., 04469
*Corresponding author: thomas.e.stone@maine.edu, 207-581-1237

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Abstract
In order to meet decarbonization goals associated with mitigating climate change, many states and the federal government offer a variety of rebates and tax incentives for heat pump installation. Heat pumps are generally more efficient than other heat sources and can maintain the same temperature in a home or building with lower overall greenhouse gas emissions. While the climate change implications are of crucial importance, electric ratepayers have an immediate question: how much will my electric bill go up if I install a heat pump? With thousands of heat pumps being added to the electric grid each year, electric utilities have questions related to grid reliability, grid capacity, and preparing for more electrification. Here we analyze monthly electrical loading data for 155 homes in the northeastern United States who installed a single heat pump. We find that the most common result among households is an increase of ~25% in electricity use after the installation of a heat pump. However, there is very wide variability in the electrical loading changes that makes defining a typical home challenging, and we recommend treating this ~25% result as an order of magnitude estimate only.

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I.  Introduction
The energy necessary to heat, cool, light, and otherwise make buildings function accounts for 18% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and 13% of the United States’ GHG emissions [1, 2]. ¹  In the state of Maine, located in the cold northeastern corner of the United States, ~33% of GHG emissions are from the heating, cooling, and lighting of buildings [3].  As a part of their portfolio of efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change by reducing GHG emissions, many states (and the federal government) incentivize the installation of heat pumps [4-7].  Heat pumps use the thermodynamic properties of a refrigerant, combined with electricity to run the necessary mechanical components, to move thermal energy from a region of cooler temperature to a region of warmer temperature—this is opposite the natural direction of heat flow [8].  In the winter, a heat pump moves thermal energy (or colloquially, heat) from the colder outside air to the warmer inside air in order to heat a building.  The opposite happens while air conditioning in the summer; the heat pump moves the heat from inside the cooler building to the warmer outside.  While operating, a heat pump’s GHG emissions derive only from the emissions associated with producing the electricity needed to run it.  As with any device purporting beneficial electrification (switching from fossil fuels to electricity for the same benefit but with less environmental degradation), a key parameter is how much GHGs are emitted by the electric grid [9, 10].  Maine’s electric grid generates 0.481 pounds of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour of energy (0.481 lb/kWh), which is one of the lowest carbon intensities in the country and makes beneficial electrification very attractive [11].²  In fact, Maine has installed 115,442 heat pumps since 2019 and has reset its installation goal to 275,000 heat pumps by 2027 [3, 12].

Besides the environmental benefits of beneficial electrification³ and the practical benefit of being able to both heat and cool a building, heat pumps have other appealing features.  Heat pumps can often heat a home more cheaply than by other means, offer finer temperature control by heating in zones, and are quiet [13, 14].  However, heat pumps have large upfront costs, though rebate programs often mitigate these.  Heat pumps do not work during power outages unless an alternative source of power is procured, and they can substantially increase a building’s electric bill (even if overall heating costs decrease).

In this work we seek to quantify the last point—how much does a residential building’s electrical usage typically increase after installing a single heat pump?  Homeowners can use this information, along with their local price of electricity, to estimate the increase in their monthly electric bill.  Though switching to a heat pump will often save homeowners on their overall heating bill, they can still be surprised by the increase in their electric bill.  The analysis here gives homeowners another piece of information to aid their financial decision-making.  Furthermore, with thousands of heat pumps being added to the grid, electric utilities can use this information to help plan for the additional loading.  Utilities that offer rebates for customers purchasing heat pumps can use this analysis to calculate an average payback time on their investment.

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II.  Methods
Stowe Electric (SE), located close to Maine in northern Vermont, provided anonymized monthly electrical energy loading data (in kilowatt-hours, kWh) for all of their residential and commercial customers who installed one or more heat pumps between 2018 and 2021.⁴  They provided monthly electrical loading data from ~2 years prior to each heat pump installation until present day.  SE also provided the installation date, heat pump information (manufacturer, model, unit type—ducted or ductless, number of units), financial information (heat pump cost, rebate given), and type of customer (residential or commercial) for all installations.  Where known, SE provided the type of heating system being replaced by the heat pump as well as any other known home electrification efforts (electric vehicle charging, solar array present).  In this study, we only use the installation date and monthly electrical loading for each customer.  Though a further analysis of the financial data would be very interesting (calculating a typical payback time, for example), we would need to know additional information about łŠłÜČőłÙŽÇłŸ±đ°ù’s previous heating systems and costs that were not widely reported.

Due to the small number of commercial customers installing heat pumps, we limited the scope of this study to residential customers who installed a single⁵ heat pump (either ducted or ductless).  Customers had up to 90 days to submit their rebate paperwork, which is a (likely small) source of error.  Occasionally a customer would have multiple monthly reads of 0 kWh, indicating they had shut off electrical service for some reason.  Since multiple months of 0 kWh electrical usage could potentially skew the data, and because this suggests a non-typical customer, we removed all customers from the data set who had more than two consecutive months with 0 kWh electrical usage (we retained customers with a single monthly read of 0 kWh in the analysis, which did not significantly change our results or conclusions).  Finally, some customers did not have 12 months or 24 months of previous electrical data available.  For example a homeowner could have bought a home in January and installed a heat pump in June, which would yield only five months (January – May) of pre-installation data.  We removed these customers from the data set as well since they did not have adequate pre-installation data to compare with their post-installation data.  After we pared these exceptions from the data set, we had 155 residential customers with 12 months of pre- and post-installation electrical loading data available.  Of these 155 customers, 123 had 24 months of pre- and post-installation data available.  We chose the 12 and 24 month timeframes as the before and after so as to ensure the data reflected an entire heating and cooling season, no matter when the heat pump was installed.

Of course, there are a number of limitations to this data set and subsequent analysis.  Perhaps the most glaring is that we cannot attribute the electrical loading changes solely to a customer installing a heat pump [15].  A home is not a laboratory where a single variable can be isolated, and a number of unknown factors could have changed a home’s heating demand and overall electrical usage during the time under study.  In fact, we observed some homes with decreased electrical loading after installing a heat pump.  Clearly, adding a large electrical load like a heat pump will increase electricity demand so some other changes must have taken place in these cases.  In the 24 months under study (12 months pre-installation and 12 months post-installation) for each home (48 months total where data was available), a number of electrical and behavior changes likely took place.  In this study, the only change we know for certain is that a homeowner installed a heat pump.

The typical variation in a home’s electrical use over a 2 (or 4) year period points to the next limitation in the data set: the average or typical home in this study may, or may not, represent an individual home well.  While one of our intents here is to give homeowners an order of magnitude estimate of what will happen to their electrical usage after installing a heat pump, we emphasize that this is only an estimate and individual homes may differ greatly from the average results presented here (see Table 1 and Figure 1).  Our results might be most applicable to electric utilities who are interested in average changes when a large number of heat pumps are added to their territory.

Finally, all of the homes in this study are geographically co-located in northern Vermont, making our results most applicable to regions with similar temperatures (such as the state of Maine, which we have focused on here). 

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III.  Results and Discussion
We calculated each łŠłÜČőłÙŽÇłŸ±đ°ù’s monthly electrical energy consumption in kWh for the twelve months before and after installing a heat pump.  We also calculated their median consumption of the same period.  For the 155 customers, we found an average annual change in usage of 22% and a 28% change in median usage.⁶   For the 123 customers with 24 months of data available, the average usage increased 22% and the median increased 29% (see Table 1).⁷ 

	12 months before/after	24 months before/after
Number of customers in data set	N = 155	N = 123
% change in average electric loading (kWh/month)	22%	22%
% change in median electric loading (kWh/month)	28%	29%

Based on this data set and analysis, our primary result is that a customer might expect their electrical loading (and thus electric bill) to increase by ~25% due to the installation of a single heat pump.  We stress, however, that there was a tremendous amount of variability in the average and median, including a maximum 12 month average increase of 490% and a minimum 12 month average increase of -69% that was actually a decrease in electrical consumption (see Figure 1 for the distribution of 12 month changes). Though counterintuitive, there are a number of ways that the average electrical demand in a home could decrease after installing a heat pump.  For example, the homeowners could have added solar capacity that covered the additional electricity for a heat pump as well as other electrical demand; changed their behaviors with respect to heating and cooling; changed the building envelope (such as by adding insulation); reduced other electrical loads in their home (such as by replacing appliances); or they could have increased their use of non-electrical appliances (such as heating with a woodstove or switching to a propane hot water heater).  In any case, other decreases in electrical loading must be greater than the increase due to the heat pump installation in order to see an overall decrease in usage.  If we remove the 57 customers who had a decrease in their electricity consumption in the 12 months post-installation, the expected electrical loading increases to ~50%.  This ~50% increase might be a more conservative indicator of expected increase if no additional actions are taken by the homeowner (such as adding solar capacity or insulation, for example). 

Likewise, some customers saw more than 100% increases in their monthly loading, indicating a greater than doubling of their electric energy consumption (and bill).  While adding a heat pump might explain the doubling of small ~ 100 kWh/month accounts, adding a single heat pump is very unlikely to cause a doubling of larger ~ 1000 kWh/month accounts where other factors were likely at play (such as adding a heat pump in conjunction with a home addition, for example).

Because of the wide variability seen in Figure 1, it is challenging to define what a ‘typical’ homeowner might expect for a change in their electrical energy consumption which is why we only offer an order of magnitude estimate of ~25%.  Compounding the variability issue is that the data can be parsed in a number of ways.  For example, if we exclude an outlier at the high (489%) end the expected change shifts closer to ~20%, but then increases if we also exclude customers who had a negative change.  If we choose to calculate the median (instead of the average) change in each Table 1 statistic we find a change of ~10%, which then returns to ~25% if we again exclude customers with a negative change.  Perhaps the best conclusion we can draw from this data is as follows: if you do not make efforts to decrease your grid-produced electrical energy production (such as installing a solar array or lowering your usage with behavioral changes), your electrical loading will likely increase between 5 and 50% upon installing a single residential heat pump, but you cannot exclude higher increases.

Our ~25% order of magnitude result might be most applicable for utility-scale planning, where averages are more relevant.  Homeowners can use this estimate, coupled with the full distributions of changes in Figure 1 (which may be more illuminating for an individual customer), as a starting point for their financial decision-making process regarding a heat pump. 

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IV.  Conclusion
In this paper we have analyzed pre- and post-installation electrical loading data for 155 homes that installed a single heat pump, finding that a typical home might expect a ~25% increase in their electric bill as a result of installing a heat pump (although their overall heating/cooling costs might have decreased).  We stress that this ~25% is an order of magnitude estimate that cannot be attributed solely to the installation of a heat pump since a residential setting does not allow us to isolate a single variable (heat pump installation) for study.  Other behavioral and structural changes almost assuredly took place in each home over the 24 or 48 months of study, which affects electrical loading in unknowable ways.  We also stress the wide variability in the data set, as seen in Figure 1, which makes drawing conclusions about a ‘typical’ home very challenging.  Even given these qualifications, we hope that homeowners can use these results to better inform their financial decision-making process when considering heat pump installations.  Electric utilities can use this information as they prepare for more electrification in the future.

Finally, we conclude with reminders from Wendell Berry that “if we are not in favor of limiting the use of energy, starting with our own use of it, we are not serious” and “if we are not in favor of rationing energy, starting with the fossil fuels, we are not serious” [16].  Conservation, or source reduction, will always yield the greatest environmental benefit.  While converting from heating with fossil fuel to heating with an electric heat pump might generate a number of environmental benefits, true environmental stewardship asks us to reconsider and minimize how much heating is truly necessary in the first place.  Deeply engaging with all of our energy use will likely be uncomfortable, especially as it becomes clear that we will have to relinquish some of our behaviors and comforts [17].  Nevertheless, the climate emergency requires us to take on this engagement and it is our hope that the work presented here will add, in a small way, to the larger conversation.

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V.  Footnotes
¹Different studies rarely consider exactly the same inputs for the energy associated with buildings, so the GHG emissions stated are best thought of as order of magnitude estimates and not direct comparisons.

²Reducing the quality of Maine’s electric grid to a single number (CO₂ emitted per unit of energy produced) is a gross oversimplification.  We must note that a full accounting of the environmental quality of Maine’s electric grid would not only involve all of the GHGs emitted in the production of electricity, but other ecological and social ramifications of producing that electricity.

³It is beyond the scope of this paper to do a complete life cycle analysis comparison between heat pumps and the many other heating options available, which others have done elsewhere.  We note that heat pumps generally exhibit lower life cycle emissions than other heating options, though the GHG emissions of the local electric grid can make them less beneficial in some cases.

⁴Husson University Institutional Review Board Approval #22SH02.

⁵In most instances it was clear when a residential customer had installed two or more heat pumps, and those were immediately excluded from analysis.  However, there were instances where it was not clear if multiple buildings had each received a heat pump or if one building had received multiple heat pumps.  We excluded these from the results presented in Table 1, but if we had included them our results, discussion, and conclusions remain essentially unchanged: Average¹² = 26%, Median¹²= 31%, Average²⁴ = 24%, Median²⁴ = 30%.

⁶Let A_before,i and A_after,i be the i^th łŠłÜČőłÙŽÇłŸ±đ°ù’s average monthly electrical energy consumption (in kWh) in the twelve months before (-12 ≀ t ≀ -1) and after (1 ≀ t ≀ 12) installing a single heat pump; we excluded the installation month (t=0) from our analysis as that month contained both days with and without a heat pump.  Similarly, let M_before,i and M_after,i be the i^th łŠłÜČőłÙŽÇłŸ±đ°ù’s median monthly electrical energy consumption in the twelve months before and after installing a heat pump.  The percentage change in the i^th łŠłÜČőłÙŽÇłŸ±đ°ù’s average energy usage can then be calculated as  and the percentage change in the i^th łŠłÜČőłÙŽÇłŸ±đ°ù’s median energy usage can be calculated as .  For the N = 155 customers with 12 months of before and after data, we find an average percentage change in average energy usage  (significant using a paired sample t-test, p = 0.00022).  We also find an average percentage change in median energy usage  (significant, p = 0.00726).  Performing similar calculations for the N = 123 customers with twenty four months of data available, we find  and  for that timeframe (p = 0.00254 and p = 0.00758, respectively).

⁷As indicate in Figure 1, there was wide variability in the electrical loading data.  Here, we list the standard deviation and range for each summary statistic presented in Table 1. 

(12 months)
(12 months)
(24 months)
(24 months)

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References

1.Ìę Richie, Hannah. “Sector by sector: where do global greenhouse gas emissions come from?” ourworldindata.org (2020).
https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector (accessed March 1, 2024).

2.Ìę U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” epa.gov (2021).
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions (March 1, 2024).

3.Ìę Maine Climate Council. “Maine Won’t Wait: A Four-Year Plan for Climate Action.” maine.gov (2020).
https://www.maine.gov/climateplan/ (accessed March 1, 2024).

4.Ìę Efficiency Maine. “Heat Pumps.” efficiencymaine.com (2023a).
https://www.efficiencymaine.com/about-heat-pumps/ (accessed March 1, 2024).

5.Ìę Efficiency Vermont. “Available Rebates.” efficiencyvermont.com (2023).
https://www.efficiencyvermont.com/rebates/list (accessed June 28, 2023).

6.Ìę NH Saves. “Heat Pumps & Central Air Conditioners.” nhsaves.com (2023).
https://nhsaves.com/residential/electric-heating-cooling-equipment/ (accessed June 28, 2023).

7.Ìę U.S. Department of Energy. “Making Our Homes More Efficient: Clean Energy Tax Credits for Consumers.” energy.gov (2023).
https://www.energy.gov/policy/articles/making-our-homes-more-efficient-clean-energy-tax-credits-consumers (accessed June 28, 2023).

8.Ìę U.S. Department of Energy. “Heat Pump Systems.” energy.gov (2023).
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-pump-systems (accessed June 26, 2023).

9.Ìę Natural Resources Defense Council. “Beneficial Electrification: Plug In for the Greener Grid!” nrdc.org (2023).
https://www.nrdc.org/bio/vignesh-gowrishankar/beneficial-electrification-plug-greener-grid (accessed June 26, 2023).

10.Ìę Environmental and Energy Institute. “Beneficial Electrification: An Access Clean Energy Savings Program.” eesi.org (2023).
https://www.eesi.org/electrification/be (accessed April 7, 2024).

11.Ìę U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Maine Electricity Profile 2022.” eia.gov (2024).
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/maine/ (accessed February 25, 2024).

12.Ìę Maine Climate Council. “Maine Won’t Wait Progress Report.” maine.gov (2023).
https://www.maine.gov/future/sites/maine.gov.future/files/2023-12/_2023_MWW%20Progress%20Report.pdf (accessed April 7, 2024)

13.Ìę Efficiency Maine. “Compare Home Heating Costs.” efficiencymaine.com (2023b).
https://www.efficiencymaine.com/at-home/heating-cost-comparison/ (accessed June 27, 2023).

14.Ìę Energysage. “Pros and cons of air source heat pumps.” energysage.com (2023).
https://news.energysage.com/pros-and-cons-of-air-source-heat-pumps/ (accessed June 27, 2023).

15.Ìę Stone, Thomas. “Five year post-installation review of a heat pump water heater.” Spire: The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability no. 3 (2019).
/spire/2019/09/18/stone/ (accessed June 20, 2023).

16.Ìę Berry, Wendell. “Less Energy, More Life.” Our Only World: Ten Essays. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2015. 69-72.

17.Ìę Bendell, Jem. “Deep adaptation: a map for navigating climate tragedy.” Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) Occasional Papers Volume 2. University of Cumbria, Ambleside, UK. (Unpublished)

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On a trip to your local haunt, you may have noticed a rising trend: a growing number of coffee shops, cafĂ©s, and food establishments across Maine — and indeed across the country — are distributing compostable cups, straws, and containers. 

With concerns escalating over single-use plastics and the limitations of our recycling system, it’s no wonder that businesses large and small are looking for more eco-friendly alternatives. After all, packaging and plastic waste have become a ubiquitous and unwelcome part of our modern lifestyle. 

We now know that of plastic waste has ever been recycled, compared to the 91% that ends up incinerated, in landfills, or in the environment. And as exponentially, recycling rates in the United States are

The sad truth is that even if we could recycle 100% of our waste, it would not be the climate solution we so desperately want and need. Recycling is costly and energy intensive. Even if run flawlessly across the nation — a likely unattainable aspiration —  our recycling system . That’s a far cry from the 90% reduction needed in that sector to live within our , as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  

With this knowledge, compostable packaging appears to be a cleaner, greener choice than the average single-use plastic. But , they are not a silver bullet solution to the single-use waste crisis. They are, after all, a single-use option themselves. Here’s why the growing push for these products isn’t the environmental fix we need: 

1. Compostables Are Rarely Composted

The first major challenge is that compostables are rarely composted at all. 

Without federal regulations in place, packaging producers can as  “bioplastic,” “biodegradable” or “compostable” whether or not they can degrade. To combat this, a growing movement of certifiers — including , and — are reviewing and certifying truly compostable containers. But often these labels only verify that compostables will break down in the high heat or unique conditions of . 

Compostable packaging is very rarely compostable in your backyard, which is why access to composting services is essential for compostables to work. Unfortunately, a vast majority of Americans do not have access to these services: in the U.S. have municipally supported composting, and only accept any form of compostable packaging for fear of (see point 2).

More often than not, the compostables procured by our well-intentioned coffee shops are being sorted out of our recycling and composting streams and ending up in our landfills.  

2. Compostables Have a Bigger Environmental Footprint Than You Think

There’s a common misconception that a compostable item — even if it ends up in a landfill — is better than most single-use alternatives. “At least they’re breaking down,” we think. Unfortunately, compostables rarely degrade in a landfill setting because a landfill doesn’t emulate the conditions of an industrial compost facility. In the rare case they do break down, — a greenhouse gas than CO2. 

Beyond this, manufacturing compostables often comes at a greater environmental cost than the average single-use item. Consider that compostable food serviceware was found to have across every environmental metric, from water consumption to ozone depletion to global warming, when compared to non-compostable alternatives.

Why is that, you might ask? The agricultural processes involved in growing the raw feedstock materials for compostables, like corn or sugarcane, require significant water, energy, and fertilizers. This can contribute to and environmental degradation, all while placing additional strains on an already stressed food system. If the U.S. were to shift all single-use items to compostables, it would likely require large-scale monoculture farming — further exacerbating issues of soil depletion, pesticide use, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity. 

Last but certainly not least, many compostable products are treated with toxic chemicals like PFAS for durability and water resistance. This highly persistent group of chemicals — also known as “forever chemicals”— can leach into the environment and water supplies, posing long-term health risks to humans and wildlife. 

As previously mentioned, many composting facilities for this and many other reasons. . 

3. Compostables Are More Expensive

Compostable packaging is often significantly more expensive than its traditional single-use or plastic counterparts. The financial burden of this higher expense falls disproportionately on small businesses and their consumers. 

While large corporations may be able to absorb the higher costs of compostable materials, many small businesses find that these products don’t just cost more — they also present logistical and financial challenges. “Compostable packaging creates a number of issues with regard to space in our bins as well as in the collection vehicle, which in turn can drive up the cost of a program” shared Greg Williams, Director of Organics at Agri-Cycle, a food waste collection service and composter in South Portland. Without an effective composting infrastructure in place, businesses are left to foot the bill for packaging that ultimately ends up in the landfill. 

It’s important to note that in some cases, compostable packaging does make sense. For example, certified compostable food ware can increase food scrap collection and reduce recycling contamination — particularly when composting infrastructure is available. But for many households and small businesses, it’s a costly and ineffective solution. As Will Pratt, owner of Tandem Coffee Roasters in Portland, shared, “[Compostables] give a business the feeling that they are making a difference when in actuality they might not be. Single use is single use.” 

One thing is clear: compostable packaging isn’t a reliable or universal fix to our waste crisis. 

The Real Solution: Reuse

If we’re serious about addressing the environmental impact of single-use packaging, we need to focus on a solution that really works: reuse.

Studies show that reusable packaging could reduce emissions from single-use plastics by — far more than compostables or recycling can achieve. And if we reused just 10% of plastic products across the globe, we could pollution.  In fact, reusable food serviceware can beat single-use alternatives — including compostables — on .  

Reuse systems like reusable and refillable containers and cups offer the best path forward for reducing waste and cutting emissions. This is a solution that can make a real difference for the environment.

Across the world, cities and companies are beginning to implement reusable packaging systems with promising results. In Europe, for instance, reusable packaging models are and proving to be effective in reducing waste. If we prioritize reuse, we can achieve significant reductions in waste and emissions while building more resilient local economies with greener, cleaner jobs. 

What You Can Do

The good news is that as a consumer, you have the power to drive change. Start by bringing your own cup to the coffee shop — it’s a simple, effective way to reduce waste at its source. If your local cafĂ© still uses compostables, check if they’re certified by , or . Better yet, ask your cafĂ© to provide reusable containers on-site and to encourage customers like you to bring in their own cups and containers for take-out! 

— a volunteer coalition advocating for reuse in the Pine Tree State —  is calling on cafĂ©s and businesses to display its “BYO encouraged” sticker as a signal to customers that they’re welcome to bring their own cup or container. You can and distribute them to your local cafĂ©s to help spread the word. (FYI: Maine’s food code already allows for this, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.)

Other steps you can take are supporting businesses with reuse systems in place and advocating for policies that encourage the same. Reuse Maine’s longer-term vision is for all dine-in and take-out foodware in Maine to be served in returnable, reusable containers. As the customer, you’d simply bring them back to any participating restaurant, hand them to your next delivery driver, pop them into a return kiosk while you’re out and about, or even return them alongside your empty recyclables. (Reach out or get involved with to learn more about their vision for Maine’s reuse economy!) 

It’s time to move beyond the compostable packaging trend and focus on sustainable, long-term solutions. Reuse is the future, and we’re looking forward. 

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This piece aims to place the scale of PFOS contamination of agricultural soil into context. The data presented here are based on results from a study conducted for my Masters thesis “Uptake Takeaways: Soil-to-Crop Movement of Per- and Polyfluoralkyl Substances (PFAS) in a Paired Field and Greenhouse Study”, which took place on a contaminated farm in Unity, Maine. In this study, our team sought to quantify uptake of PFAS from contaminated soil to edible portions of lettuce and two other crops to support farmer and policymaker understandings of the risk associated with farming on contaminated land. This data visualization features the number of lettuce cups that a 70 kg person could safely consume based on what our research taught us about the transfer of PFOS-contaminated soil to lettuce and using health standards set by the European Food Safety Authority (2020). These findings are not recommendations and should not be extrapolated beyond this field setting, as many questions remain about the mechanisms that drive PFAS uptake in a field. Results from this study are under review for publication, but results from the paired greenhouse study may be found here:

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Scearce, A. E., MacRae, J. D., Goossen, C. P., Zhang, Y.-J., Holt, K. P., & Schattman, R. E. (2025). Uptake of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) into lettuce (Lactuca sativa), tall fescue (Schedonorus arundinaceus) and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum): A greenhouse experiment evaluating bioconcentration factors and testing the effect of intercropping. Environmental Advances, 100629.

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The locality, organization, and intimacy of contra dancing mirror the values of sustainability. Friends and strangers carpooling to distant barns to spin and do-si-do through the night. What could better embody Maine’s rural community spirit? Many dances in contra are performed “in the round” (i.e. orbitally). To me, these formations echo the regenerative processes essential to conservation and sustainability. Across Maine, collaboration and resource-sharing are integral to daily life, whether it’s through farming cooperatives, shared fisheries, or carpooling to events like contra dances. These practices reflect a deep-rooted commitment to environmental responsibility; reducing waste, strengthening local networks, and preserving traditions that sustain both people and place. Through this piece, I wanted to explore how grassroots traditions such as contra embody community resilience. Despite regressive federal administrations, by uniting through community engagement and commitment, cyclical processes can continue to move forth. Just as contra dancing requires cooperation, adaptability, and a shared sense of purpose, so too does the fight for sustainability. Spire’s mission aligns with this ethos by unifying community, sparking dialogue, and inspiring collective action to ensure that the rhythms of conservation continue to move onward.

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Nineteen of us occupied several rows within the classroom, seated in every other lecture hall seat, with colorful hiking packs jammed into the seats in between. This was a Wilderness First Responder recertification course, and many of us were wearing layers of outdoor gear, broken-in hiking boots, and well-loved brimmed hats. We were here to recertify our ability to practice basic wilderness medicine in the backcountry. This was my third recertification and like many of my classmates, I was here to maintain my certification for professional requirements and personal peace-of-mind during my own adventures. 

Clad in two different types of plaid, our instructor C. paced in front of the class, describing several curriculum updates that the training school had issued: “…and earlier this year, we at [the training school] decided to remove jaw dislocations from the curriculum since we looked at the data and found that hardly anybody was actually encountering them, and if they did, the dislocated jaw was unlikely to be the biggest problem facing the patient
But we are keeping those shoulder dislocations, those finger and toe dislocations, all that good stuff—we’re keeping that in the course. Questions? Well, I have one and my question is—has anyone actually reduced a dislocation in the backcountry? I’ve done it just once and I’ve been practicing wilderness medicine for decades!” 

While our discussion was focused very much on the corporeal experience of misaligned body parts being treated through the techniques of “reduction” (putting the joint back into alignment), I thought more deeply about the all-encompassing experience of being dislocated from a place: this is not surprising as I was just a few short weeks into living in a new place. I had left central Maine, where I had been living and working for the past three years, and relocated to Utah for graduate school. Despite physically driving the several thousand miles that separated my former and new homes, the change still seemed sudden and disconcerting. Here I was, on the campus of my new university, talking about misaligned fingers and shoulders, but thinking instead about displaced perspectives and disrupted narratives. 

These topics had been an ongoing source of reflection for me during my time in Maine. I moved to Maine to work as a wild blueberry research assistant, and throughout my time in that role, I repeatedly heard from blueberry growers, researchers, and consumers about how much had changed within the industry over the past few years. My first growing season in Maine was in 2021, and it was characterized by hot and humid conditions punctuated by a startlingly wet July (Calderwood, Scallon, and Tooley 2023), but then the 2022 season was more uniformly hot and droughty (Calderwood, Scallon, and Tooley 2023). After I had stopped working in wild blueberries in 2023, that growing season was cool and extraordinarily rainy (Calderwood and Parks 2024), giving way to a record-breaking, hot 2024 season with drought and flood conditions alike (NOAA 2024). Though my sampling window is short, the dramatic differences between the years makes it difficult for me to generalize as to what the wild blueberry growing season in the state is “usually” like. 

There are ample data available to climate scientists who calculate and articulate the many ways that Maine’s climate is changing, and these folks make clinical predictions about how these will impact Mainers’ routines, livelihoods, and ways of living. But it is those who are not using just numbers and models to describe the changes, who can teach us the most about what these changes actually mean: our neighbors and friends can tell us stories in a more personal and relevant way.  

Wild blueberry growers who have farmed for decades know that their growing season is longer, with the season having grown by fourteen days in the last twenty years alone (Calderwood and Parks 2024). They know that as Downeast Maine changes from having frequent, gentler rains to the furious deluges now more common, the elevated runoff scours the sandy soils from their fields and leaves the plants to desiccate between storm events. The growers know that the blueberry plants are beginning to flower and fruit at different times than they historically have, creating a mismatch between when the plants have open flowers and when their pollinators are active and searching for flowers. Wild blueberry growers know that the warmer winters are not quite killing off the fungal and insect pests that devour their plants in the warmer months. The growers know all this because they’re witnessing it day after day and season after season. They’re seeing the impact in reduced harvest yields and in smaller incomes. 

Agriculture is a field reliant on knowing in different forms, and there is particular emphasis placed on the knowledge that comes from experience, whether it is one grower’s personal experience or an experience had by another member of the local growing community. We are now in an era when past lived experiences cannot adequately inform our assumptions about the future, and this reality is deeply unsettling for those who have historically had success in using their experiences to shape their management decisions. Wild blueberry growers familiar with implementing particular management practices on specific days now find themselves redesigning their management timelines and using new technology and tools to do so. Instead of applying a pesticide treatment on May 15, for instance, they may now be applying a pesticide treatment one month after buds appear, which may be well before May 15. 

Wild blueberry growers are a self-sufficient and creative community, so adopting new tools and increasing flexibility in management practices will enable them to adjust to the disruptions associated with climate change, and in fact, the industry is already starting to do this. But even with this adaptability, it is probable that the growers will feel slightly unmoored, particularly for those individuals who have worked in the industry for decades. This mental disarrangement, this dislocation, arises from the temporal displacement of well-established routines and traditions, from the physical displacement of unpredictable weather events and climate patterns, and from the cultural displacement of new routines, traditions, and technologies altering what it means to be a wild blueberry grower.

The cultural landscape of those affiliated with the wild blueberry industry is being changed alongside the climate. Celebrations of completed harvests and other milestones must now occur weeks before they once used to—and these changes can be significantly disruptive. Communities develop group identity from shared events and traditions, and many of these events are anchored temporally: celebrating the completion of the wild blueberry harvest with a regional festival in late June would seriously disrupt the linkage of wild blueberry harvests to the regionally- and culturally-defined end of summer. If this celebration is moved ahead five weeks, what event replaces the early August event so as to provide a marking of the end of summer and an opportunity for the entire community to come together?  Dislocations of events like these change the narrative that individual growers have which situates them within the larger legacy of wild blueberry growers in Maine, while also altering the narrative of how the community in, say, Downeast Maine, defines the passage of seasons and the occurrence of local cultural events. 

Consumers of wild blueberries are subject to all of these same dislocations, especially those who live near blueberry barrens, hand-harvest their berries (on a farm or in secret locales), and/or pilgrimage to certain farm stands to buy the in-season bounty. Participants in all of these activities may use them to construct their own identities and narratives around time, and deviations from the expected narrative can cause confusion. Recently, a married pair of my friends was discussing the annual joy of hand-raking berries but could not agree on when they typically went raking with their two sons. As they thought back over the dozen years they’ve gone hand-raking, they could not determine whether they hand-raked at different times of the summer because of the joyful turbulence of raising children, or because the ripening time for the berries had been changing over the years. Though this is just one anecdote, intergenerational conversations about a range of events will likely show a similar confusion about when and how events are situated within our personal and collective histories; we can expect this confusion to continue into the future as the climate continues to change. 

Maine’s challenges due to the changing climate extend far beyond its wild blueberry industry. The horrendous coastal flooding of December 2023/January 2024 is not the last flooding that will be suffered. Changes in the timing and severity of precipitation events will impact the safety of Maine’s lobster fishing industry. Warmer temperatures may stress Maine’s beloved potatoes so they grow more slowly or are more subject to disease. Outside of industry, changes in climate mean less predictable conditions for ice fishing and snowmobiling, canoeing and hunting, camping and cycling. In short, climate change is already impacting every part of the state, in most professions, and most pastimes. 

Coupling the dislocations of climate change in our work with our personal lives creates an even stronger cognitive confusion that is so potent because we cannot escape the impacts of climate change. We may not readily blame the changing climate, but we might be disappointed that we cannot participate in our favorite seasonal sport, we might be afraid that we will suffer property damage or loss during frightening storm events, or we might be terrified of decreasing economic returns in our jobs. When considering the many impacts of climate change, our cognitive and community health must be included in discussions of financial, environmental, and infrastructural health and climate readiness. Emerging research on this topic is providing more tools for discussing these challenges and generating techniques communities and individuals can use to fortify their mental health and improve community resiliency. 

If we consider that the treatment for a shoulder dislocation is to “reduce” the misalignment by guiding the joint back into place, the way it was before, we might think that the treatment for a climate change-induced cognitive dislocation is to disengage from the issues and attempt to restore the system to the way it was before. This is impossible—we cannot restore the climate to pre-industrial conditions, although dramatic action now can prevent the worst future scenarios from coming to pass. But knowing that one of the definitions of “reduce” is “restore,” we can then recall that restore means “to renew; to set up or bring into existence again; to re-establish” (Oxford English Dictionary 2024). Rather than hope that the impacts of a changing climate will pass us by or not be quite as severe as the varied models predict, we can actively work to reinstate our sense of self, rediscover our lost sense of belonging, and reconnect our interrupted sense of continuity by shoring up community and individual resiliency (Clayton et al. 2021). Having open and honest conversations about the professional and personal challenges caused by a changing climate, encouraging local through international governments to take seriously the risks of climate change on mental health, and participating in community events and traditions are all tangible ways to reduce our current dislocations. We can imagine a future of strong communities, resilient people, and adaptable legacies; now we are tasked with bringing into existence those futures.  

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Works Cited

Calderwood, Lily, and Jordan Parks. 2024. “Wild Blueberry Phenology: Tracking Prune and Crop Plant Development through the Season.” In 2023 Wild Blueberry Research and Extension Report. Orono, Maine: 91±ŹÁÏ. .

Calderwood, Lily, Mara Scallon, and Brogan Tooley. 2023. “Wild Blueberry Phenology: Tracking Prune and Crop Plant Development through the Season.” In 2022 Wild Blueberry Research and Extension Reports. Orono, Maine: 91±ŹÁÏ. .

———. 2022. “Wild Blueberry Phenology.” In 2021 Wild Blueberry Research and Extension Reports. Orono, Maine: 91±ŹÁÏ. .

Clayton, Susan, Christie Manning, Meighen Speiser, and Allison Nicole Hill. 2021. “Mental Health and Our Changing Climate.” Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. .

NOAA. 2024. “Quarterly Climate Impacts and Outlook – Gulf of Maine Region – September 2024.” Drought.gov. .

Oxford English Dictionary. 2024. “Restore, v.¹, Sense III.6.a.” Oxford University Press. Oxford English Dictionary. .

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The post Dislocation and Restoration appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

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This watercolor painting series illustrates the Maine wild blueberry harvest heritage focusing on small family farms and local and migrant hand-rakers through landscape and harvest scenes. Wabanaki people were the first to manage the fields with a stewardship relationship and the practice of hand-raking. In the early 1900s, hundreds of people and families from Maine, across the U.S. and Canada would flock to the fields to take part in the annual harvest tradition. However, the number of crews have been dwindling and I aim to pay homage to the hardworking communities who keep the cultural heritage of hand-raking alive today. I gathered these scenes through photographing the fields across the Midcoast and Downeast regions of Maine and meeting with small farmers and various migrant hand-raking crews. I was compelled to create this work at a time of large corporations controlling the market making it difficult for smaller farmers to stay afloat in the industry, the rapid conversion to mechanical harvesters amidst labor shortages and profit demands, and the tradition of hand-raking atrophying in community culture. I aim to shed light on the social-ecological relationships of the small farmers and workers who hold up the local food system for Maine wild blueberries. Additionally, I hope these paintings offer new perspectives and spread awareness to consumers and viewers of the interconnection between food, land, and people. I hope this collection invites conversation to viewers on including the heritage of hand-raking into the sustainable practices for field health and conservation of small farms in the wild blueberry industry.

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A Shared Generational Harvest

At the top of a sloped field facing Appleton Ridge and a big blue sky, grandkids are raking. This painting depicts Ron Howard, field manager of Brodis Blueberries Farm in Hope, Maine, checking on his grandkids harvesting in late July. The blueberry fields hold shared memories with the many people who have been woven into its harvest season lineage. The fate of those memories held by the land and its people who came to work in the fields is at risk of being lost due to economic challenges, including processor prices that impact land management decisions for small wild blueberry farms. Ron is proud to keep the family harvest tradition going for seven generations on these fields.

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Returning to Work

We meander around the large boulders as we rake up to the end of our strip. Big Rock Field as it is called, is an assortment of boulders that lay blanketed on top of the hummocky topography of the field. This natural landscape was shaped by retreating glaciers that left behind a ridged trail of glacial boulders, creating a moraine. Raking in this field is a hard working job but it is a beautiful place to be in the summer of Maine. I raked on Big Rock with one of the last remaining hand-raking crews of this large company to visit this place. It’s one of the few fields left that retains boulders, an inconvenience to mechanized farming. Hand-rakers get paid piece rate $2.50/box, a price that’s remained the standard for fifty years. This crew voices concern that the tradition of hand-raking being discontinued in the industry is inevitable. The growing arrival of mechanical harvesters on the fields instead of communities of people is coming as the next change in the landscape’s legacy . It won’t be long until they’ll stop returning to Big Rock Field. If the hand-raking crew is terminated and removing the boulders proves to be too expensive, this field will be left for the forest to reclaim. The glacial legacy of this land with wild blueberries to live on is dependent upon people returning to this field to keep managing it.

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Awaiting the Berries to Turn Blue

In late June, as the sun sets and the moon appears for the night, I look out upon the field, all thickly matted green across the land out to the sea. I step through the plants as they reach just above my ankles, tiptoeing carefully so as not to squish ripening berries. I look down at the tiny green berries hidden amongst the leaves. A few are just starting to swell and turn red to purple on top. Scattered over the entire land, rocks the size of canoes are nestled into the Earth. The patchwork of berries hugs around them for warmth that is absorbed by the sun, claiming their place on this land. This beautiful place exists everywhere in Maine yet is unknown to so many. And yet the reality facing the Maine wild blueberry industry is that so many fields are disappearing. Old farmers are aging or forced to exit the industry because of unprofitable process prices, and the land is being sold or excavated for other purposes. In early fall of 2024, a purchase was made on this land in Blue Hill and Sedgwick, to be developed into house lots.

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Following the Harvest

This small crew of guys from Honduras arrive for another day of work in the fields of Harrington, Maine. Based in Florida, this group of men migrate together up the East Coast through the year following the harvest until they reach their last stop in Maine. From Florida they travel to Georgia, and the Carolinas for various fruits, to New Jersey for high bush blueberries, then arrive in Maine by August for the wild low bush blueberries. After quickly trying to harvest as much acreage of land in the short 3-4 week window of ripe berries, they go down to Pennsylvania to pick apples. Then in November they travel back up north to Maine for the Christmas wreath industry, and by the end of the year they return to Florida for a short rest to do it all over again in January. A very tiring job harvesting throughout all the seasons they tell me. Raking alongside them that day I quickly met their tenacious characters, work ethic, and their large hearts as they told me they do this work for their families back home. When I asked for their permission to photograph them while they were raking, they immediately stopped raking in their individual strips and joined next to each other to pose together, like a family photo. Seeing how these men wanted to be seen by the public, speaks to the honorary workers they should be recognized as. As people who come to work in food landscapes, their social well-being is intertwined with the health of the environment in local agricultural communities. These guys answered the call for an extra crew of hard workers to help the family members of this small family farm keep the heritage tradition of hand-raking going in their business. Most of the workers on hand-raking crews for freshly sold wild blueberries in the industry today, are Hispanic migrants.

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The post Harvest Heritage appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

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How Can a Head

It began with a man and a woman, as many stories do.

They met on the beach in the Rockaways at the southern edge of Queens. It was the crux of the 20th century, an indelible ecotone of time. Families sprawled across the sandy peninsula like so many ants, enjoying an innocent pause between one war and another.

Albert was a fortunate man. After a short period of training in the Colorado mountains, he found himself miraculously spared from war, returning home to New York instead of Korea. Returning to a large family and the certain pleasures provided by the coastal city.

It’s hard to say what he first noticed about her. Edna was a peculiar woman of many signals. She rode bikes and roller skated. She climbed billboards and trees. She smoked cigarettes. Of all her curious signals, smoking was the only one he cared to extinguish.

Edna was an artist. Shortly after their first oceanside encounter, she invited him to her family’s home in Brooklyn to make his head. He didn’t quite understand what she meant then, luring him to a quiet room with a solemn chair and instructing him to sit down. After retreating to another room, she returned to him with a giant block of clay. She made his head.

Sculpture was Edna’s specialty. She had a natural gift for capturing fine features of life on clay, producing a wide range of impressions of the natural world around her—innumerable flowers and faces, large and small, bound by silica and sweat. She saw something special in Al. After an isolated session in her family’s home, she created an earthen model of his youthful face, detailing his essential attributes and preserving the replica with plaster of Paris.

Edna shared her gift with Al, teaching him the art of impression. She was one of his subjects, staying still many years later while he carved her likeness into smooth clay. Their heads sat next to each other, resting beside an assortment of faces on their bedside, from their marriage into the next millennium.

One Spot, Two Spot, Yellow Spot, Blue Spot

It began with a male and a female, of that much we are fairly certain.

They met somewhere in eastern North America, several millions of years ago, at the interface of two geological epochs. Who exactly met whom? Well, that’s up for debate.Ìę

They were salamanders, of course.Ìę

They met as many salamanders do, in a wetland on a warm spring night. There they resided, for a short period, before spawning their own remarkable creations and returning to the land. In time, their offspring followed suit, transforming and emerging from the water. And so it went, as it had gone since time immemorial, from water to land and back again. An endless cycle between two worlds.

The salamanders lived in this fashion, moving dynamically through the world, persisting through manifold change from Miocene to Pliocene to Quaternary, riding the slow tide of glacial maxima until they found themselves sprawled across a wide expanse of land from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.

Of the various amphibians found in Maine, blue-spotted salamanders are perhaps the most mysterious. While frogs sing their way through spring, proudly announcing themselves to the world and every potential mate, predator, and occasional human spectator, salamanders remain silent, emerging from a subterranean maze to move quietly across the woods, slipping into their mating habitat with hardly a splash.

Most people know salamanders from fortunate (or unfortunate) encounters on land, where they can be found roaming the forest floor after a rain or migrating over roads on a warm, wet night. These moments during their surface movements and brief residency in certain wetlands offer a tiny glimpse into their populations and ecology. Outside of these windows, salamanders are cryptic creatures, mostly residing underground, hidden from our view.

Maine has eight native salamander species (or maybe nine, but we’ll get to that later). While some people are familiar with large spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) and their bright yellow dots or widely abundant red-backed salamanders (Plethodon cinereus) and their typical red-orange dorsal stripe, relatively few know of the blue-spotted salamander. Blue-spotted salamanders, so named for their rich blue flecks against a jet-black body, are comparatively rare and hard to find. 

Biologists and wetland ecologists tend to study amphibians by observing their mating activity and counting their egg masses. These egg mass counts comprise the regulatory backbone for protecting many amphibians and their aquatic habitats—organisms and ecosystems that remain among the most threatened worldwide. 

Blue-spotted salamander eggs are not like the rest. While spotted salamander eggs form large, compact egg masses that are fairly visible and countable from a wetland’s edge, blue-spotted salamander eggs barely come together, appearing as single eggs or small and loose clusters that often break apart, dropping to the lower depths invisible to the biologist’s focused eye.

Amphibians are rapidly declining around the world and habitat loss remains one of the greatest threats to amphibian biodiversity. Understanding where and why species are where they are is an important prerequisite for amphibian conservation, but many species, such as blue-spotted salamanders, linger in mystery because of their elusive nature. Many populations remain undocumented and are likely experiencing losses unknown to us—silent extirpations against the backdrop of environmental change. We can hear (and see) the trees falling in the forest. No one hears the salamander. No one knows their sound.

In the last twenty years, wildlife biologists took inspiration from the molecular world and devised a new technique to better illuminate cryptic species. Rather than searching endlessly for loose, drippy eggs and the critters that made them, they began looking in the environment for something much smaller and far more abundant: DNA.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is all around us. It is in the air we breathe and the tap water we drink. It is in our lakes, ponds, streams, and soil. Wherever creatures live, eDNA usually follows, like fingerprints at a crime scene, quietly lingering after the culprit disappears. Species are defined, in large part, by the unique genetic code contained in their cells as double helix structures comprising megabytes to gigabytes of information—each genome its own molecular magnum opus. A signature sculpture in miniature. When those cells leave the body, as many frequently do, the genetic material leaves as well, finely packaged in discarded hair, mucus, and other biological byproducts that spread throughout the local environment. One salamander’s waste is another man’s treasure.

The first animal studied with eDNA was a frog: An American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) living abroad in France [1]. Researchers collected water from ponds and used a lab technique—polymerase chain reaction (PCR)—to amplify frog DNA from the water, confirming their presence in the environment. This technique has since been adopted for many more life forms in many more ecosystems, from alpine zones to the deep sea.

In Maine, eDNA has been used to study turtles, mammals, and anadromous fish, providing scientists and environmental managers a broader net for detecting rare species of conservation and management concern. Perhaps our salamanders will be next. Perhaps we can use eDNA to find our mysterious A. laterale—our amphibious Al.

Like a human head sporting various ubiquitous features (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and so on), DNA has many regions that can appear quite similar between different species. The art of head sculpture is identifying the small idiosyncrasies that define an individual’s face—the width of the eyes, the length of the nose—and fashioning those essential traits as accurately as possible. The trick to eDNA is finding a unique genetic sequence, one that distinguishes one species from all the others that may be found in the same place, and homing in on that sequence with molecular keys—primers and probes. This is no trivial task. Life on Earth has been evolving for billions of years, churning out countless genomes and creatures. The ones we’re aware of (and have sequenced) are mere fragments of the total. Of those we’ve documented, some creatures are quite distinct and easy to parse from others. Our blue-spotted salamanders are something else entirely.

Offspring

Edna and Al had three children, all daughters.

The house was bursting with activity and childhood trinkets. Al found himself surrounded by females. Outnumbered. Everywhere he went, they followed. And following them all was Edna, steadfast and eccentric as always, teaching them all the ways of art, incorporating images of the girls into new pieces that increasingly adorned the walls of their home. Gone were the days of isolated intimacy and quiet impressionism. There were new muses. New faces to capture in oil and fiber and clay.

When their eldest was five years old, she took her turn on the sculpting chair, sitting patiently as Al created a nearly perfect rendition of her tiny head under Edna’s tutelage.

When they were old enough, they dispersed into the world in pursuit of new paths. One became a radio disc jockey, and then a scientist, and then an editor. One became a medical doctor. The youngest became a singer, performing for many years before joining the corporate world.

Through all their travels, they remained in a close orbit around Edna and Al. Or rather, they revolved around each other. The oldest two daughters ultimately returned to the childhood neighborhood to stay and raise their own offspring. The youngest and her family lived afar, frequently returning for visits until Edna passed away and Al eventually found his way to her, spending his last years by her side. 

Sex Education

It’s time to back up again.

A few million years ago, a funny thing happened on the way to the forest. Something that’s never happened before. At least we don’t think it has. Not quite like this.

Most amphibians have two sexes, female and male, which reproduce with each other, creating more females and males, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. Egg and sperm. X/X and X/Y (or Z/W and Z/Z, for many amphibians, but that’s another matter).

In Maine, blue-spotted salamanders are typically found with other, nearly identical looking salamanders that are nearly always female. They are the unisexual Ambystoma.

Unisexuals reproduce in a rather clever way, “stealing” sperm from male, blue-spotted salamanders to fertilize their eggs without necessarily using the sperm’s genetic material. The eggs develop into larvae, all females and often clones. This is where it gets tricky. Sometimes, a unisexual will incorporate DNA from the sperm into her offspring by genome addition or replacement. While most animals are diploid, containing exactly two copies of their genome, unisexual Ambystoma are polyploid, often containing three. Or four. Or in very rare cases, five. Kleptogenesis, they call it. A unique reproductive mode all to themselves [3].Ìę

How and why they do this is fuzzy, but there are some ideas. An all-female population can grow faster than one with both sexes—a competitive advantage in a resource-limited world. Sex promotes genetic diversity, preventing harmful mutations from accumulating in a population. Unisexual salamanders are reproductive double-dippers. They have their cake and eat it too.Ìę

The benefits of being unisexual and polyploid are not without their limitations. Unisexual Ambystoma have elevated rates of early egg mortality [4]; it’s not uncommon to see opaque, molding eggs in their egg masses. Unisexuals move less than their sexual counterparts; they tire more easily [5], as if all those extra genomes are dragging them down. Nevertheless, they persist, having existed in this arrangement for millions of years, defying all our usual conventions about life and sex. And species! Unlike the blue-spotted salamander, which was formally named Ambystoma laterale in the mid-1800s, unisexuals has gone by various Latin monikers in the last century that have resisted widespread, long-term adoption of a scientific name and species designation. Unisexual Ambystoma is the best term we’ve currently got.

In Maine (as elsewhere), our knowledge of blue-spotted salamanders depends on our knowledge of unisexuals. And vice versa. The two are deeply linked, genetically and ecologically. For nearly a century since the unisexual Ambystoma were first described, many have pondered how these two creatures co-exist. One depends on the other, limited by a finite supply of sexual and ecological resources.Ìę

The first scientist to report on these salamanders in the early 20^th century, Clanton, remarked on the eventual consequences of such a bizarre interaction, theorizing that sperm-dependence of unisexuals would lead to population collapse in the sexual species [6]. Some researchers have identified locations where this may be happening in wetlands devoid of any diploids and suitable sperm, populations shrinking over time [7]. In so many populations, unisexuals seem to dominate the diploids, persisting with a heavily skewed ratio, boggling many bright ecological minds. In Maine, this is usually the case in our vernal pools. To date, we still aren’t sure of any places where our blue-spotted salamanders exist without unisexuals.

As with our sneaky, blue-spotted salamanders, unisexual salamanders are cryptic creatures, fossorial and elusive. Together, they present unique challenges for researchers. They are hard to find. And they are hard to tell apart. Unisexuals grow larger than blue-spots. Under a certain size, all bets are off. A tissue sample is often needed—a small clip of the end of the tail (it grows back)—to examine their DNA more carefully.

Here we see the potential benefit of eDNA for these “double cryptic” critters. Trapping is hard work. As a wise student from Chicago once said (paraphrasing), salamanders move pretty fast. If you don’t stop and trap in the right place at the right time, you could miss them [8]. Collecting tissues and analyzing them in the lab adds more complexity, demanding permits and additional levels of expertise and equipment. Collecting a water sample is a lot simpler.

But wait, you say, didn’t you mention clones? Isn’t their DNA the same? How does any of this work? You lost me at kleptogenesis!

I hear you. These are all good points.

To your second question, I say that none of us know how these creatures really work. The biological mechanisms behind this complicated mode of reproduction remain a mystery. But some very talented scientists in Indiana are currently working on figuring that out.

To your first question, I say this: You are right and wrong. These are no normal salamanders. These are Schrödinger’s salamanders. Their DNA is the same. Except where it isn’t.

Relatives

It began with a man and a woman. A different man and woman.

They met in the early 1900s in New York City, during the Great War. Their families had left Europe like so many others at the time, emigrating to America, where they arrived with fresh dreams, accents, and surnames.

Sam was a merchant of fruits and vegetables. He raised poultry. A man of the natural world. 

They were introduced by Sam’s sister and soon married, living for a short time in New Jersey before settling in Brooklyn. Gussie was a dynamic woman, bombastic with energy and well-known to her descendants for two key fixations in life: food and sex. 

They had five children: Murray, Sylvia, Bill, Beatrice, and little Albie.

Al was close to his big brothers and sisters. The five siblings were inseparable as children, forging bonds during the Great Depression that resisted the frays of time and distance. They were reared on rich foods and Yiddish humor. They consumed stories from their elders, in time becoming enigmatic storytellers themselves. As adults, they journeyed in new directions, spreading across the continent and starting new lineages under various names, thousands of miles apart. They had new dreams, accents, and surnames. They never forgot their heritage.

Al remained in New York with Edna and their three girls, down the road from his older brother Murray and his family. He became an engraver, managing the family shop with Murray for fifty years and building his own private engraving workshop in his basement, where he spent many hours tinkering with his tools at night in the subterranean space. And he kept making heads, using Edna’s signature technique to capture even more members of the family in clay.

Conservation for a Complex

Here is where the story comes together. Here is where all the little strands align. It took a little while, but life is complex. Sometimes you need to meander. Like a salamander.

So far, we’ve established two things. Blue-spotted salamanders are hard to find. And they aren’t always what they seem. They are shadowed by unisexuals, who use their DNA in strange ways. But they aren’t the only ones being shadowed.

The unisexual Ambystoma are part of a complex of salamanders spread across eastern North America, from Nova Scotia to Minnesota. Like little Albie, the blue-spotted salamander is but one member of this expansive group of species. There are four more, including the Jefferson salamander (A. jeffersonianum), tiger salamander (A. tigrinum), smallmouth salamander (A. texanum), and streamside salamander (A. barbouri). Blue-spots are the smallest of them all.

In Maine, we only have blue-spotted salamanders and their unisexual dependents. No other members of the complex exist here today. But unisexuals are more than meets the eye. In all their cells, they carry multiple genomes from multiple species. Examine the DNA of any unisexual salamander in Maine and you’ll find two distinct nuclear genomes from two distinct species: Blue-spotted salamanders (L) and their larger Jefferson (J) relative. Usually in the triploid variety—buy two blue-spots, get one Jeff free (LLJ).

Somehow, despite being hundreds of miles away from the nearest Jefferson salamander, these unisexual Ambystoma in Maine can’t let go of their past. They are large, they contain multitudes. The story is similar in other places. Wherever you go, unisexuals contain a strange composite of genomes from other species in the complex. In the Midwest, where many of the diploid species co-exist, unisexuals are extra freaky, containing three or even four distinct genomes all at once [9].

Herein lies the problem for these salamanders and eDNA. If you find DNA from the blue-spotted salamander genome in a wetland, how do you know who it’s from? If you are in Ohio, where all five sexual species occur, how do you distinguish a tiger from a tiger, a blue from a blue? A single wetland may contain DNA from two or three or four species, even when only one or two are actually there (this is a separate concern with eDNA, but we won’t get into that here). 

This problem is especially relevant for blue-spotted salamanders, whose genome uniquely appears in every known unisexual “biotype” (the many different genome combinations observed in unisexual Ambystoma). The unisexuals have a special connection to the blue-spotted salamander, not unlike Al’s daughters, following him in New York and beyond, proudly carrying his legacy wherever they go in life, even when he is no longer there.

There is a solution to this cryptic conundrum. Another genome, unlike the rest. We’ve all got one, straight from our mothers, going back one and a half billion years in evolutionary time.

The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. There, I said it. Are you happy? Can we move on now?

Over a billion years ago, a big cell swallowed a small cell and the two lived in harmony, sharing their molecular machinery for chemical alchemy, or so the story goes (there are many versions). What followed was an explosion of increasingly sophisticated organisms, a growing domain of eukaryotic creatures containing two distinct genomes, one in the nucleus and another in the mitochondrion, one sexual and another maternal.

Fast forward to the late Cenozoic era, when mammals increasingly roamed the land. Amidst the new terrestrial boom of life, something special was happening in the water. When our aforementioned salamanders first met and the unisexual Ambystoma were born, a new genetic lineage began, a unique mitochondrial line extending from mother to daughter for millions of years.Ìę

Like DNA in the nucleus, mitochondrial DNA mutates over time, changing ever so slightly over many generations. Over a few million years, the unisexual mitochondrion drifted away from the other members of the complex [10], accumulating a new set of mutations that nicely distinguish our kleptogenic salamanders from the blue-spots, tigers, smallmouths, and Jeffs. Curiously, the unisexual mitochondrion is most similar to that of the streamside salamander (A. barbouri) [11], a species only found in the Midwest and a potential maternal ancestor to the unisexual lineage.Ìę

eDNA studies typically rely on mitochondrial DNA over nuclear DNA. There’s more of it out there, with many mitochondria per cell compared to the singular nucleus. For most species, this practice is mostly convention. It’s how business is currently done. For the unisexual Ambystoma complex, it’s a commandment. It’s the only way this ballgame can be played.

Finding the right keys—those pesky little primers and probes—remains an arduous task, especially in places where many members of the complex co-exist. With other scientists in the Northeast, we’ve made some progress detecting and distinguishing salamanders with eDNA using a method known as metabarcoding, a technique that can detect and sequence many species—whole communities—from a single sample. This method produces a wealth of ecological information at a premium: it’s expensive and comes with certain other limitations. Others have developed more targeted methods focusing on a couple of amphibian species at a time. To this end, we’re getting closer for this salamander complex of conservation concern.

Environmental DNA is a powerful, remarkable tool, but it’s not a magical replacement for well-established methods for studying living creatures. We’ll never answer all our questions about the natural world with eDNA. A head carving is not an actual head. An artifact of life is not the same as life, itself. An impression, even an immaculate one, only tells you so much.

Why does any of this matter? Why should we care about the blue-spotted salamander or the unisexual Ambystoma, for that matter? 

These are the existential questions we wrestle with in science and conservation. There are any number of good answers to these questions. I say they matter because we say so. Amphibians are remarkable creatures. They are intrinsically good. They matter for their own sake. Find me someone who hasn’t been wooed by frog songs on a spring night. Find me one person, just one, who has found their first salamander, staring deeply into its googly eyes and cheeky grin, and not felt a sense of wonder.

These creatures matter too for the various roles they play in nature, and by extension, our lives. Amphibians are vital members of the food web. They eat an assortment of small creatures. They are the candy of the forest, a tasty, nutritious delight to our larger, “charismatic” fauna (they’ve all got plenty of charisma, if you ask me). They keep the system going by munching away at a smorgasbord of wetland litter and life and exporting nutrients back onto the land. Amphibians are a source of knowledge, master healers and transformers, capable of teaching us so much about life and our own bodies.

They are also being lost, along with so many other life forms, due to our own negligence. 

All five diploid members of the unisexual Ambystoma complex are declining in parts of their range. They are emblematic of our current biodiversity crisis, an extended family of unique organisms threatened by climate change, disease, exploitation, pollution, and habitat loss. If they don’t matter now, they may never matter again.

The unisexual Ambystoma are a modern marvel. They are the world’s oldest known unisexual vertebrates, an evolutionary feat of resiliency. There is some debate over how to actually classify them, whether as a species or something else entirely. Regardless of what we call them, they are an important part of the story. Understanding blue-spotted salamanders in Maine means understanding unisexuals. Keys to a big, beautiful, wild world.

Heritage

Legacy, what is our legacy? What does the manual say? Tell us, Lin, won’t you [12]?

The seeds we set now will determine the future, as they have time and time again in the past. I may not know the fate of my own seeds, but I know those of the ones who came before me. I wouldn’t exist without them.

Edna and Al are my heritage, my grandparents. And Sam and Gussie before them. And so many other creatures on this small blue dot, all the way back to those early amphibious animals and their ancestors to the very first cells of life, billions of years ago. I am but one product of eons of evolutionary artistry, one small head of clay, sculpted with painstaking care by the Earth, herself. 

What we do now matters, even if our deeds go unnoticed or are forgotten. The tools we create, the knowledge we produce, the stories we tell, and the impacts they all have, for better or worse, will be the heritage we pass down to future life. Heritage is our legacy for the ones who follow. Heritage is our collective story for Earth and all her inhabitants. Heritage is our chance to write a good narrative—so let’s make it a good one, for their sake.

Ìę

References

1. Ficetola GF, Miaud C, Pompanon F, Taberlet P. Species detection using environmental DNA from water samples. Biol Lett. 2008;4:423–5.

2. Bogart JP, Klemens MW. Additional distributional records of Ambystoma laterale, A. jeffersonianum (Amphibia: Caudata) and their unisexual kleptogens in northeastern North America. American Museum Novitates. 2008;12545:1–58.

3. Bogart JP, Bi K, Fu J, Noble DWA, Niedzwiecki J. Unisexual salamanders (genus Ambystoma) present a new reproductive mode for eukaryotes. Genome. 2007;50:119–36.

4. Charney ND, Kubel JE, Woodard CT, Carbajal-González BI, Avis S, Blyth JA, et al. Survival of Polyploid hybrid salamander embryos. BMC Developmental Biology. 2019;19:1–15.

5. Denton RD, Greenwald KR, Gibbs HL. Locomotor endurance predicts differences in realized dispersal between sympatric sexual and unisexual salamanders. Functional Ecology. 2017;31:915–26.

6. Clanton W. An unusual situation in the salamander Ambystoma jeffersonianum (Green). Occasional Papers of the Museum of Zoology. 1934;:1–18.

7. Bogart JP, Linton JE, Sandilands A. A population in limbo: Unisexual salamanders (Genus Ambystoma) decline without sperm-donating species. Herpetological Conservation and Biology. 2017;12:41–55.

8. Hughes, J. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Paramount Pictures; 1986.

9. Bogart J. Unisexual Salamanders in the Genus Ambystoma. Herpetologica. 2019;75 December:259–67.

10. Bi K, Bogart JP. Time and time again: Unisexual salamanders (genus Ambystoma) are the oldest unisexual vertebrates. BMC Evolutionary Biology. 2010;10.

11. Bogart JP, Bartoszek J, Noble DWA, Bi K. Sex in unisexual salamanders: Discovery of a new sperm donor with ancient affinities. Heredity. 2009;103:483–93.

12. Miranda L-M, Odom, Jr. L. The World Was Wide Enough. New York, NY: Atlantic Recording Corporation; 2015.

Ìę

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Ìę

“Elegy From Millinocket” delves into our collaborative identity with nature in reflecting on my great grandmother’s embrace of nature in daily life. I question the common notion of a ‘return’ to nature, as how can one return to a world they have never truly left? Although we spend a majority of our time in domestic spaces, we inherently rely on and surround ourselves with natural products and find ourselves commonly traveling, whether by foot or car, through natural spaces. We often only acknowledge a connection, or ‘return,’ to nature in our intentional and brief interactions: an outdoor expedition, a vacation, or photography session. Yet, what happens and changes when we view everyday actions, hobbies, and even homes as artistic moments–moments warranting reflection, collaboration, and admiration–of nature? Part of conservation and sustainability efforts rely on building personal relationships and emotional connections with nature among community members, and finding moments of collaboration between ourselves and nature within daily life presents opportunities for increased awareness and care toward our environments. 

Ìę

Katahdin’s the only one watching
as we sip stories through tear-stained napkins.

My eulogy’s flown with the northern wind
by the time my cousin begins the dig.

They tell of forests felled into fields,Ìę
of the produce, corn and potatoes, and

of my great grandmother’s child hands
boring holes in the soil of the family plot.Ìę

They reassure a return to the earth
as if she abandoned these aspens in life,Ìę

but the daisies on my dress match those at her stone
like the daylilies and daisies back at her home.Ìę

The bird bath beyond her trailer window
now fills with algae and feathers.

The wooden ramp rising to her front door
now weathers and lies leaf-littered.Ìę

Surely she admires seeing Katahdin now
having grown up in its stately shadow,Ìę

but all I’m left to admire is all she has tended,Ìę
her petaled children nestled in their garden beds.

Ìę

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