Ìę

Welcome to Spire’s tenth anniversary issue! Since our inaugural issue in 2017, we have been fortunate to publish a wide variety of environmental stories, including over 150 works of fine art, photography, poetry, essays, research articles, and even animation. We are grateful to the many talented contributors who have shared their pieces with us and the larger community in Maine, advancing awareness, dialogue, and action around conservation and sustainability. As our social-ecological systems face ever-growing challenges, we believe interdisciplinary forums such as Spire are vital for reflection, engagement, and (hopefully) inspiration. Thank you for being here and joining the conversation.

We are delighted to announce Jordan Ramos as the winner of this year’s cover art contest. Ramos’ Spiritual Retreat is from her watercolor series, Athletes of the Rake, and sheds light on Maine’s sustainable wild blueberry hand-raking communities. She vibrantly paints hand-rakers in action and shares their experiences through documented interviews, emphasizing the beauty found in community-engaged agricultural practice.

Our tenth issue contains work from over 20 contributors, spanning a variety of environmental themes and genres. We see stories about glaciers, climate change, and our relationships to landscapes over the passage of time in Eleanore Allan-Rahill’s poetry collection Glacial Humanity and Nestor Walter’s essay “Consider the Glacier.” We hear how the rivers and mountains in our backyards move and reorient us to the natural world, in personal essays such as “Our River” by Andrea Lani and “Listening Differently” by Mara Scallon. Writings in this issue meditate on our lasting and complex legacies in nature, whether in the form of artificial refuse, as seen in the poem “Ode on a Plastic Starbucks Cup” by Benjamin Thorne, or as artificial life, as explored in the fictional piece “An Anatomy of a Steller’s Sea Cow” by Matthew Jablonski. 

The artists in this issue reflect on the fragility and beauty of local species and environments in their watercolor paintings, prints, digital illustrations, and even sculpture. Human-nature interactions are on display for feathered friends, such as in the watercolor paintings of Piper Galipeau’s Tapping and Brenda McGuiness’s Summer Residents, as well as those with fins, such as in Sarina Martin’s monoprint Replenished and Maeve Littlefield’s linoprint Blubber and Baleen. Several pieces explore impacts of climate change and human excess on ecosystems from the sea, as seen in the sculpture Entangled Rights by Sophie Shannon and the print Debris Pile #01 by Erin Coughlin, to the sky, as conveyed in the digital illustration Survival of the Tallest by Haley Metzger.

Of course, we must thank our dedicated editorial team who have made our tenth issue possible. A special thanks to our editors—Laurel Dorr, Mo Drammeh, Elise Dunne, Joelle Kilchenmann, Nicole McAdam, Monica Miles, Kathryn Novak, Autumn Pozniak, Alex Scearce, Micah Shelenberger, Clinton Spaulding, Kathleen Spear, Stella Tay, Aaron Thibodeau, Jordan Thompson, Ana Trueba, Erin Victor, and Nestor Walters—who provided their insight and time. This year we also thank our design team members, Kathryn Novak and Erin Victor, who made our inaugural print issue a success and our social media coordinator, Nicole McAdam, who helped spread the word about Spire online. Additional thanks is given to our faculty director, Daniel Dixon, whose support for Spire over the last decade has made this journal possible.

We enjoyed the chance to read and edit the powerful voices, narratives, and works within this issue. We hope you enjoy the tenth edition of Spire!

Cheers,

Chantelle Flores & Harrison Goldspiel
Editors-in-Chief

The post A Letter from the Editors appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

Ìę

Maine’s virtual Ice Age tour begins on a well-known coast-side mountain peak marked by smoothed boulders and rivulet-like ridges [1]. The landscape was formed, according to our guide, the late Dr. Harold W. Borns of the 91±ŹÁÏ, by an ice sheet that, twenty-five thousand years ago, was two miles thick over this particular mountain. “Under my feet,” Dr. Borns tells us, “was the first piece of Maine to see the light of day after the Laurentide ice sheet retreated.”

Glaciers form as snow packs thicker and thicker onto itself until it presses into ice and gathers enough mass and pressure to begin flowing [2]. Glaciers can also accumulate mass from wind-carried drift, ice avalanches, and water frozen directly to the glacier, and they can lose ice directly to sunlight-induced vaporization, to wind scour, to melt, and to calving at the margins. Debris can increase melting by reducing the ice’s ability to reflect sunlight, or decrease melting by insulating from the sun. The imaginary line between where a glacier gains and loses ice is called its equilibrium line.

The second video of the virtual tour is at the edge of a pond where Dr. Borns stands with two bubble-shaped hills in the background [1]. The hills are smooth on one side and jagged on the other because the ice once flowed over them from one direction and plucked and carried away their material toward the other. On one hill, Dr. Borns tells us, a block of pink granite “the size of a garage” sits on a bed of white granite. The closest source of pink granite is over thirty miles away, and this is indicative of glacial flow capabilities.

Tectonic plates affect glaciation by thrusting up new mountains whose weathering by carbonic acid rain trickles into groundwater, streams, rivers, and the ocean and is then pocketed by tiny shell creatures as carbonate [2]. This removes carbon from the atmosphere and cools the planet. The shapes and locations of continents, molded by slow magmatic churning, also influence glaciers. They route ocean and atmospheric currents, expose more or less land to higher or lower latitudes, and drive higher or lower elevations to receive more or less rain. Higher elevations themselves, with lower temperatures, encourage snow to pack into ice and trickle down as a glacier.

In the third video, on a coast of rippling water with a rolling green hill behind it and an open blue sky above, we are told that the Sound that Dr. Borns stands beside is the only true fjord on the eastern coast of the United States. Fjords, Dr. Borns explains, are formed when the ocean floods a valley that was carved by ice. In most fjords there is a submerged ridge that formed from debris gathering at the ice’s limiting edge, called a moraine [1].

The Last Glacial Maximum is believed to have occurred some 20,000 years ago during which a layer of ice over two miles thick in some places covered the upper half of what is now central and eastern North America. Another layer hunkered along the northwest coast and onto what is now southern Alaska. The middle plains south of these sheets were an icy tundra ravaged by cold and dense winds that gathered over the ice and then plunged down into the slightly warmer and lower pressure plains. Animals gathered along the ice margins and humans gathered around the animals, and there are stories of benevolent glaciers and of glaciers punishing humans for disrespecting the glaciers in certain ways [3, Ch.3].

The next stop, video four, begins among sun-speckled trees and bushes and beside a pond whose water can be heard sloshing in the background [1]. The pond, Dr. Borns tells us, is named after two brothers who built a farmhouse, sawmill, and a dam at the pond’s end. A Pond House still remains that, according to Dr. Borns, serves “wonderful popovers” in the summer. Along the hillsides, we are told, are beach-like edges some 250 feet high that were carved when the ice was receding and the ocean was also deeper by 250 feet.

The suspicion by Europeans that glaciers had once extended far past their 1800s boundaries began with hunters, farmers, and woodcutters who noticed rocks with scars and notches, or boulders whose material did not match the mountain that they now rested on, or fish fossils that were far from great bodies of water. Leading geological scientists at the time insisted that the rocks, boulders, and fossils could be explained by a world-covering flood, and it took the persistence of a few scientists to establish what is now the theory of ice ages [4, Ch. 1-2].

Flash forward to stop number eighteen and we are on a lush green hill with a ridge of boulders in the background. This ridge is an “end moraine” formed by debris spilling over the ice margin. The ice is always flowing downstream, we are reminded, but the margin itself can advance or retreat, depending on rates of accumulation or ablation. The lushness of the surrounding green is from blueberry bushes, which, Dr. Borns informs us, fruit only every other year and are mowed down and regrown in the years in between. The video ends with a reminder that “this is private land” and an admonition not to pick the blueberries because, “you have no right” [1].

This comment would perhaps not be so unsettling if in earlier videos the mountain, the region, and the water bodies had not been called by names given by people with questionable rights to name them. Wapuwoc – “white mountain where the sun first looks” – was the mountain in the first video, Mimuwipon was the pond, and Pihci-cihciqi-pisipiqe was the sound [5, 6]; and they were known by these names for multiple thousands of years before their current references as “Cadillac,” “Jordan,” and “Somes.” The region uncovered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet had a name long before it could even be conceived of being called Maine or the United States: ckuwi – “come here,” ckuwapon – “the sun looks here,” ckuwaponahkik: “the land where the sun first looks our way” [7].

After agreeing that ice ages had occurred, scientists began to ask why such extreme climate fluctuations can happen. The combined effects of eccentricity – the shape of Earth’s orbit; obliquity – the tilt of the axis of Earth’s rotation; and precession – that the plane of axial tilt slowly rotates like a wobbly spinning top, baffled early ice age scientists for decades. Finally, after thirty years of painstaking plotting and calculating, Serbo-Croatian Milankovich produced a model that aligned with mineral and coral reef records. Milankovich had focused on the northern hemisphere, however, and northern and southern hemispheres seem to experience simultaneous ice age effects. The question “why do ice ages occur?” became “why are ice ages global?” which persists today [4, Ch. 3-4].

“It took a long time to explain the fragility and intricacy,” Leslie Marmon Silko writes in Ceremony, “because no word exists alone, and the reason for choosing each word had to be explained with a story about why it had to be said a certain way” [8, p. 32]. That was the responsibility of being human, the medicine man Ku’oosh explains to Tayo in Ceremony, “the story behind each word must be told so there could be no mistake in the meaning of what had been said, and this demanded great patience and love.”

Chemical engineer and self-taught linguist Benjamin Whorf argues that speakers of different languages see the universe differently [9, p. 243]. In English we say, “the light flashed,” implying that something has to be there for the light to flash. But, according to Whorf, a Hopi Indian who says “reh-pi,” using one word for the whole performance, no subject, no predicate, no time element, is the better physicist, more aligned with modern field theory.

According to a Wabanaki language speaker, the settlers were shown the “good fishing or meeting spots” of Wapuwoc, Mimuwipon, and Pihci-cihciqi-pisipiqe by the natives. The settlers offered the natives beads and other trinkets, and the natives accepted these trinkets as tokens of the settlers’ appreciation. Then, the next time the natives came, they were not allowed to fish because they had “sold” the land to the settlers.

A volcano erupted in 1996 under Iceland’s Vatnajokull ice cap with an ash cloud reaching 10 km of altitude and a heat transfer equivalent to a WWII-era nuclear weapon being detonated every minute for a week [10]. The volcano quieted but continued melting a fissure under the ice, and this water eventually exploded from the ice with waves 3-4 meters high and a flow rate second only to the Amazon River. No one was hurt, largely thanks to early warning. But other forms of glacial floods have killed thousands of people in Cordillera Blanca and other populated glaciated regions [11].

“They only fool themselves,” Betonie, another medicine man tells Tayo in Ceremony, “… The deeds and papers don’t mean a thing. It is the people that belong to the mountain” [8, p.118].

In the military, “my” rifle is the one I am responsible to keep oiled and clean. “My” barracks room is the one I maintain as inspection-ready. “My” Humvee is the one I am responsible to service regularly. Even “my” body is the one I have sworn to place between my beloved home and war’s desolation. At home, “my” child is the one I am responsible to feed, clothe, and teach and learn from. “My” relatives are those people whom I will help and whom I can count on to be helped by without question. These are all places to which I belong or beings to whom I owe a duty.

Ket nil skicin – I am not native. I tell what I have been told.

Engineers have proposed massive projects to stall glacier outwash and retreat: a multi-mile long submarine barricade could slow melting by reducing warm water contact around fjord-outwash glaciers; a pump station drilled to the glacial bed could remove basal water and slow the glacier’s sliding; an artificial island built under an ice shelf could provide an additional stabilizing pinning point. The multi-billion cost of any of these would rival enormous hydroelectric dams or artificial islands built for airports, but pales in comparison to the multiple trillions per year estimated in global cost if sea levels rise according to certain predictions [12].

Yaq–so they say.

“The liars had fooled everyone,” Tayo reflects in Ceremony [8, p.177], “white people and Indians alike; and as long as people believed the lies they would never be able to see what had been done to them or what they were doing to each other
 how they were still being manipulated by those who knew how to stir the ingredients together: 
 thievery and injustice boiling up the anger and hatred that would finally destroy the world: the starving against the fat, the colored against the white
 the lies devoured white hearts and for two hundred years white people had worked to fill their emptiness
 to glut the hollowness with patriotic wars and with great technology and the wealth it brought


“And always they had been fooling themselves,

and they knew it.”

Ìę

Sources

(1) Maine Ice Age Trail Map & Guide: Down East.

(2) Bennet, M. R., & Glasser, N. F. (2009). Glacial geology: Ice sheets and landforms (2nd. ed.). U.S.A.: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

(3) Cruikshank, J. Do Glaciers Listen? First published in 2005 by UBC Press.

(4) Imbrie, J. and Imbrie, K. Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery first published in 1976 by Enslow Publishers

(5) Cadillac Mountain Restoration https://schoodicinstitute.org/science/forest-ecology-research/latest-projects/cadillac-mountain-restoration/

(6) Neptune, G., Naming the Dawnland (2018) Abbe Museum publication https://abbemuseum.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/4b8da-namingthedawnlandgeorgeneptune_web.pdf

(7) Personal communication, February 2026

(8) Silko, L.M. Ceremony. 1977. Viking Press.

(9) Whorf, B. (Carrol, J. ed.) Language, Thought and Reality. 1956. Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York.

(10) Schoonmaker, D., 1998. Jöklhlaup. American Scientist 86, p. 426-427.

(11) Carey, M. (2004) Living and dying with glaciers: people’s historical vulnerability to avalanches and outburst floods in Peru.

(12) Moore, J., et al., 2018. Geoengineer polar glaciers to slow sea-level rise. Nature 555, 303-305.

The post Consider the Glacier appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

Ìę

Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę(There is no anatomy for Steller’s Sea Cow. Every Steller’s sea cow is dead. Its anatomy is no more.)

Ìę Ìę Ìę ÌęIn the conference room, the scientists discuss their plans to deextinct Steller’s sea cow.

       The younger scientist says, Steller said that they tasted like beef, and that the juveniles tasted like veal.

       The older scientist asks, How can we know what it tastes like? What if veal back then tasted very differently from the veal we have today?

       The principal investigator stops their chattering by saying, We must refocus. We have the nuclear genome for the sea cow, so we can begin the process of bringing the sea cow back.

       The older scientist balks and asks, How exactly are we going to do that?

       The principal investigator says, We are going to edit the genes of its closest living relative, the dugong, of course. We will deliver the DNA of the sea cow into the cells of the dugong via Cas9 nucleases that will slice up the dugong DNA and make it like the DNA of Steller’s sea cow. Then we’ll transfer the nucleus of the edited cells into hollowed-out dugong egg cells. Then, we’ll zap the edited egg cells to trick them into initiating embryonic development, and poof we have the fetus of a Steller’s sea cow.

       The younger scientist asks, What’s going to give birth to these sea cows? Can’t only Steller’s sea cows give birth to Steller’s sea cows?

       The principal investigator says, There’s no need for other animals to give birth to the Steller’s sea cows. Biotechnology advances every day, and soon we will have the means to construct artificial wombs in which the sea cow fetuses will gestate. Nature will no longer be needed at this step to facilitate the creation of new life.

       The older scientist says, Even if these Steller’s sea cows can be birthed, then surely they will not survive in the wild. The deextincted mammals will not know how the world works now. We’ll need to make so many Steller’s sea cows since so many of them will die.

       Dirtied and smirking, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum—remember, those are their real names—lean against the wall at the back of the room and lock eyes with one another. To this doubter, Jeff says, Well, uh, life, uh, finds, uh, uh, uh—

       Laura says, Life finds a way.

       Jeff says, Yes, thanks L. Life, uh, finds a way.

       The principal investigator agrees with them. Yes, life finds a way.

       For a moment, the whole room, Jeff and Sam and Laura, the scientists, and all the subordinate technicians who do not speak because they are only there to learn how they will deploy arcane techniques of deextinction in accordance with the scientists’ plans, sit in a contemplative silence.

       The younger scientist asks, Why did Steller’s sea cow go extinct in the first place?

       The principal investigator says, It was a tale as old as time: they were hunted to extinction by humans in the course of just 27 years, with the last one being seen in 1768.

       The younger scientist says, That must have made Steller sad.

       The older scientist says, Steller was already dead by then.

       The principal investigator says, None of this matters because Steller’s sea cows are gone but soon they will be back.

       The younger scientist, so fond of scientific discourse, says, If we are just editing the genes of dugongs and hoping to approximate the phenotype of a Steller’s sea cow, then are we in fact bringing Steller’s sea cow back? Aren’t we merely making something based on what we imagine Steller’s sea cows to have been?

       The principal investigator says, All of that is moot, for the organisms that we will make will be so similar to Steller’s sea cow that genetic comparisons won’t matter. Besides, we have but one complete sequence of nuclear DNA, so whatever organisms we produce cannot be taken as the quintessence of Steller’s sea cow. The genome was captured with all its idiosyncrasies, and no one can know whether it is representative of the median Steller’s sea cow.

       The older scientist says, This makes sense. We are not bringing Steller’s sea cow back to life so much as giving the extinct mammal and the men who hunted it to extinction a chance at redemption. The proliferation of animals like Steller’s sea cows will right all of our past wrongs, and that’s beautiful.

       The principal investigator closes the meeting by saying, Once Steller’s sea cows are back, we will have to study them to understand every part of their morphology and ethology so they can be protected.

       And then, the sirenians, each born of antiseptic copulation between idiot animal and cunning man, will live again, the first reborn the most innocent soul and each one birthed thereafter marked indelibly innocent too, all brought back through unfathomable techniques wrought by so many speculative deaths redeemed finally by the Steller’s sea cows that now, thanks to the work of the scientists and their technicians, the cast of Jurassic Park, and capital furnished by institutions funded and managed by people whose names few know, cut all 30 feet of their 8000 lbs bodies through Pacific kelp forests like Cas9 proteins through strands of DNA, their lips undulating over the brown fibrous matter while marine mammals, fishes, seabirds, crustaceans, algae, and maybe even a couple confused humans look through the blue depths of the ocean, all wondering what exactly those massive things swimming on by eating every blade in their path are, all asking themselves whether they ought to be afraid of these new but familiar beasts with skin so tough that nothing but the strongest of teeth or propellers can lacerate it, all pondering how the world will be now that one more organism, another node in the web of life, is present among them all, competing for resources and reproducing.

Ìę

The post An Anatomy of Steller’s Sea Cow appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

Ìę

Ìę

I am a waste nerd. If you open the Photos app on my phone, you will find hundreds of pictures of waste-related infrastructures (Figure 1). Nestled between pictures of my children, I have photos of trash, recycling, and compost bins from around the world. After scrolling through a photo shoot of our new puppy, you will find photographs of recycling trucks and close-ups of recycling labels on packaging. I even have photos from touring recycling facilities, one of my favorite pastimes.

Over lunch at a recent recycling conference, I learned that I am not alone. Other self-identified “waste nerds” also take these pictures, especially when traveling. Their vacation photo albums, like mine, feature pictures of rubbish containers awkwardly mixed in with awe-inspiring architecture, breathtaking landscapes, and pictures of family and friends.

Waste infrastructure is one of those things that, unless you work in the “materials management” field, is rarely given a second thought. Finding the nearest public trash or recycling bin, rolling your recycling cart to the curb each week, or dropping off your trash at the local transfer station quickly become routine parts of life. We rarely question these systems in place for getting rid of the items we no longer want.

Yet anthropologists and other critical social science scholars have started to examine these infrastructures that hide in plain sight. For example, in Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai (2017), Nikhil Anand draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Mumbai to show that the city’s water system is more than just a network of pipes and valves but a dynamic and contested set of material, political, and social relationships. Anand argues that “hydraulic citizenship” — or the recognition as a legitimate resident through access to municipal water — is continuously negotiated and, in turn, shapes social belonging and civic claim-making.

Discard studies scholars Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky make a similar point about waste. In their book, Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power (2022), they show how infrastructure and wasting practices are culturally and historically specific, challenging the idea that humans are naturally wasteful. People, they argue, had to be taught to accept single-use disposable items. This teaching came from both the explicit marketing of cheap “throw-away” goods to post-WWII consumers and the infrastructures in place that normalize this behavior, such as the regular collection of trash and recycling. Discard studies, as a field,also draws attention to what infrastructures are missing, either because they were removed (e.g., the delivery of milk in refillable milk jugs), marginalized (e.g., the use of durable cutlery in many restaurants), or never built in the first place (e.g., wash hubs for robust reuse-and-refill systems).

Liboiron and Lepawsky challenge us to go beyond feel-good solutions, like simply recycling more. They argue that discarding is inevitable, but we can still learn to “discard well” by designing waste systems and practices that are attentive to power dynamics, specific to particular times and places, and remain accountable to what (or whom) is discarded. For Liboiron and Lepawsky, discarding well requires an “ethic of incommensurability” that accepts that there is no single right answer, that every act of discarding will benefit some while harming others. This means that our waste infrastructure is more than just the bins, collection trucks, and sorting equipment; it is a materialization of our political and ethical decisions about which people, places, and things are valued, and which are treated as disposable.

The hopeful part is that, once we start to see our local waste infrastructure, we can also start to change it. In Maine, it is an excellent time to do just that. In 2021, the state became the first in the nation to pass an Extended Producer Responsibility law for packaging, shifting some of the costs and responsibility for managing packaging waste materials from municipalities to the companies that design and sell the packaging in the first place. This law intends not only to reimburse participating cities and towns for eligible recycling program costs but also to establish a dedicated funding stream for infrastructure investments and public education.

In other words, Maine communities have a unique opportunity to re-imagine our state’s waste infrastructure and speak up for what we want to see. This is a chance to move beyond a narrow focus on recycling and invest in robust, equitable reuse and refill systems in our communities. We can also encourage producers to redesign products and packaging for refill and reuse rather than single-use, disposable options.

The next time you notice a recycling or trash bin in your community, ask; who built this system, who does it serve, and whether there is a better option. Then speak up.

Ìę

References

Anand, Nikhil. 2017. Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Duke University Press. .

Liboiron, Max, and Josh Lepawsky. 2022. Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power. MIT Press.

The post Dream Big, Speak Up: Reimagining Waste Infrastructures in Maine appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

Ìę

“So! I’m signed up to do a bird count survey for the Mountain Birdwatch Project
would u be interested in joining??”

This early-evening text from my dear friend KP brought a smile to my face. I quickly replied that I’d check my schedule, and within two days we’d finalized our plans. I was a bit apprehensive about this trip, not because of backpacking with KP but because of my fledgling birding skills. I have had hearing loss from an early age, which has served as an easy excuse for why I tend to identify birds visually instead of auditorily. As someone who expends a lot of effort on following and understanding human speech, I usually view time spent near nonhumans as an opportunity to relax, let down my guard, and not worry about focusing too much on what the other critters are saying. My hearing still isn’t great, though my attention-paying abilities must bear equal culpability. More than once, I’ve asked an ornithologically-inclined companion for their best guess as to the creator of some tree-based chatter, only for them to politely suggest that the noisemaker was mammalian; evidently the noises were the mocking jeers of red squirrels.

My listening skills for bird identification are poor, but if I’m truthful, the rest of my approach to bird identification is pretty nascent as well: I enthusiastically use the MerlinID app to sift through and identify the warbles and chirps of my avian neighbors, I usually unfocus my binoculars before correctly focusing them, my eBird checklists are usually incomplete (what’s a breeding code, anyways?), and I excitedly hoot about novel or first sightings (thereby alerting the target birds to their now-concerning proximity to a bumbling biped). I’ve not been learning to bird for all that long, and it’s not my primary hobby so my skill development has been slow, albeit joyful and interesting. Throughout this journey, I’ve also been balancing the temptations of using technology like MerlinID with the deeper-held gratification of recognizing and naming the bird on my own or the tactile satisfaction of thumbing through a bird guide. Long live analog! But, dang, is it easy to embrace some of this tech when you’re just beginning.

When we met up for the trip, I mentioned to KP my concerns of being a subpar—though no less enthusiastic—partner for this endeavor, and she reassured me that I’d be fine: it’d be an opportunity for me to learn and practice, and realistically, my biggest contributions could be in morale-boosting, wayfinding, and timekeeping. I was delighted by this encouragement as these are three skills I have in abundance. With my confidence restored, KP and I finished up our Hannaford shopping trip by splurging on Raisin Bran and oat milk. We returned to the car and headed west for the last leg of our journey into the Rangeley area, to Saddleback Mountain.

Once at Saddleback Mountain Ski Area, we shouldered our bulky packs (a box of Raisin Bran occupies a lot of space, you know) and began our pokey ascent up the ski runs, immediately gaining 1,715 feet of elevation over two miles. Along the way, we eagerly sought out wildflowers and encouraged one another to enjoy the stunning vistas so we could catch our breath. Once in the alpine zone, we traced the ridge for several miles, passing the summits of Saddleback and The Horn before making camp along the Appalachian Trail in a small campsite with multiple tent platforms. We popped our tent up on the platform with the fewest holes in its rotted boards, unfurled our sleeping bags, and happily crawled inside and away from the gathering clouds of voracious insect suitors.

As my watch buzzed in the morning darkness several hours later, I reminded myself to boost morale and get us onto the trail ASAP so as not to miss our ideal (read: kind of mandatory) 4:15 a.m. start of the bird count. Using a combination of gentle cajoling and high beams from my headlamp, I got us onto the trail on time and we arrived at our first sampling site several minutes early. This was fortunate, for while we had GPX locations showing which exact section of trail we needed to occupy for each count, we also had site photographs we needed to capture and extra layers we needed to tug on.

We nestled in down jackets and perched on granite slabs just below the mountaintop of Saddleback Junior. Puffy fog clouds overflowed distant valleys and glowed brightly in the light of the half-moon. KP readied her clipboard with its multiple data sheets, I readied my stopwatch and good morale, and then we waited.

This project, which has been going on for the past twenty-five years, is designed to count ten bird species and—drumroll please—red squirrels! While I spent my pre-trip time scheming about trail snacks, KP had been learning and quizzing herself on the varied vocalizations of these focal species: yellow-bellied flycatchers, black-capped chickadees, boreal chickadees, winter wrens, Bicknell’s thrushes, Swainson’s thrushes, hermit thrushes, blackpoll warblers, white-throated sparrows, and fox sparrows. The researcher leading this multiyear project had prepared detailed notes indicating how KP was to mark different species, by what means she identified them (seeing or hearing), if and where they moved, their distance from her, and the critters’ approximate location across cardinal directions.

Using a series of species codes, un/circled codes, and solid or dashed lines all superimposed on a quadrisected gray circle, KP diligently marked the nearby creatures at our first sampling spot: white-throated sparrow, black-capped chickadee, and red squirrel. While I was in charge of the stopwatch—and running MerlinID in the background, “just in case”—I was absolutely mesmerized by watching KP translate the assorted, seemingly unidentifiable sounds around us into cryptic notations on the page. As her pencil confidently darted around the gray circle, marking species here and movements there, I began to discern the different patterns in some calls and I could determine approximately where the birds were.

After twenty minutes of observations, we were done. Satisfied with our work, KP carefully tucked away the completed data sheets and we scrambled over the summit of Saddleback Junior to our next sampling spot, where we roosted on blaze-painted rocks at the top of a steep descent. Again, we listened and she marked our observations. On to site three, settling ourselves beneath a fir painted with the Appalachian Trail’s famous rectangular white blaze. Then to spot four, characterized by an abundance of tufty ground lichen and Vaccinium plants. As we listened and waited here, I noticed some trampled bunchberry along the edges of the trail. While KP marked white-throated sparrows, yellow-bellied flycatchers, and Swainson’s thrushes, my eyes traced the moose footprints along the ground. When my stopwatch indicated our sampling block was complete, I surveyed the trampled bunchberry and found loose moose hairs stuck on the branches of the shrubs above. I plucked those hairs, gifted them to a delighted KP, and followed the moose prints into the trailside trees, where I found several moose summer scat deposits and a broad, flattened area, indicating this was a resting spot for our elusive moose! Thrilled with the possibility of sighting of such a large mammal, KP and I continued on to sampling spots five and six, where we did not see the moose, although KP had great success with hearing the birds and I with the red squirrels.

By the final sampling spot, I was confident in identifying the Swainson’s thrushes, white-throated sparrows, and of course, the red squirrels. Though this is a short list, these were some of the most vocal birds so I heard many repetitions of their songs in a short period of time. I also gained more practice in listening carefully to the other unknown birds, tracking their movements, and generally paying attention to what was happening around me. Satisfied that I’d delivered on my ability to keep spirits high and keep us on the correct trails, I felt the whole exercise was a great success. KP was similarly elated, pleased with identifying a few additional bird species at a few of our stops, marveling at the evidence of our moose neighbor I’d uncovered, and happy to report to the researcher that we had completed our survey.

We chattered as we retraced our steps, traipsing again through all six of our sampling sites as we followed the Appalachian Trail back to our campsite. There, we poured bowls of Raisin Bran, drowned them in oat milk, and happily crunched our way through breakfast. Satiated, we loaded our packs up and headed westward, over the rocky summit of The Horn, through bogs to get to the summit of Saddleback, where we walked along the rock-lined paths before stepping down through a band of gnarled alpine evergreens and emerging at the top of the ski mountain. There, we met a couple who were clearly birding, for they sported fancy binoculars and an impressive zoom lens on a high-end camera.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” I asked as we drew near. They told us they had driven several hours from Portland to try to see a Bicknell’s thrush. Evidently more adept at using the eBird platform than I, they’d seen a post from someone who had recorded a sighting of that species on Saddleback the previous day, and they’d eagerly jumped into their car to try to spot this bird. We told them about our sampling project, solemnly informed them we’d not seen a Bicknell’s thrush, and wished them luck.

We descended the ski mountain along the Green Weaver trail, walking in wide arcs to mimic the downhill skiing motion in the hopes of saving our toes from being smashed into the fronts of our shoes. Channeling skiing techniques as I walked down a ski slope on a gorgeous summer day, I thought about how I only knew this area during the non-winter months: I’d hiked, biked, trail run, and camped across the Rangeley region but I’d never been here during the snowy months. Similarly, I realized, there were many who came to this area only during ski season, who might only imagine chasing the best powder instead of blackpoll warblers or Bicknell’s thrushes.

My mental and emotional map of Saddleback Mountain now includes a birding trip with KP, and my perception of the Rangeley region is richer for it. Skiers’ mental and emotional maps may include successful runs, challenging ski trips, or amusing lodge hijinks. All users of land and space—that is to say, everything human and more-than-human—replicate the process KP and the other bird researchers used to document their identified birds: we use different symbols, movements, directions, and codes to mentally inscribe our experiences upon the landscapes in which we spend time. Whether you’re a red squirrel (I know you!), an Appalachian Trail thru-hiker, a birder wannabe (call me!), a mogul maestro, a winter wren (I don’t know you yet!), or a plein air artist, Saddleback Mountain holds a special place in the hearts and memories of many.

This granite mountain that stands 4,120 feet above sea level is physically inscribed with wide ski runs, the narrow Appalachian Trail, and soft footpaths of its nonhuman denizens, yet Saddleback is also inscribed with the memories, emotions, and lifeways of the many who have come to know it in some manner. The mountain has been known to skiers for sixty-five years and to the Abenaki Nation for thousands of years. We would do well to remember that we are not the first to spend time on this land, we will not be the last, nor are we the only species. With intentional, slow attention, we can see more clearly the intersecting and interdependent layers of love and life on our landscapes. Learning new bird species has facilitated this practice for me, as it has caused me to be attuned to the available habitat, movements of species smaller than me, and the myriad sounds that surround me in some spaces. Practicing this intentional, slow attention-giving whether at home or further afield, has enriched my understanding of these places, and made my mental maps more complex.

As for my own mental map of Saddleback? I anticipate an additional layer will be added in June 2026 when KP and I return. I’m hoping to reacquaint myself with my known birds and perhaps add an additional bird species to my list—maybe the Bicknell’s thrush? Most likely, it’ll just be another mischievous red squirrel, and I’ll be fine with that.

Ìę

Ìę

Ìę

Ìę

The post Listening Differently appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

Ìę

In open fields found venturing through the woods or down dirt roads in rural far northeast regions of Maine, awaits a unique summer challenge and ceremony: to harvest Maine’s tiniest native fruit. This watercolor painting series, called Athletes of the Rake, illustrates the hand-raking communities who come to harvest wild blueberries in Downeast Maine every summer. Hand-raking is a traditional harvesting method that gathers the delicate fruit using a short-handled rake in the rugged terrain of fields, where the unique landscape structure was shaped by glaciers roughly 10,000 years ago. The fields where the wild blueberry plants naturally sprawl are very rocky, with sandy soil deposits from retreating glaciers, as well as on hilly topographies shaped by the retreating ice (Borns 2018; Calderwood et al 2020).

In Maine’s wild blueberry industry, hand-raking has long been the gentlest method to harvest the crop compared to mechanical harvesters which result in greater yield loss, more damage to the plant, bruised berries, and poorer quality (Mara et al.1989). However, this careful harvest by hand is a strenuous exercise, requiring rakers to stoop down to comb berries off the tops of eight-inch-tall plants for hours under the summer sun. Despite the outdoor labor, which can be difficult at times to endure, the Maine summer of berry harvesting offers a unique “wild” experience that many return for year after year.

The practice of hand-raking carries on the heritage of the harvest, through which the wild blueberry landscape has a legacy of collective communal stewardship by Wabanaki Tribes for thousands of years (Calhoun et al. 2023). As commercialization of the crop expanded the industry in the early 1900s, hundreds of people and families from Maine, across the U.S., and Canada would flock to the fields for this seasonal work (Salt 1985). For some it was also a tradition to take part in the annual community harvest. The arrival of mechanical harvesters in the 1970’s, however, brought a dramatic change to the landscape, and the number of hand-raking crews on the fields has dwindled. Yet, some farmers still needed people to harvest fields in the roughest terrain or prioritized quality fruit picking, and the local labor shortage led to the employment of immigrant workers from Latin America in the 1990’s (Mamgain 2013). Despite bringing new communities of people to the fields, mechanical harvesters have displaced many or some found other work elsewhere for better pay. Since the early 2000’s, scenes of people harvesting in the field have become a rare sight. With my work, I aim to pay homage to the hardworking communities who keep the cultural heritage of hand-raking alive today.

These four watercolor paintings each showcase harvest scenes from local, migrant, and Passamaquoddy and Mi’kmaq Indigenous crews. In the summer of 2025, I traveled to rake with various crews harvesting wild blueberry fields of Downeast Maine to learn about their perspective on this traditional practice. Each painting is paired with quotes gathered from the conversations I had with the rakers I met.

This painting series, called Athletes of the Rake, is a tribute to the hand-rakers and their intensive work of harvesting Maine wild blueberries. By shining a light on farm workers, I aim to foster appreciation for the incredible work these people do to harvest food as well as spread awareness of the community around this harvest. Through intersecting art, storytelling, and ecology, my project aims to rekindle our relationship with tending to natural food and biodiverse ecosystems. Additionally, I hope these scenes and perspectives of the harvesters invite the public to engage in conversations about the interconnected relationships between food, land, and people.

As an artist, I sought to create this project to illustrate the connections between the labor work and the legacy of wild blueberry landscapes. I was compelled to create this work at a time when the Maine wild blueberry industry is rapidly accelerating towards mechanization, which has visibly changed the landscape and displaced communities and traditions. The annual summer season of hand-raking is atrophying in community culture. While mechanical tractor harvesters may be more efficient for farmers during economic challenges and local labor shortages, these machines require a supply of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the health of the wild blueberry ecosystem has been affected by climate change (Tasnim et al. 2022). The phenological growing stages of the plant have shifted schedule from nature’s calendar, resulting, among other things, in a mismatch between the arrival of native beneficial pollinators and open bloom flowers (Peng et al. 2025). My body of work explores the significance of preserving the traditional harvest practice of hand-raking to conserve these 10,000-year-old wild blueberry landscapes in Maine, as we are living in an anthropogenically induced climate crisis.

Ìę

Spiritual Retreat, Watercolor, 2025

“You’re on the ground and not in an office building or with artificial light. You’re out here on the land and it’s emotionally, physically, and spiritually healthy, and I think we’ve lost that in our society now” – Kris Larson, a longtime raker for 58 seasons in Downeast Maine and 72 years old.

Kris shows me his favorite stickered rake, which he named Bull Moose. At 72 years old, he’s grateful to be out here on the barrens under a blue sky listening to the crows, in the place he calls home. “Just meditate on this,” he recites a line he lives by from Anton Chekhov, a Russian playwright: “It’s people like that the Earth rests upon.” He points around the crew dispersed in the field, “It’s all the people (rakers) who harvest a wild food on this land and take care of it”.

Ìę

Sweeping Machine, Watercolor, 2025

“Being out here with these guys, my friends, takes my mind away from the sad and depressing times in my life”. Eric, a hand-raker on a small migrant Honduran crew.

After joining this crew for highbush blueberry picking in Michigan this spring, where he normally works construction jobs in the winter, Eric decided to go along with them on their harvest migration routes in the Northeast. Raking wild (lowbush) blueberries is entirely different, but he quickly picked up the fast harvest technique from watching the motion of the other guys. Called sweeping, the art of this style of raking involves swinging the rake side to side while exercising your whole body to lunge forward. The metal tines on the rake swoosh across the tops of the plants to gather the array of blue fruit and allow you to look out upon the rainbow of colors in the landscape.

Ìę

Trail Blazed by Families, Watercolor,Ìę 2025

“Me gusta libre en el campo” (I like to be free in the field), Maria, a mother, tells me about raking with her son in the open blueberry fields of Maine.

​Based in Ohio, they spend the entire year touring across the U.S. to harvest different crops such as apples, corn, highbush blueberries, and pumpkins. At the end of a long harvesting journey every year, she says they spend December back at home in Mexico, along with many other families from Mexico on this same crew.

Ìę

Harvest Built for Human Endurance, Watercolor, 2025

“If you can rake berries, you can do any labor job”, is what Bobby always tells his son.

Bobby has been in this field since he was a kid, when his dad first brought him from their home in New Brunswick. Now he is bringing his son with him every year to continue their family tradition. He hopes raking will teach his son the value of a hard work ethic, just as it taught him. Outside of the blueberry harvest season, Bobby works lobstering and building houses in the year.

Hand-raking brings them back to their Wabanaki ancestral land, but they also enjoy it for the exercise, which is what a lot of the people I’ve met on this crew tell me. The fields in the Passamaquoddy land where this wild fruit grows in aren’t easy to pick, and that’s why one raker who loves the challenge that raking offers, told me he spends his time leading up to the harvest season “training to fight the blue”.

Ìę

Bibliography

Borns, Harold. 2018. “Glacial Geology of Maine’s Blueberry Barrens.” https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/nabrew2018/proceedingpapers/proceedingpapers/6/.

Calderwood, Lily, David E. Yarborough, and Brogan Tooley. 2025. “About Maine Wild Blueberry – Cooperative Extension: Maine Wild Blueberries – 91±ŹÁÏ Cooperative Extension.” Cooperative Extension: Maine Wild Blueberries. September 2025. https://extension.umaine.edu/blueberries/about/.

Calhoun, Aram, Malcolm Jr Hunter Jr., and Kent Redford. 2023. Our Maine. Rowman & Littlefield.

Mamgain, Vaishali. 2013. “Ripples from the East Coast Stream: Contributions from Migrant Hispanic Workers to Maine’s Wild Blueberry Industry.” Maine Policy Review 22 (2). https://doi.org/10.53558/hjhz8899.

Marra, Michele C., Timothy A. Woods, Russell Parker, Nun Nun San, and Mario F. Teisl. 1989. “A Comparison of Lowbush Blueberry Harvesting Technologies: Experimental and Economic Results from the 1988 Field Tests in Washington County, Maine.” Maine Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 825. Orono: 91±ŹÁÏ. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_bulletin/40/.

Peng, Shijia, Aaron M Ellison, and Charles C Davis. 2025. “Climate Change Intensifies Plant–Pollinator Mismatch and Increases Secondary Extinction Risk for Plants in Northern Latitudes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122 (40). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2506265122.

“Salt, Vol. 7, No. 2.” 1985. DigitalCommons@91±ŹÁÏ. SALT, Inc. 1985. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/salt_magazine/24/.

Tasnim, Rafa, Sean Birkel, Lily Calderwood, Samuel Roberts, and Yong-Jiang Zhang. 2022. “Seasonal Climate Trends across the Wild Blueberry Barrens of Maine, USA.” Atmosphere 13 (5): 690. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13050690.

Ìę

The post Athletes of the Rake appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

Ìę

My poem is about one of my favorite Maine wildflowers that I often see out on walks when I visit Pemaquid in the summer. I now grow them in my own garden to remind me of my time there. Meadowsweet (Spiraea alba) attracts many species of bees, beetles, butterflies and wasps with its nectar and it is a joy to watch them attentively visit the blooms. Native to Maine, meadowsweet provides nesting habitat for birds, browse for deer and rabbits, and is a host plant to over 100 species of caterpillars.

Ìę

Hundreds
of blushing faces,
sunny greeters
of the forest edge
between sandy
road sides
and the dark
of trees.

Never one,
but multitudes.
A conversation
of bumblebees
and wasps.

Great black diggers
rendered dainty,
sipping teacups,
their spindly legs
dipping among
feathery stamens,
wings tucked
in iridescent cloaks.

Frothy steeples
mark the point
where the road
curves away
from beach roses
and bayberry bushes
that anchor the land
from waves,
and enters the shade
under cool pines
where the wood asters
and swamp azaleas
linger
in the damp.

Ìę

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

Ìę

I walked along my path and saw a tree on the ground.
Solitary, it stood. It was once tall, Triumphant.
Now, on the ground it lay. Crestfallen, defeated.

Can a tree feel when it is about to fall?
If it could, would that make its descent more tragic—
To know the tree must fall and nothing can stop it?
To know that for all its stature, it still cannot overcome the winds?

Think instead about a falling tree in a forest.
Familiar branches anchor it, catch it amidst its fall.
Supported by neighbors, the tree weathers gravity.

Ìę

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

^1. 91±ŹÁÏ at Augusta, Augusta, Maine 04430
^2. 91±ŹÁÏ, Orono, Maine 04469

Ìę

Abstract

This study presents the findings on the use of narrative (i.e., storytelling) when communicating complex scientific uncertainties. A growing body of evidence in narrative cognition and communication has shown promise for the use of narrative in science communication. Prior research has shown uncertainty is difficult to communicate and raises ethical concerns since scientists do not want audiences to be either underconfident in projections with epistemic uncertainty (i.e., where unknowns remain) or overconfident in projections with aleatory uncertainty (i.e., based on random factors). This project researched the use of narrative in communicating the scientific uncertainty of data projection tools built to support agricultural and conservation decision makers with decisions related to climate change. Participants completed an empirical survey reviewing the underpinnings of four data projection tools. For each tool, participants were randomly assigned to read either a technical or narrative description of the tool. Results indicate that narrative descriptions increased understanding, though measurements for emotional response and behavior change were non-significant. Results additionally indicate that the use of narrative did not reduce participants’ confidence in projections of epistemic uncertainty. However, participants did show a statistically significant overconfidence in the models’ ability to predict completely random factors, indicating that caution should be applied and further research conducted on the use of narrative in communicating scientific uncertainty.

Keywords: communication, climate, description, narrative, uncertainty, epistemic, aleatory

Ìę

Climate change and data scientists have an imminent need to identify and implement effective communication strategies for their technical work. This need is imperative as agricultural and conservation decision-makers need evidence to inform their decisions. Previous research has been promising for the use of narrative communication to facilitate the understanding of complex science. This study expands upon that research by exploring whether narrative communication is an effective tool for communicating uncertainty data, since decision-makers may hesitate to act if they misunderstand or lose confidence in projection models.

The BARRACUDA Project (Biodiversity And RuRal Adaptation to Climate change Using Data Analysis) is an interdisciplinary, multi-state, and multi-university research project in Northern New England seeking to create high-quality data models and tools to support agriculture and conservation sectors regarding climate change decision-making (RII Track-2 FEC; NSF Award #2019470). Within Barracuda, Team CHASM (Communication Has A Special Meaning) is a mentored undergraduate and graduate research team at the 91±ŹÁÏ at Augusta (UMA) seeking to gain a better understanding of effective climate change communication strategies. This study uses data projection tools created within the Barracuda Project as examples of uncertain information and empirically test participants’ understanding, confidence, emotional response, and self-reported behavior change according to the use of either narrative or technical descriptions.

Ìę

Literature Review

Communication fuels scientific dissemination by conveying sentiment, knowledge, evidence, and value (Filiz 2020; Hansson et al. 2020). This paper focuses on two communication styles: technical communication, which has been shown to limit comprehension among non-scientists (Bromme, Rainer, and Jucks 2018; Schwingel 2018), and narrative communication, which is associated with increased recall, ease of understanding and comprehension, and shorter reading time (Dahlstrom 2014). Bullock et al. (2019) illustrate how the use of jargon can hinder the processing of scientific information and amplify resistance to the message. Narrative formats emotionally transport audiences, making scientific concepts more relatable and actionable (Appel et al. 2015; Downs 2014). Thus, narratives can influence behavior (Kim et al. 2012).

However, to our knowledge there are limited examples of narratives used to communicate uncertainty-inherent projections related to climate change. Audiences frequently misinterpret uncertainty, conflating variability with ignorance (Rydmark, Kuylenstierna, and Tehler 2020). This miscommunication can cause decisionmakers to overestimate uncertainty, therefore delaying actions (Horne, De Urioste-Stone, and Daigle 2021) or misallocating resources (Ward et al. 2019). Distinguishing epistemic uncertainty (i.e., known evidence with remaining gaps) from aleatory uncertainty (i.e., intrinsic randomness) is essential (van der Bles 2019). The application of narrative science communication in this context offers a potential resolution. Narrative science communication may help the general population more fully grasp the nuances of uncertainty to make decisions in their lives.

Ìę

Methodology

Participants in this study were adult university students in Psychology and Communications courses, aged 18 to 65 (n = 81). Sixty‑five participants completed the demographic questionnaire. Of these, 69 % were female; 84 % identified as White/Caucasian, 6 % Native, 5 % Hispanic, 2 % Black, and 2 % multiracial. Informed consent was obtained; the survey blocked anyone under 18. This was intended as a pilot study; hence, the population comprises college students rather than agricultural stakeholders.

The survey was developed and hosted within Qualtrics (Qualtrics, Provo, UT). Participants were provided images from four data projection tools developed by the greater Barracuda Project research team. These data projection tools covered the following topics: Spotted-Wing Drosophila, the Soybean Crop Model, Crop Switching, and Data Visualization (Barracuda 2023). Participants were randomly assigned to read either a narrative or a technical description of the tool.

Participants randomly assigned to the narrative read a comedic short story about a hapless farmer whose neighbor helps him understand why he would be better off growing soybeans as opposed to pineapples based on the current and projected growing season changes. Participants randomly assigned to the technical description read the same information about the model inputs and outputs, though in a technical and data rich format.

Predictive models have inherent uncertainty. The epistemic uncertainty stems from the inability of any model to encompass the infinite variables that can affect the target outcome; decisions must always be made as to which variables to include or exclude in the simplified models. The narrative and technical descriptions include information about the specific data included in the model and describe the prediction outputs. The aleatory uncertainty stems from many other unpredictable factors that can also affect crop outcomes, such as deer infestations, wildfires, or bad seed stock. These factors are essentially random events that cannot be predicted in a crop yield model.

After reviewing the uncertainty information, all participants were given the same questions to measure their understanding, regardless of whether they received the information in the narrative or technical format. Participants were then asked additional questions designed to measure their emotional response/transportation (immersion into a narrative) and to evaluate their judgments of confidence in the uncertainty information presented. Each of these question sets were developed by the team according to each specific data projection tool. The emotional response/transportation questions were adapted from a short form transportation scale (Appel et al. 2015) which measures self-reported emotional, imaginative, and cognitive engagement with the descriptions. The content-based questions were presented as true/false to check respondents’ understanding of the material and Likert-scaled questions were used to assess the confidence level of respondents after they completed the readings.

Analysis of the data collected from this survey was conducted through Qualtrics and PSPP software (GNU Project 2007). The survey experienced significant attrition, such that later portions of the survey had lower completion rates. It was checked if there were any significant differences between scenarios, but attrition greatly inhibited the data sets. Therefore, the team combined all scenarios to create a more robust sample size when analyzing the difference in outcomes between narrative and technical reporting.

The overall aim of this study was to discover if narrative descriptions were more effective than technical descriptions at communicating uncertain scientific data. It was hypothesized that participants receiving the narrative versus technical description would 1) better understand, 2) have a stronger emotional response, and 3) a stronger likelihood of belief or behavior change, without 4) undermining their confidence in the uncertain data.

Ìę

Results

Participant Comprehension
Regarding hypothesis 1 (that participants will better understand the uncertain scientific data when communicated in narrative versus technical format), the one-way ANOVA revealed a modest but significantly better understanding of the science when participants read a narrative reporting formats (n = 153) versus technical reporting formats (n = 150) (F(1, 301) = 6.22, p = .013*). Each data projection tool scenario had three questions that were checked for understanding of the reported science, leading to a correct understanding score between 0 (no correct answers) and 3 (all correct answers). Participants who read the narrative scenarios scored more 2s and 3s, showing increased understanding of the information (Table 1).

Table 1. Number of correct answers for narrative versus technical descriptions. Row % shows the distribution of the number of correct answers within each specific group. Column % shows the composition of each number of correct answers category across the two groups. Total % shows the distribution of every cell relative to the entire dataset.

Additionally, when participants were asked if the descriptions they read were easy or hard to understand, participants reported perceiving that the narrative explanations were easier to understand (Table 2). A Chi Square analysis revealed a significant difference in the perception of ease versus difficulty of the readings between participants who read narrative versus technical descriptions (χÂČ (df = 1, n = 258) = 9.84, p = .002**).

Table 2. Participant perception of description difficulty. Row % shows the split between “Easy” and “Hard” ratings within each group. Column % shows the breakdown of groups within each difficulty rating. Total % shows the percentage of the entire sample that falls into each specific cell.

Participants’ Emotional Responses
Hypothesis 2 (that participants would have a stronger emotional response to narrative versus technical writing) found no significant differences (F(1, 209) = 2.46, p = .118). These results indicate that participants who read the narrative descriptions were no more emotionally transported (i.e., invested and immersed) than those who read the technical descriptions.

Participants’ Likelihood of Belief/Behavior Change
Hypothesis 3 (that participants would show a stronger likelihood of belief or behavior change) was measured by asking participants two yes or no questions: “Do you perceive this type of data projection tool would be useful to you or someone you know?” and “If you had access to this tool would you use it to inform your decision-making?” A Chi Square analysis on perceived usefulness of each respective data projection tool yielded significant results, χÂČ (df = 1, n = 277) = 15.06, p = .000** (Table 3), such that participants receiving the narrative descriptions found the tools to be more useful than those reading the technical descriptions.

Table 3. Perceived usefulness of data uncertainty tools. Row % shows the split between “Yes” and “No” responses within each group. Column % shows the breakdown of groups within each opinion category. Total % shows the percentage of the entire sample that falls into each specific cell.

However, believing that the tools would be useful did not lead to participants reporting a likeliness to utilize the tools. A Chi Square analysis did not reveal evidence of perceived likelihood of behavior change to use the tools χÂČ (df = 1, n = 282) = 1.82, p = .178 (Table 4).

Table 4. Perceived likelihood of behavior changes to use tools. Row % shows the split between “Yes” and “No” responses within each group. Column % shows the breakdown of groups within each opinion category. Total % shows the percentage of the entire sample that falls into each specific cell.

Participants’ Confidence in Uncertain Data
Hypothesis 4 (that the use of narrative descriptions would not undermine participants’ confidence in uncertain data) was this study’s new application of the use of narrative in scientific communication. The survey included confidence questions for both epistemic and aleatory uncertainty related to each data projection tool. A check in confidence for the Soybean Crop Model despite epistemic uncertainty asked, “How confident are you that the model can predict harvestable biomass of soybeans under ideal conditions?” We hypothesized that the narrative descriptions would not undermine participants’ confidence in the scientific data. Indeed, a Chi Square analysis revealed no evidence of a difference in confidence level when participants read the narrative versus technical descriptions, χÂČ (df = 4, n = 258) = 6.16, p = .187 (Table 5).

Table 5. Participants reported confidence on questions of epistemic uncertainty. Row % shows the level of confidence responses within each group. Column % shows the breakdown of groups within each category. Total % shows the percentage of the entire sample that falls into each specific cell.

While the data indicated that narrative descriptions of science did not undermine the confidence of participants in uncertain data of an epistemic nature, the same was unfortunately true for uncertain data of an aleatory nature. The check for confidence (or more specifically, overconfidence) in the Soybean Crop Model’s ability to predict unpredictable outcomes asked, “How confident are you that the model can predict harvestable biomass of soybeans under unforeseen circumstances like deer attacking the crop?” As with all the data projection tool scenario descriptions, the Soybean Crop Model’s narrative and technical descriptions both included explicit information about what data was used in the model to create the projections, in this case the temperature and solar radiation of the plot each day, as well as the soil moisture content. Deer infestations would therefore be outside of the scope of the model.

Participants who read the technical description were more likely to recognize that the models could not account for random factors. Participants who read the narrative descriptions were less likely to recognize that random variables were beyond the scope of the science, χÂČ (df = 4, n = 231) = 10.70, p = .03* (See Table 6). This finding is of concern because it indicates that while audience confidence in uncertainty data may not be undermined by the use of narrative scientific description, the audience’s complex understanding of the scope and implications of the uncertainties may be adversely affected.

Table 6. Participants reported confidence on questions of aleatory uncertainty. Row % shows the level of confidence responses within each group. Column % shows the breakdown of groups within each category. Total % shows the percentage of the entire sample that falls into each specific cell.

Ìę

Discussion

The study results indicate that narrative descriptions of scientific uncertainty data can facilitate better comprehension of information. The increased comprehension validates previous research (Dahlstrom 2014; Downs 2014) that narratives can be used to promote engagement with a wider audience, increasing the accessibility of science to the general population.

The study found no significant difference in participants’ emotional transportation (i.e., emotional investment). Participants who read the narrative descriptions were no more and no less transported than those who read the technical descriptions. While narratives do have an established capacity for transporting audiences to the extent that they are wholly absorbed in the story (Appel et al. 2015), the narratives used in this study did not establish that effect among participants. Future research can explore the impact of narratives that resonate more and less with participants’ personal experiences, values, or concerns.

The study did not replicate the increases in behavior change associated with the use of narrative descriptions that have been found in the literature (Downs 2014; Kim et al. 2012). While participants who read the narrative descriptions found the data projection tools to be more useful than those who read the technical descriptions, they did not indicate that they would change their behavior to make use of the tool. The lack of reported behavior change may be due to our participant pool being composed of college students that includes both individuals who are likely to use the data projection tool in their careers and those who are unlikely to have the need. Alternatively, the empirical survey format we used may not be able to capture the increase in behavior change found in the literature (Kim et al. 2012). Future research could particularly focus on populations who are more likely to have use for the tool in addition to exploring the use of more and less transporting narratives and adopting measures that more comprehensively capture behavior change.

This study explored how the use of narrative in science communication might impact an audience’s understanding of and confidence in uncertain projections. Scientific uncertainty has been shown to be a specific area of struggle for audiences (Horne, De Urioste-Stone, and Daigle 2021; Ward et al. 2019). Epistemic uncertainty needs to be better understood so the public can have confidence in robust projections. This is because understanding epistemic uncertainty may help people see why a projection looks the way it does and how it can become more trustworthy over time. However, each predictive model adds to a body of evidence that need not be discounted in its entirety due to ongoing epistemic uncertainty. The results indicate that audience confidence in epistemic uncertainty data was not impacted using narrative descriptions. This is promising for advances in science communication.

The results also included that participants who read narrative descriptions were less likely to recognize the limitations that the data projection models possess in predictions concerning random factors beyond the model scope. While there was little difference between participants reporting they were confident or very confident in the models’ ability to predict truly random factors, participants who read the technical descriptions were more likely to be unconfident and very unconfident than those who read narrative descriptions. It is possible that this disparity resulted from narrative descriptions invoking a sense of fictionality in participants’ understanding, such that the possibilities and limitations of science were perceived to change. The very use of narrative may lead audiences to suspend disbelief and entertain applications inconsistent with reality (e.g., a model predicting yield in ideal growing conditions is able to predict a deer infestation). As such, future research should explore whether suspension of disbelief can impact an audience’s cognitive adherence to scientific laws in the context of fictional or non-fictional scientific narratives

Ìę

Conclusion

This study examined whether narrative communication could alleviate the difficulty science communicators face when presenting uncertain projection models. We hypothesized that, compared with a technical description, a narrative format would (1) improve comprehension, (2) increase emotional transportation, (3) raise belief or behavioral intention, and (4) not reduce confidence in the uncertain data. We found that narrative descriptions improved participants’ understanding of scientific information. In the same vein, participants also perceived narratives to be easier to understand. However, our data does not provide clear support that narrative communication can be successfully applied to the communication of uncertainty data. Participants’ confidence in uncertain data did not lessen with narrative descriptions, though participants did show an overconfidence in predictions beyond the scope of the models. Similarly, our data does not support the idea that participants will alter their behavior, nor will they have a strong emotional response when presented with narratives about data projection tools. Considering these findings, using narrative communication styles should be approached with an awareness of its potential pitfalls in explaining uncertainty. While we could not prove that the narrative communication style was abundantly superior across all hypotheses, effective communication in the climate and agricultural conservation field should be seen as imperative for bolstering audience engagement. Using caution, and with additional research as to its appropriate use with uncertain data, narrative science communication can serve as an instrument to foster scientific literacy in broader communities.

Ìę

Declarations

Author Contribution Statements
All authors contributed to the study conception and design, including material preparation, data collection, analysis, and commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved of the final manuscript.
K.C., G.F., and A.R. wrote the main manuscript text.
K.C. provided academic support, professional advising, manuscript writing, editing and data analysis.
S. M. provided academic support and developed technical descriptions.
L.K., M.B., G.F., A.R., and K.C. developed narrative descriptions.
G.F. performed data analysis of the survey results, wrote the literature review, results and conclusion portions of the manuscript, and assisted with edits to the main manuscript.
A.R. wrote the methodology section, drafted the manuscript, and created an Institutional Review Board (IRB) application for ethics board approval of study, and assisted with edits to the main manuscript.
G. F, M.B. and L.K. performed the literature review for this study.
M.B. assisted with drafting and developing the survey questions.
L.K. assisted with statistical data analysis of survey results, and the digital creation of the survey in Qualtrics, and drafting the literature review portion of the manuscript.

Ethics approval
The questionnaire and methodology for this study was approved by the Institutional Review Board committee of the 91±ŹÁÏ at Augusta (IR 30195) which recommend this proposal be exempted from further review pursuant to 45 CFR 46.104(d) (2) “[r]esearch only including interactions involving educational tests, survey procedures, interview procedures, or observation of public behavior”.

Funding
This work was supported by a National Science Foundation Grant (RII Track-2 FEC; NSF Award #2019470).

Competing Interest
The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Consent to participate
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Data Availability
Data is available to view at: https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/workspace?goToPath=/openicpsr/228762&goToLevel=project

Ìę

References

Appel, Markus, Timo Gnambs, Tobias Richter, and Melanie C Green. 2015. “The Transportation Scale-Short Form (TS-SF).” Media Psychology (Philadelphia) 18 (2): 243–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2014.987400.

Barracuda – Biodiversity and Rural Response to Climate Change Using Data Analysis, 2023. URL https://biobarracuda.org/ (accessed 7.8.25).

Bromme, Rainer, and Regina Jucks. 2018. “Discourse and Expertise: The Challenge of Mutual Understanding between Experts and Laypeople 1.” In The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Processes, 2nd ed., edited by David N. Rapp, Michael F. Schober, and M. Anne Britt. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315687384-13.

Bullock, Olivia M., Daniel ColĂłn Amill, Hillary C. Shulman, and Graham N. Dixon. 2019. “Jargon as a barrier to effective science communication: Evidence from metacognition.” Public Understanding of Science 28, no. 7: 845-853. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662519865687

Code of Federal Regulations. 2025. Retrieved from Title 45 Subtitle A Subchapter A Part 46 Subpart A § 46.104: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-45/subtitle-A/subchapter-A/part-46/subpart-A/section-46.104

Dahlstrom, Michael F. 2014. “Using Narratives and Storytelling to Communicate Science with Nonexpert Audiences.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – PNAS (United States) 111 (Supplement 4): 13614–20. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320645111.

Downs, Julie S. 2014. “Prescriptive Scientific Narratives for Communicating Usable Science.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – PNAS (United States) 111 (Supplement 4): 13627–33. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1317502111.

Filiz, Bijen. 2020. “The Relationship between Effective Communication Skills and Verbal Intelligence Levels of Faculty of Sport Sciences Students.” International Journal of Educational Methodology 6, no. 3: 603-612. https://doi.org/10.12973/ijem.6.3.603

GNU Project. 2007. GNU PSPP (Version 3) [Computer Software]. Free Software Foundation. Boston, MA. Available from: https://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/”

Hansson, Sten, Kati Orru, Andra Siibak, et al. 2020. “Communication-Related Vulnerability to Disasters: A Heuristic Framework.” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 51: 101931. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101931.

Horne, Lydia, Sandra De Urioste-Stone, and John Daigle. 2021. “Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in the Face of Local Uncertainty: A Phenomenological Study.” Northeastern Naturalist 28 (sp11): 108–28. https://doi.org/10.1656/045.028.s1107.

Kim, Hyun Suk, Cabral A. Bigman, Amy E. Leader, Caryn Lerman, and Joseph N. Cappella. 2012. “Narrative health communication and behavior change: The influence of exemplars in the news on intention to quit smoking.” Journal of Communication 62, no. 3: 473-492. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1460-2466.2012.01644.X

Rydmark, Joacim, Jan Kuylenstierna, and Henrik Tehler. 2021. “Communicating Uncertainty in Risk Descriptions: The Consequences of Presenting Imprecise Probabilities in Time Critical Decision-Making Situations.” Journal of Risk Research (Abingdon) 24 (5): 629–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2020.1801807.

Schwingel, Johanna M. 2018. “Enhancing Scientific Communication Through an Undergraduate Biology and Journalism Partnership.” Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education (United States) 19 (1). https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v19i1.1445.

van der Bles, Anne Marthe, Sander van der Linden, Alexandra L. J Freeman, et al. 2019. “Communicating Uncertainty about Facts, Numbers and Science.” Royal Society Open Science (England) 6 (5): 181870. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.181870.

Ward, Alastair I, Suzanne Richardson, Roy Macarthur, and Aileen C Mill. 2020. “Using and Communicating Uncertainty for the Effective Control of Invasive Non‐native Species.” Mammal Review (Oxford) 50 (2): 211–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/mam.12188.

Ìę

The post Using Narrative to Explain Uncertainty in Climate Change appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

Ìę

I am telling the story of the Maine Coast, how it is changing, and what can be done to ensure a resilient future for both the environment and the communities that inhabit it. Growing up and going to college in Maine, the coast has always been an important part of my life. As a scientist, I have studied the coast and become even more familiar with its subtleties – what lives in the water, how pollution affects organisms as small as plankton, and how the rocky coast was formed, for example. Close observation helps me notice and document the change of a place, whether due to seasons, climate change, or weather.

While exploring, working, and researching on Maine’s coast, I am constantly encountering piles of debris, unfortunately now as familiar as rocks, seaweed, and periwinkles. These brightly colored pieces stand out from the gray beaches and dominate the scenery, and I find myself incorporating images of debris in my prints just as often as natural elements. Litter in our oceans poses a myriad of problems, from entanglement and ingestion by marine life to breakdown into microplastics. By weaving images of this debris into my work, I hope to inspire others to think critically about where our waste ends up and how we can minimize or reuse these products.

Ìę

The post Debris Pile #01 appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.