High atop Acadia’s mountain summits are sweeping views, subalpine plants, and an ecosystem under threat. Come with me as I take part in each step of a field season and learn about how scientists are working to help restore these unique places.

Sea to Trees Season 4 Episode 2: Place-based Science | The Mountain Summit

[Hiking sounds (breathing, crunching footsteps)]

Julia: Yeah how far are we? Amina: We have gone Julia: Oh wow Amina We’ve gone 1.2 miles so Julia: Out of? Amina: I think 1.6?

Welcome to Sea to Trees. My name is Julia Rush and today, we’re hiking a mountain in Acadia National Park.

Amina: Just the hint of fall starting

We’re looking out over Jordan Pond on Mount Desert Island. It’s a sunny, clear, early September day and at every vista point we can see out over the pond and beyond the edge of the Island at the Atlantic Ocean. It’s breathtaking.

Amina: Look at that! Julia: I know every few feet Amina: It just gets better

This hike isn’t for leisure, but it’s hard not to enjoy yourself while taking in sweeping views and breathing fresh, pine air. This is actually part of our morning commute to work which means I’m one-handed. As it turns out, hiking with a microphone in one hand…

Julia: I think if I go back, backwards. Slow and steady.

Proved to be just teetering on the edge of too dangerous.

Julia: Ok yeah this may be a two-handed moment, right? Amina: Perhaps Julia: I think we’re getting to a point where Amina: Yeah Julia: I think I’m gonna just - *audio cuts* [music starts]

We’re hiking to work because it’s the only way to get to the restoration sites atop Penobscot and Sargent mountains. Today is all about the mountain summit. A part of Acadia National Park that gives it its signature bald-granite horizon line. A space awaiting intrepid hikers for them to mark their journey, rest and eat a snack, surrounded by panoramic views of more mountains and the ocean beyond. An ecosystem that houses rare and subalpine plants typically found further north. One that's under threat.

My day actually started around 5:30 in the morning. I got up, made coffee, ate my breakfast and packed my bag, preparing to meet the restoration team, at the car at 7 o’clock. After loading up we began the hour-and-a-half drive to the trailhead, watching the world start to wake around us. Once we made it to the trail, laced up our boots, hauled our packs over our shoulders, and made sure all our equipment was accounted for, we started the hike.

[audio of hiking, making conversation, breathing heavily]

If you’ve ever hiked a mountain in Acadia, you might know how unassuming they can look from afar. These peaks are not sharp and looming, they’re soft and sloping across the horizon. But that doesn’t mean the hikes in Acadia are easy. On this day we hiked the Jordan Cliffs trail which features metal rungs and ladders to help you scale, well, the Jordan Cliffs. It’s not quite as harrowing as the name suggests, but with thirty liter packs on our backs and the late summer heat starting to creep in, it was definitely strenuous. After an hour and a half of hiking we finally reached our destination.

Julia: Oh yeah, where are we right now? Amina: We’re at the top of Penobscot, I guess not quite the very top, but on the north side of Penobscot mountain Julia: We’re still on the summit? Amina: Yes, we’re still at the top, not the very very peak <>

This is Amina Wilson. She’s the restoration research associate at Schoodic Institute. Her morning commute nearly every day during the summer and fall is a hike and her office is a mountain summit. On paper, restoring a mountain summit has a somewhat straightforward order of operations, one we’ll get into a little bit later. But there’s so much work that goes on behind the scenes of a summit field season. I took part in each step of that process this year to understand all the work that goes into restoring Acadia’s summits.

After the long hike we got to work monitoring plots that already underwent restoration in past seasons.

Amina: All right, so we have three different types of plots up here on the mountain.

These plots that Amina is talking about are patches where vegetation is degraded and restoration methods have been applied. Like I said earlier, mountains in Acadia have soft, rounded peaks, most of which have exposed bald tops, with only a few trees here and there. Here on Penobscot, the sloping granite rock faces that make up the summit are pretty expansive. Between these granite ledges there are islands of vegetation, think low, shrubby plants that can withstand the winds that blow right off the ocean. A degraded area is one where you can see that there once was plant cover but for reasons we’ll get to in a second, the plants have died off. You can tell just by looking at these spots that plants used to grow here by the hard line between living plants and dried up gravel.

Amina W: We have restored areas, and within those we have seeded plots and unseeded plots.

Restored plots are degraded areas that were identified in field seasons past and treated with a restoration method. The two methods here are seeded and unseeded. Seeded plots have a layer of soil and seeds while unseeded just have soil. That way they can see if planting seeds is worth the effort.

Amina W: We also have control plots, such as this one right here. Control plots are restorable areas, so they're degraded, and they're something that we might choose for restoration, but we're using them as a control so we're never going to restore them. We're just leaving them as is, and we use that as a baseline to see just how well the vegetation is doing in those areas, what kind of species are growing, species richness, all that stuff.

So, I know it sounds a little counterintuitive to identify an area where plants have died off and then just leave it alone, but these plots play a crucial role in research. Having these control plots help Amina and the rest of the team understand what the mountain might look like if they weren’t doing any restoration at all. Imagine if these plots started to grow back vegetation all on their own without any help from the scientists. It would greatly inform the restoration plan for these areas.

Amina W: And then we also have reference plots, which are next to restored plots, and those are patches of intact vegetation that we want to ideally restore our restored plots to look like those one day.

So the three types of plots here are: restored plots that have had a restoration method applied, control plots which are degraded areas that were left alone to act like a baseline, and then reference plots, the healthy, intact islands of vegetation that give scientists like Amina a reference to aim for.

Amina W: But yeah, today we are just monitoring all three of those types of plots, and we use these handy dandy little half meter by half meter quadrats.

In this case, monitoring means counting the number of plants in these plots to understand how successful the applied restoration methods are. To do that they use a quadrat which is a half-meter by half-meter plastic square made with a pvc pipe frame and strings arranged in a grid inside the square.

Amina W: So yeah, what we do is we identify every single living plant species as best we can, and we count the number of squares that it occurs in, and then we also estimate the overall cover in the whole quadrat. So, because there's 25 squares, one square is 4% of the overall area.

Each of the plots has four nails in the ground where each corner of the quadrat sits. So that from year to year, they monitor the same exact spot in each plot. Amina set the quadrat down on the nails and then started to count.

[Amina counting to herself]

All of the data they collect goes into a spreadsheet to be analyzed later. Because, while they are actively restoring these summits, they’re also experimenting to find out what the most effective restoration method is.

Amina W: All right, if you would like to help. Julia R: Me? Amina W: Yeah

When I said I would be getting you up close and personal with some of the science happening in Acadia this season, I meant it. Not only was I able to observe the science, I actually got my hands on some of it. Amina enlisted me to help with the monitoring, handing over her data collection tablet so I could enter what she observed. We hiked all this way, she may as well put me to work right?

Amina W: So I am just going to tell you, essentially, category, family, genus, species in that order. And then I'll give you, I'll give you all of the data in the order that it appears in here, the number of cells that it appears in, and then the percent cover that, I think it is.

My training is in journalism which is why you can hear a bit of panic in my voice, but Amina gave me careful instructions and guidance so I could help get all the monitoring done on Penobscot.

Amina W: All right, so I'm gonna hand you this. Julia R: Okay, Amina W: I have it filled out for crustose lichen, and if you can just those three are going to be blank, and then I'll give you a number.

I followed Amina around the rest of the day watching passing hikers steal curious glances at us as we worked. By the time we were wrapped up, after lots of patience from Amina, I had memorized the category, family, genus, and species for three toothed cinquefoil, one of the plants that makes these summits so special.

Chris Nadeau: The summits of in Acadia are some of the most beautiful places in the park. They're visited by millions of people each year. And the summits are also characterized by this really low lying vegetation.

Dr. Chris Nadeau is a climate adaptation scientist at Schoodic Institute. You may recognize him from last episode about the Great Meadow Wetland. He’s also the lead scientist on the restoration and research happening on the summits.

Chris N: And so when you have low lying vegetation, and lots of people, lots of vegetation gets trampled, once the vegetation gets trampled, then it dies after being trampled a few times. And then if we get a heavy rain event or a heavy wind event, then the soil that used to be under those plants can blow or wash off the mountain. And then once the soil is gone, it's just really difficult to get plants back in these places, and so we've been working to try to figure out how to restore plants to those places.

Three toothed cinquefoil is one of those low-lying plants Chris is talking about. It sort of creeps along the ground and almost looks like a wild strawberry plant. Each of its shiny, deep green leaves has three little points that look like teeth and it sprouts tiny white flowers in the spring. Three toothed cinquefoil is a sub-alpine plant, meaning it thrives in the transition zones between forested slopes and treeless mountaintops. Sub-alpine ecosystems are rare in coastal Maine, making them special. Most of the other summit plants are low to the ground too, which makes them all easy targets for foot traffic.

Chris N: So we have a lot of species that are found much further north, but also some rare species that are found further south, and they all kind of come together on a on Acadia’s kind of low elevation coastal summits and so protecting those plant communities and restoring them is really important.

With millions of hikers come millions of boots. And with so many visitors, there are bound to be some who will go off trail, whether that’s to try to get even better views or simply because they don’t realize that they’ve stepped off the marked path. Like Chris said, it doesn’t take much to trample and kill these low plants and they end up taking on a ton of damage from human traffic alone. On top of that, those heavy downpours that Chris mentioned are increasing in frequency. According to Maine's Climate Future reports from the University of Maine, extreme precipitation events are happening more and more often in the Northeast and are due, in part, to increased temperatures brought on by climate change. So the need for this restoration is critical.

The monitoring Amina and I were doing on Penobscot Mountain happens late in the summer. But the restoration season kicks off a little bit earlier with a hike to address the foundation of these plots: the soil.

Lauren Knierim: So this is year three of Save Our Summits.

Lauren Knierim is the community volunteer ambassador for Acadia National Park. This summer she led two hikes per week guiding volunteers up to Sargent and Penobscot mountains. Save Our Summits, a partnership of Schoodic Institute, Friends of Acadia, and the National Park Service, was designed to address the issue of how to get soil up to the top of a mountain.

Lauren K: And so there were a couple of different ideas thrown around about how we could get all of this soil up there. We talked about a helicopter bringing the soil. We talked about mules bringing the soil up the trail. And those just weren't really feasible, and somehow our best option that we settled on was all of you. Each of the volunteers showed up bright and early at the trailhead to hike soil up to the summit of Penobscot mountain. Soil that will be used by Amina and her crew to create new restoration plots this fall.

Volunteer: How much are we carrying up in the group today? Lauren K: How much do you think? There's 11 of us I think Volunteer: I was gonna say 200 Lauren K: Got 166

In just one hike, eleven volunteers carried up one hundred and sixty six pounds of soil. I packed five pounds into my own backpack and sincerely underestimated just how heavy five pounds feels after an hour of hiking. Over the past three years seven hundred and ninety two volunteers hiked up over thirteen thousand pounds of soil to Sargent and Penobscot mountains. These hikes happen during the summer so that when it’s time to make new plots in the fall, the soil is already at the top of the mountain. The next step in the process, this year, was the summit advisory meeting, a gathering of experts to help the restoration team brainstorm new methods to apply on the summits.

Chris N: There isn't a lot of understanding about how to restore plants and soil to mountain summits, especially these kind of unique, low elevation mountain summits, like we have here in Acadia. And so because we don't really know how to do that restoration we have consulted with a variety of different experts, from restoration ecologists to people who study mosses and lichens to people who study soil, all sorts of different experts have come to the summits, they've seen restoration work we've done in the past, and then we have a big conversation about, what should we be doing in the future? This meeting took place over the course of two days and started with hikes to each restoration site. Once we arrived at the sites, Chris, Amina and the rest of the crew explained the restoration, their methods, some of the results and the challenges they’re facing.

Amina W: So I know some of you have had a chance to walk around and kind of look at the difference between these three plots that are around here the two closest to us were both built in 2023 so they’re two years old.

This restoration crew consists of partners at the National Park Service and Friends of Acadia. Jesse Wheeler, Acadia’s Vegetation Program Manager and Emma Lanning a biological science technician for the Park are involved in each stage of the restoration process.

It was quite inspiring to see so many people from all over the country come together to aid in a restoration happening right here in Acadia.

Chris N: It is super unique and and it's, it's a really exciting meeting to be a part of, just because you get to spend a whole day, two full days out on mountain summits, just talking to great people that are excited to be there and interested in helping out.

After the summit advisory meeting wrapped up, Chris, Amina, Jesse, and Emma organized all of the ideas that came from the gathering and picked out a couple to try in this year’s restoration plots.

Chris N: One of the things that three different people came up with independently, is that while we were walking around on the summits, people noticed that the natural plots that are still intact have all this microtopography, so all these bumps and humps and valleys that that catch seed, they hold water, but our plots are just completely flat. They have four centimeters of soil everywhere. And so many people noticed that and suggested that we might want to incorporate micro topography.

In the fall, Amina’s crew started to use the soil that was hiked up to create new plots with a plan for how to incorporate these new ideas.

Julia R: Okay, what are we doing? Amina W: Restoring degraded area on top of Sargent mountain. Julia R: And How cold is it? Amina W: So cold it's probably 50 degrees, yeah, but feels like 30 with the wind chill,

I hiked up Sargent mountain with Amina this fall, a month after our monitoring day, to help out with the last bit of work on the summits for the season. This last step is when the crew makes new plots that will undergo monitoring next year. Again, I got my hands dirty, this time literally.

Julia R: So we're carrying soil? Amina W: Yeah, so if you want to grab a bag of soil, We started out by finding a degraded area that would be a good candidate for restoration. And then, using the soil hiked up by volunteers throughout the summer, created a new plot. This year they are adding a new type of plot testing out a new method to see if the theory about microtopography works.

Amina W: So if you see on this plot, there's like these little mounds that we created, kind of using like a bowl to create like kind of sand castle type molds on top.

To make a microtopography plot we applied a layer of soil across the degraded area and then made mounds out of soil just like sandcastles spaced out around the plot. Then we spread seeds and some leaf litter from surrounding vegetation all over the plot and covered the whole thing up with a blanket of erosion control fabric. This fabric is sort of like burlap and it helps to protect the seeds and soil from all of the factors that threaten these plots in the first place, to set them up for success. The erosion control fabric, along with every other tool and instrument used up here gets hiked up the mountain by the restoration team, which is no small feat. With the biodegradable stakes that we stowed in Amina's bag, we secured the edges of the fabric in place and lined sandbags along any exposed edges.

Amina W: And that is what a finished plot looks like.

Once all the soil is used up and each new plot is tucked in for the winter ahead, the planning process for next season starts. And the cycle continues.

Come next summer, the restoration team will be back, placing quadrats on those same four nails in each plot, counting tiny seedlings that have sprouted from the seeds sown the previous year, fruits of the labor of numerous field technicians, National Park managers, scientists and citizens, including me. Each tiny little seedling carries the hope of those individuals. Hope for their success in growing in the face of increasingly severe weather, hope that hikers will step mindfully and stay on trail, and hope for a bright future for Acadia’s summits.

Thank you for listening to Sea to Trees, a podcast from Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park, a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, inspiring science, learning and community for a changing world. Acadia National Park is on traditional lands of the Wabanaki, people of the dawn. A big thank you to this episode's guests Dr. Chris Nadeau, Amina Wilson, and Lauren Knierim. Sea to Trees is written and produced by me, Julia Rush, and edited by Catherine Schmitt and Sarah Luchini. The cover art was created by Sarah Luchini. Sea to Trees is possible through generous support of the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early-Career Fellowship, the National Park Foundation, National Park Service, and Schoodic Institute.