Introduction
America Adapts, the Climate Change Podcast and its host, Doug Parsons, visited Schoodic Institute to learn more about our conservation science. Over the next several months, we’ll be sharing with you edited interviews (click to listen) from the podcast; find the full podcast episode here.
We are continuing this month with Schoodic Institute Science Communication Specialist Catherine Schmitt.
Interview with Catherine
Doug Parsons (DP): The Communication Specialist. This is right up my alley! Can you just describe your roles there?
Catherine Schmitt (CS): I communicate about science in Acadia, including and especially the science supported by Schoodic Institute.
DP: What are your favorite subjects to write about? And I want you to wear your Schoodic hat for this because there might be other subjects that you like to write about, but what do you really like writing about?
CS: I really like writing about ecosystem interactions, how different ecosystems work. So for example, there’s a lot of meadows in Acadia National Park or places that are called meadows. And I wrote an article about what is a meadow and what does that really mean and how do they work and what is their function. And so those kinds of stories, or interactions between birds and forests, or how beavers influence other animals that might be living in a wetland.
DP: A lot of the content that’s generated there at the Institute is very technical. And so they put this in front of you. How do you make it come alive? Do you have a process for like, all right, here’s a bunch of charts and here’s some science, but I need to write this in a way that the public’s going to understand. What’s your process?
CS: First of all, I hope that I write it in a way that the public understands, but I’m not so sure I’m always successful and I don’t know that I’m the best one to judge that. But what I try to do is tell stories of science that are people focused. So this idea that science is not a collection of facts, but how we came to know those facts and science as a way of knowing and not the only or the best way of knowing. It’s people-focused. Science is something that people do. It’s a pursuit of knowledge and a particular way of pursuing knowledge. Focusing on who scientists are, what they do, how they do it, and why is a big emphasis. And so that might look like a profile of someone, or it might be as minor as just including an element of how do we know whatever facts I might be presenting in a story. Do we know that from observation, from collecting data, from measuring things? Just the inclusion of a little bit of the verb can convey the process of science. And then I also show how science works by joining scientists in the field. I love to be outside. It’s part of why I got into environmental work. But a lot of times science is communicated at the end when a journal article is published or results are released, and that disconnects audiences from everything that led up to those results. I try to bring people along and show them science as it unfolds.
DP: You shared quite a bit of the writing that you’ve done. And one story that stood out for me is what happened at the Maple Spring Trail. And so just a couple of things here. I want you to just give a really quick, broad overview. What was happening there? And what did you see? What did you hear? And then how did you know what would help people grasp the weight of climate change?
CS: Maple Spring is a trail in Acadia, a hiking trail. And like a lot of hiking trails in Acadia, it goes up a little ravine or valley along a stream that flows down from one of the highest mountains all the way down. So very steep stream. And the trail follows it. In some cases, the trail crosses the stream multiple times and there are stone steps built right into the stream bank. And when we had an intense rainstorm one June, I think it was June 2021, something like four inches fell in the space of a few hours and it was very sporadic. Some places only got an inch of rain, but this particular place got multiple inches of rain and it just flowed off the mountains and that stream turned into a torrent and it washed out the trail, moved giant boulders, destroyed wooden bridges. And the trails of Acadia are also on the National Register of Historic Places because of their design and stewardship. The park experienced damage elsewhere with entire highways washed out, the gravel carriage roads washed out. But for Maple Spring, which is one of these historic footpaths, a favorite trail of many people, the park was left with, what do we do? Do we rebuild it and how? And so the story was a little bit about the power of the water, the unexpectedness and unpredictability of climate change impacts on the park, how the park, the trails and the carriage roads and other infrastructure was not built for the current climate. But the story was really about, again, that human aspect of what do we do and how the Park makes decisions, structured around a workshop that brought together people from across Acadia National Park. The trail builders who are masters at their work, the historic preservation officers, the resource managers, park leadership — Superintendent Schneider was there — and all of those people got together for two days to talk about this one trail as a case study for the resist, accept, direct framework. Do we resist this change and just rebuild it the way that it was? Or like when many of the trail builders wanted to super build it and use bigger rocks and stronger wood, do we accept it and move the trail? We all went out there together and looked at possible rerouting? Or do we abandon the trail completely? I tried to convey how difficult it is for the people who have to protect these places.
DP: You’ve been writing for a long time. Tell me a bit about your own evolution, because climate change 20 years ago, it was there, but it wasn’t necessarily driving the narrative like it is today. Can you tell us a bit about your own journey as you’ve approached this issue?
CS: The biggest change has been that it went from something that was distant in the future to something here and now. When I started out, all of the climate change impacts were still thought to be really far away and they were something we were preparing for. And then within the space of 10, 15, 20 years, they all started unfolding all around me. And it’s a kind of a surreal experience to have that happen.
DP: Can you tell us a bit of some of the things that you’ve done? I think that goes over a time span. You’ve been involved with editing Maine’s Climate Future Report. What is that? And tell us a bit about how that has changed over time.
CS: The Maine Climate Future reports are a good example of this change that I’ve experienced. The initial one came out in 2009, and this was the first state assessment of climate change across the state of Maine. So up until that time, we had national, we had the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports, we had the national reports, and then there was also some Northeast region reporting, but nothing specific to Maine. Maine’s a big state and particularly natural resource dependent. And the governor asked the University of Maine, which has some leading climate change researchers, to produce a report on what the future climate might be and what the impacts might be. And that was over 70 different scientists and experts as authors. And my role was to help edit and produce the report, including working on a lot of the figures. The audience for that was actually legislators and the governor, policymakers. That report was a little bit about how climate had changed in the past and how climate change works. There were original projections. Climate modelers at the university did their own state-specific projections, but everything was in the future and possible, a lot of uncertainty. That report became a reference for everyone to cite, offering common ground and giving everybody in the state a common reference point for how much had climate already changed and how much was it projected to change. People like numbers and they want just a single number. And so we tried to do that. And then by 2015, things had changed enough and there was a lot happening politically that we decided an update was necessary. We had to update the projections, first of all. The modeling science evolves and develops and we wanted to get some better numbers on trends. We also experienced things like heat waves in the Gulf of Maine and accelerated warming in the ocean that wasn’t covered in our first report. And so we did an update in 2015. And then within five years, we needed another update, which really emphasized the acceleration of how all of these trends that we had predicted were just not only already becoming reality, but much, much faster than scientists had predicted. The change has been having to communicate what is happening now and how people are experiencing it and responding to it and adapting to it more so than what’s going to happen.
DP: When you’re actually out in the field with scientists, and you and I met when we were out in the field with scientists, is there anything you’ve experienced that you wish more visitors to the park could see firsthand? Because it’s obviously a unique way of seeing the park.
CS: Oh, absolutely. I wish that more visitors and neighbors understood how much scientists working in parks and park staff care about parks and care about the places that they’re working and the future of this planet. Like, it’s not just a job. They’re doing that work because they care. And that’s things like, if they’re wildlife biologists, the care that they take when they’re handling animals and carefully releasing them, or the care that they take to not disturb the birds that they’re trying to count and listen to their songs, and witnessing that care and concern is something that I just wish more people knew about and could understand.
DP: What’s your favorite spot in the park?
CS: Impossible question… I’ll say my recently newly appreciated place is, in fact, the Great Meadow. I didn’t spend a lot of time in the Sieur de Monts area until I was working on my book, Historic Acadia National Park, when I was writing about the early trail builders. And there’s a lot of amazing stonework in the hiking trails that begin at Sieur de Monts. But then surrounding that, there’s also this giant wetland complex where we’re currently doing a lot of work at Schoodic Institute, along with Friends of Acadia and the National Park Service. And so I’ve been spending a lot of time there. And it’s unique because there’s a trail called the Jesup Path, which is a boardwalk that goes right through this red maple swamp and then into this open meadow where there’s tons of birds and butterflies, dragonflies and frogs. There’s a lot of wildlife, but it’s also just the chance to experience a wetland, which are places, it’s not an easy place to walk in and you might not go except that there is a trail there. So that would be a place that I would recommend, especially to visitors who might have family, young children or other family members. The trail is nice and flat and smooth and fairly accessible.