Merrymeeting Bay / Kennebec Estuary Research Program (Bowdoin)

John Lichter
Assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies
Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1995

My research as an ecosystem ecologist began on coastal sand dunes bordering Lake Michigan where I studied the mechanisms of plant succession. Since then, I have contributed to research investigating the effects of rising atmospheric CO2 on forest productivity and biogeochemical cycling with colleagues at Duke University. After coming to Bowdoin College in 2000, I began research on the ecology and environmental history of Merrymeeting Bay, which provide many engaging and important research topics for an ecologist. I am most interested in understanding the legacies of past human disturbance on the river-estuary complex and in providing information useful for the sound management and conservation of Maine's coastal ecosystems. To this end, I work with Bowdoin students to reconstruct the history of the ecosystem and to understand the consequences of past and present human activity on the ecosystem.
Bowdoin College

Links

• Academic Spotlight: Lichter's Environmental Science Article Cited as Widely Influential »
• John Lichter's faculty page »