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Forests to Water Series

Forest to Water series
Background illustration by RavenMark.

This special series from Northern Woodlands magazine explores the various connections between forests and water, with a focus on community-based efforts that support watershed health and resilience to climate change.

Articles in the series foster learning across boundaries, highlighting conservation and working forest projects in the Penobscot, Androscoggin, and Connecticut River basins. Accompanying infographics help illustrate foundational concepts to enrich understanding of forest-to-water connections and show how human activities influence these dynamic systems.

Explore the series below and don't miss the next installment in our Winter 2021 edition!

This series is made possible by support from the Betterment Fund, Maine Timberlands Charitable Trust, and the Davis Conservation Foundation.


Floodplain Forests: Nature’s Flood Relief

By Madeline Bodin

Ten years ago, Pam Brown stood across the road from her house in Bethel, Vermont, and watched the rain fall on a field of tall, green corn. The bridge out of town had been closed, and she had nowhere else she could go. Tropical Storm Irene dumped 10 inches of rain on the mountains north of town...

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Stream Crossings Reimagined

By Cheryl Daigle and Emily Renaud

Miles and miles of streams flow through northeastern forests, serving as habitat for fish, freshwater mussels, invertebrates, and other aquatic organisms. These waterways feed our rivers, bringing nutrients from the upper watersheds to sustain natural systems downriver...

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The Future of Forestry in the Penobscot Watershed

By Laura Poppick and Cheryl Daigle

Each fall, as days grow shorter and the sun dips lower in the sky, the last of the year’s run of Atlantic salmon swim through the cold waters of the Penobscot River and its tributaries, sweeping tails against gravelly sections of riverbed...

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Rivers Reconnected

By Cheryl Daigle

For more than 200 years, dams built on waterways up and down the East Coast helped to move and sort timber, power sawmills and gristmills, and produce hydroelectric power. These dams shut off migratory routes for sea-run fish...

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Genuinely Within Our Grasp

By Richard Adams Carey

It must have felt like summiting a mountain, exhaustion and jubilation at war with each other, only to discover that, well, actually this isn’t the summit yet – and now you have farther to go...

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Forest Trees: A Natural Water Filter

By Cheryl Daigle

Our forests provide us myriad benefits, but none more critical to life than the way they interact with water. Trees collect and absorb water through branches, leaves, and roots, and then release it slowly to the surrounding environment...

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At Chapman Brook

By Catherine Schmitt

Rain falls on a forested hillside in the mountains of western Maine, 2,000 feet above sea level. Water collects in the narrow valley surrounded by a forest of pine, hemlock, oak, beech, and birch. The water forms a channel quickly on the steep terrain...

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Forests to Water: A Connected Landscape

By Kevin Berend

Taking a watershed-level approach to forest management – also called “ecological forestry” – can sustain and restore the essential interconnections and functions of a healthy forest ecosystem while also maintaining habitats for fish and good water quality...

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Exploring the Intersection of Climate Change and Land Use

By Tim Cook and Noah Snyder

In the early morning hours of July 3, 2018, a rapidly advancing cold front brought a line of showers and thunderstorms across northern New England. In the western Maine mountains, this weather event produced localized extreme rainfall...

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