Workshop Descriptions – Week 1
Climate Resilience
For webinar links, visit the special conference page and enter the password from your registration confirmation email.
Week 1: March 15–19 | 2: March 29–April 2 | 3: April 12–16 | 4: April 26–30
Tuesday, March 16
10:00 am – Conference Kick Off
10:10-11:30 am – Climate change 2.0: Habitat resilience meets carbon sequestration
As our State begins implementing recommendations of the Maine Climate Action Plan, this session will explore how carbon sequestration strategies and Maine’s target for carbon-neutrality by 2045 relate to goals for protecting resilient habitats.
Presenters: Mark Berry, Forest Program Director, The Nature Conservancy; Hans Carlson, Executive Director, Blue Hill Heritage Trust; and Ivan Fernandez, Distinguished Maine Professor, University of Maine, School of Forest Resources and Climate Change Institute
Links shared during session:
- Resilient Lands Mapper
http://maps.tnc.org/resilientland/ - Conservation Finance Network “toolkit” article https://conservationfinancenetwork.org/2018/06/26/forest-carbon-offsets
- Forest Carbon: An essential natural solution for climate change
https://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/tonydamato/pubpdfs/Catanzaro%20and%20D%27Amato%202019%20Forest%20Carbon.pdf - Meeting the Challenge of Climate Change
https://www.openspaceinstitute.org/research/meeting-the-challenge-of-climate-change - Maine Climate Council
https://climatecouncil.maine.gov/ - Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change
https://www.niacs.org/project/adaptive-silviculture-climate-change
Thursday, March 18
10:00-11:15 am – Protecting Our Rivers and Coasts for the Future: Roles for Maine Land Trusts
What contributes to climate resilience in Maine’s rivers and streams? What do resilient aquatic environments look like? And, most importantly, what can Maine’s land trusts do to support climate resilient rivers and streams? These are some of the questions our panelist will unpack as they tell about their work and how they engage with land trusts across Maine.
Presenters: Ruth Indrick, Project Manager, Kennebec Estuary Land Trust; Ben Matthews, Watershed Restoration Scientist, The Nature Conservancy; and Kirstin Underwood, Fish & Wildlife Biologist, US Fish & Wildlife Service
Friday, March 19
4:00-5:00pm – Welcome Spring Concert with Ben Cosgrove
Wrap up the first of week of Conference and the last week of winter with a real treat! Ben Cosgrove will 
wow us with a blend of musical performance and commentary on how land and music intertwine. Ben recently announced a forthcoming new album, The Trouble With Wilderness, which will release on April 16th, 2021.
Ben Cosgrove is a traveling composer, pianist, and multi-instrumentalist from New England. His music explores themes of landscape, geography, and environment and straddles a line between folk and classical music. His “electric and exhilarating” live performances are at once dazzling and intimate: music that has been described as “stunning” and “compelling and powerful,” — Red Line Roots has called him “stupidly talented” — all presented with “warmth, humor, honesty, and the easy familiarity of a troubadour.”
From 2012 to 2014 Ben served as the Signet Artist-in-Residence Fellow at Harvard University, and he is a recipient of a St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award. He has also held residencies and fellowships with Acadia National Park, Isle Royale National Park, Middlebury College, Chulengo Expeditions, the Vermont Studio Center, the Schmidt Ocean Institute, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and he spent a year as the artist in residence at White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire and Maine.
In 2017-18 Ben wrote new music and gave a series of performances in partnership with the New England National Scenic Trail, a long-distance hiking trail connecting southern New Hampshire with Long Island Sound.
For more about Ben and his work, please visit www.bencosgrove.com.