Integrating science and management to understand and sustain agricultural, horticultural, forest, and wetland ecosystems.

Welcome! Our department has as its mission the identification and application of ecological principles that contribute to the sustainable use of ecosystems in a rapidly changing global environment. Faculty expertise provides a framework for the study of interactions between biological, chemical and physical components of agricultural, horticultural, wetlands, forest, and watershed ecosystems.

We play a key role in interdisciplinary curricula and research projects involving biogeochemistry, soil science, plant science, sustainable cropping systems, and invertebrate and microbial ecology. Through its teaching and research programs in these areas the department addresses the needs of Maine's natural resource-based industries and contributes to a knowledge foundation upon which their sustainability can be built.

The department is directly responsible for the B.S. degree in Landscape Horticulture and Sustainable Agriculture, and its faculty play a pivotal role through instruction and advising in the Ecology and Environmental Sciences B.S. program. The department participates in seven graduate degree programs at both the M.S. and Ph.D. levels.

Landscape Horticulture:  http://www.umaine.edu/lhc/

Sustainable Agriculture:  Sustainable Agriculture Program

Ecology and Environmental Sciences:  http://www.umaine.edu/nrc/