Climate Driven: Aroostook County

In this Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2017 photo unsettled clouds fill the sky over Mount Katahdin in this view from Patten, Maine.

Maine's North Woods are a carbon storage machine. They could do even more for climate mitigation

Susan Sharon

Research from the New England Forestry Foundation suggests there is potential to sequester and store even more carbon with improved forest management, conservation and expanded markets for wood — but it would take more investment to achieve.

Wayne Kilcollins, an instructor for wind power technology at Northern Maine Community College, standing in front of a turbine in the lab.

Business and Economy

The wind energy field is blowing up, but a Maine training program is struggling to attract students

Patty Wight

To meet the demand for wind technicians, Northern Maine Community College launched the state's first — and still only — comprehensive training program. It started with a bang: nearly three dozen students enrolled. But in the years since, enrollment has plummeted.

Seven of the 28 turbines that make up the Mars Hill Wind facility are viewed across a field from a road near the Maine-Canada border. The facility went operational 15 years ago, becoming New England’s first commercial wind power operation.

Environment and Outdoors

15 years ago, a small Aroostook town went first on wind power – and hit turbulence along the way

Kevin Miller

As the state's wind power trailblazer, Mars Hill exposed some of the regulatory and legal pitfalls that can result when 400-foot-tall wind turbines are built near homes.

Sharri Venno, environmental planner for the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, stands in front of a section of Meduxnekeag River that's been restored to a more natural state that better suits salmon and other native species.

Climate Desk

A tribe is restoring a northern Maine river so that it'll be cooler and more hospitable to salmon

Murray Carpenter

Salmon once spawned in the Meduxnekeag River in Aroostook County, and the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians is trying to bring them back by restoring not just a river, but an entire watershed.

Daniel Corey shows off potato plants raised inside his lab and greenhouse in Crystal, Maine. Corey works with companies and researchers like Greg Porter on new potato varieties.

Environment and Outdoors

Maine farmers hope that breeding a better potato can help the industry deal with a warming climate

Robbie Feinberg

Potatoes are far and away Maine's most lucrative crop, with a harvest valued at more than $200 million last year. But Aroostook County farmers are dealing with a new challenge: climate change, which has brought warmer and drier temperatures to northern Maine in recent years.