Karen Wilson

Associate Research Professor
Karen Wilson
207-780-5395

309 Bailey Hall, Gorham Campus

Education

PhD, Limnology/Zoology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Department of Environmental Science and Policy College of Science, Technology, and Health

Dr. Karen Wilson is an associate research faculty with the Department of Environmental Science and Policy. She teaches ESP 341 Freshwater Science and ESP 412 Field Ecosystems Ecology in alternate fall semesters, and ESP 303/304 Wetlands Ecology and ESP 360 Water Quality in alternate spring semesters, as well as ESP 101 Environmental Science and Sustainability.

Dr. Wilson has a Ph.D. in Limnology/Zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she studied the long-term impacts of an invasive crayfish on lake communities. Since receiving her degree, Dr. Wilson has taught at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Zoology, University of Toronto, and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment.

Undergraduate and graduate students in Dr. Wilson’s Aquatic Systems Lab conduct research on Maine’s lakes, streams and ocean (aquatic ecology, fisheries, crayfish, river herring, foodwebs).

Dr. Wilson is currently the lead Principle Investigator on a project investigating variation in the ecology and habitat use by juvenile alosines (American Shad, Alewife, Blueback Herring) in the Kennebec River, Maine, in collaboration with the Maine Department of Marine Resources and Maine Sea Grant.

Dr. Wilson is also currently using eDNA to study lower trophic level response to grazing by anadromous Alewife in Maine coastal lakes with collaborators from the University of Maine and Bigelow Laboratories as part of the larger NSF EPSCOR Project Maine eDNA .

Past projects include the an NSF-funded project called The Future of Dams (Strengthening the Scientific Decision-making about Dams: Multi-scale Coupled-systems Research on Ecological, Social and Economic Tradeoffs), the Diadromous Species Restoration Research Network (DSRRN), a research coordination network funded by NSF, and the interdisciplinary Sustainability Solutions Initiatives project investigating economic and ecological connections between Maine rivers, estuaries and coasts in the Kennebec-Androscoggin River System using anadromous river herring as a common currency between these habitats and systems.

Selected Publications

Google Scholar

Webb, A., Wilson, K.A., Lasley-Rasher, R. 2024. Juvenile alewife residency in a north temperate estuary. Coasts and Estuaries. In Press.

Joseph Zydlewski, Stephen Coghlan, Cody Dillingham, Guillermo Figueroa-Muñoz, Carolyn Merriam, Sean Smith, Rylee Smith, Daniel Stich, Sarah Vogel, Karen Wilson, Gayle Zydlewski. 2023. Seven dam challenges for migratory fish: insights from the Penobscot River. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 11: 1253657.

Timothy F Sheehan, Molly Payne Wynne, George Aponte Clarke, Steve Coghlan, Mathias Collins, Alice Kelley, Rodney Kelshaw, Daniel Kusnierz, Joshua Royte, Rory Saunders, Catherine Schmitt, Karen Wilson, Gayle Zydlewski, Joe Zydlewski. 2021. Implementing a Monitoring Framework and Data Archive for Dam Removal: Pre-project Ecological Monitoring of the Lower Penobscot River, Maine USA. NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-NE-272. Dec 2021. https://apps-nefsc.fisheries.noaa.gov/rcb/publications/tm272.pdf

Wilson, K., and Veneranta, L. (Eds). 2019. Data-limited diadromous species – review of European status. ICES Cooperative Research Report No. 348. 273 pp. http://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.5253

Carissa Maurin, Carrie Byron, Karen Wilson, and Adam St. Gelais. Food webs and species biodiversity on bivalve aquaculture farms compared to analogous non-farm structures. Marine Environmental Research. Volume 147, May 2019, Pages 49-61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marenvres.2019.03.012

Roy, S.G., Uchida, E., de Sousa, S. P., Blachly, B., Fox, E., Gardner, K., Gold, A., Hart, D., Jansujwicz, J., Klein, S., McGreavy, B., Mo, W., Smith, S.M.C., Vogler, E., Wilson, K., Zydlewski, J. 2018. Damming decisions: A multi-scale approach to balance trade-offs among dam infrastructure, river restoration, and cost. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. November 20, 2018. 115 (47) 12069-12074.

Félix Massiot-Granier, Géraldine Lassalle, Pedro R. Almeida, Miran Aprahamian, Martin Castonguay, Hilaire Drouineau, Emili García-Berthou, Pascal Laffaille, Alain Lechêne, Mario Lepage, Karin Limburg, Jérémy Lobry, Eric Rochard, Kenneth Rose, Juliette Rosebery, Thibaud Rougier, John Waldman, Karen Wilson, Patrick Lambert. 2018. A generic method to assess species exploratory potential under climate change. Ecological Indicators. 90 (July 2018): 615-623.

Bieluch, Karen H., Theodore Willis, Jason Smith, and Karen A. Wilson. 2017. The Complexities of Counting Fish: Engaging Citizen Scientists in Fish Monitoring. Maine Policy Review 26.2: 9 -18, http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol26/iss2/4.

Willis, T.V., Wilson, K.A., and B. J. Johnson. 2017. Diets and stable isotope derived food web structure of fishes from the inshore Gulf of Maine. Estuaries and Coasts. 40(3): 889-904. doi:10.1007/s12237-016-0187-9    

Karin Limburg, Randy Brown, Rachel Johnson, Bill Pine, Roger Rulifson, David Secor, Kelly Timchak, Ben Walther & Karen Wilson. 2016. Round-the-Coast: Snapshots of Estuarine Climate Change Effects, Fisheries, 41:7, 392-394, DOI:10.1080/03632415.2016.1182506

John Waldman, Karen A. Wilson, Martha Mather & Noah P. Snyder. 2016. A Resilience Approach Can Improve Anadromous Fish Restoration. Fisheries 41:3, 116-126.

Payne, M., K.A. Wilson and K. Limburg. 2015. Using Natural Tags to Determine Marine and Freshwater Habitat Usage by Juvenile Blueback Herring (Alosa aestivalis). Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science. 72(7):1073-1086, 10.1139/cjfas-2014-0206.

Larsen, P., K.A. Wilson and D. Morse. 2013. Observations on the Expansion of a Relict Population of Eastern Oysters (Crassostrea virginica) in a Maine Estuary: Implications for Climate Change and Restoration. Northeast Naturalist, 20(4):N28-N32.

Willis, T.V., K.A. Wilson, K.E. Alexander, and W.B. Leavenworth. 2013. Tracking cod diet preference over a century in the northern Gulf of Maine: historic data and modern analysis. Marine Ecology Progress Series 474:263-276.

Cronin-Fine, L., J. D. Stockwell, Z. T. Whitener, E. M. Labbe, T. V. Willis, and K.A. Wilson. 2013. Application of Morphometric Analysis to Identify Alewife Stock Structure in the Gulf of Maine. Marine and Coastal Fisheries 5:11-20.

Nilsson, E., Solomon, C.T., Wilson, K.A., Willis, T.V., Larget, B. and Vander Zanden, M.J. 2012. Effects of an invasive crayfish on benthic invertebrate abundance and on benthivory and trophic position of fish. Freshwater Biology. 57(1): 10-23.

C.H. Orr, E.H. Stanley, K.A. Wilson, and J.C. Finlay. 2007. Effects of restoration and reflooding on soil denitrification in a leveed midwestern floodplain. Ecological Applications. 17(8): 2365-2376.

Wilson, K.A., E. Todd Howell and Donald A. Jackson. 2006. Replacement of zebra mussels by quagga mussels in the Canadian nearshore of Lake Ontario: distribution and correlations with substrate, round goby abundance and upwelling frequency. Journal of Great Lakes Research, 32(1):11-28.

Wilson, K.A., Hrabik, T.R., and J.J. Magnuson. 2006. Ecological change and exotic invaders: long-term external drivers of lake ecology in Magnuson, J.J., Kratz, T.M. and B. Benson, eds. Long-Term Dynamics of Lakes in the Landscape. Oxford University Press.

Hrabik, T.R., Greenfield, B.K., Lewis, D.B., Pollard, A.I., Wilson, K.A. and T.K. Kratz. 2005. Species diversity in four groups of aquatic organisms in north temperate lakes: physical, chemical and biological properties as sources of variability.Ecosystems. 8 (3): 301-317.

Wilson, K.A., Magnuson, J.J., Lodge, D.M., Hill, A.M., Kratz., Perry, W.L. and T.V. Willis. 2004. Long-term effects of a rusty crayfish (Orconectes rusticus) invasion: dispersal patterns and community changes in a North Temperate lake. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. 61(11): 2255-2266.

Vander Zanden, M.J., Wilson, K.A., Casselman, J.M., and Yan, N.D. 2004. Chapter 13: Species introductions and their impacts in North American Shield lakes. Pages 239-264 in Gunn, J.M., Steedman, R.J., and Ryder, R.A., editors. Boreal shield watersheds: lake trout ecosystems in a changing environment. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. 

Byron, C.J. and K.A. Wilson. 2001. Rusty crayfish (Orconectes rusticus) movement within and between habitats in Trout Lake, Vilas County, Wisconsin. Journal of the North American Benthological Society. 20(4):606-614. 

Puth, L. and K.A. Wilson. 2001. Boundaries and corridors: a review of streams and their role in the landscape. Conservation Biology. 15(1):21-30.

Carpenter, S.R., Oldson, M., Cunningham, P., Gafny, Herwig, B., S., Nibbelink, N., Pellett, T., Storlie, C., Trebitz, A., Wilson K. 1998. Managing macrophytes to increase fish growth: a multi-lake experiment. Fisheries. 23(2):6-12.

Karen Wilson
207-780-5395

309 Bailey Hall, Gorham Campus

Education

PhD, Limnology/Zoology, University of Wisconsin-Madison