Posted on April 23, 2026
BIDDEFORD, Maine — Students from the University of New England teamed up with the Biddeford Pool Conservation Trust in March to plant dune grass along the beach in Biddeford, Maine.
Dunes help protect the communities and habitats behind them and also provide a habitat for animals.
Biddeford was hit hard during the back-to-back storms in January 2024. Will Kochtitzky, an assistant professor at UNE, used geographic information systems to map out the damage along the coasts.
In the four areas surveyed, Kochtitzky and his team found that the beaches lost 28% of their dune area and had only recovered 19% of the loss by that fall.
They mapped it, but now Kochtitzky and the Biddeford community are hoping to restore what was lost.
There are multiple ways of restoring beaches after erosion, including adding more sand and building seawalls, but Lucie Fontein says dune grass is her favorite.
“We can’t fight nature; we can only work with nature,” said Fontein. “The way that dune grass works is it traps the sand and then grows taller and traps the sand again and grows taller, so that we’re just working with nature.”
Fontein is the president of the Biddeford Pool Conservation Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the ecosystem of the coastal community. When the trust was deciding how to address the storm damage, Fontein realized she could order dune grass.
Last year, she ordered 10,000 stalks of grass. She would have planted them all by herself, but she did not have to.
UNE students and community members came out to help her, and they did so for the second year in a row this March, only this year, they planted 12,000.
However, this year’s planting effort was also the beginning of a research project.
“We quickly realized that there was no literature on the correct spacing of dune grass,” said Kochtitzky. “We thought this was a great opportunity for us to take what’s currently stated, which is 12 or 18 inches, depending on how windy your environment is, with very little specification of what windy means.”
Kochtitzky and his students will monitor the dunes using drones. They are also taking wind and wave measurements, so in time, they will be able to understand how the beach and dune grass are responding.
Kochtitzky said protecting the coastal environment is also important to Maine as a whole.
“Maine’s economy really depends on tourism from, from largely derived from these beaches. We need to do everything we can to support these really critical ecosystems.”
