Service Providers

Contact Christopher Mangels for more details.

With over 25 local offices and a national footprint, we offer a wide and growing variety of consulting services, including: wetlands and stream studies, environmental design and ecosystem restoration, stormwater management and compliance, urban and community forestry, our proprietary TreeKeeper inventory management software, and invasive species management.

We understand the complex ecosystems, resource challenges, and regulatory concerns that impact the success of any environmental project. No matter the location—dense city core or a remote rural site—we leverage our creativity and expertise to deliver reliable, turn-key ecological consulting services. We combine the latest technologies with time-tested techniques to provide high-quality results in a timely and professional manner.

Specialties include research on, and management of, invasive knotweeds; interacting with State and municipal wetland laws and regulations; and botanical education. ELM’s Principal, Brian Colleran, has a long history with riparian area restoration projects in several biomes, and has been an author on four peer reviewed publications focused on how invasive knotweeds amplify and exacerbate riparian erosion.

We are a certified Supervising Forest Products Harvester through the CT DEEP. We have worked on trail creation, field reclamation and invasive species removal projects.

Mosaic Eco-Solutions was birthed during COVID and parallel to the actual birth of our second child. As a working parent with two young children, it made sense that a small-scale independent consultant model could potentially align with both our work/life balance needs and contribution to the conservation community. The “Mosaic” is a reference to “mosaic of patches” which is a landscape pattern made up of distinct habitat patches, or areas with a specific size, shape, and characteristics including individual forest stands, farms, wetlands, shrubland patches, highways, or towns. The patches are set within a matrix, which is the “background ecological system” of the landscape. We believe that our company within our community within the region is working towards conserving, monitoring, and expanding the health of the landscape. Our vision is designing and developing patches in our backyards, in our forests, and anywhere that can benefit the health of our landscape ecosystems. We specialize in working with private landowners, developers, land trusts, municipalities, and all stakeholders that know the value provided by environmental systems around us, and hopefully next to us and within us.

Why do we believe in “buy local”? Active management and stable local food and natural resource markets are key to people’s wellbeing. These resources and products from resources are the base of local economies; therefore, purchasing local products keeps money in local communities. This means resiliency, accessibility, and equity.

Why walkable communities? Land has immediate and long term value; more so immediate with the current price of housing and rent. We think making decisions that affect the next generation is important; therefore, it only makes sense to conserve and keep natural landscapes undeveloped and unhoused. We think that high density, walkable communities allow this and can be the solution. Smaller footprint does not mean void of natural ecosystems. Rural town centers, existing city communities, previously developed industrial lots all have the potential to support walkable communities. Suburban sprawl and strip development need to be removed from zoning regulations; these are not natural systems and cause significant fragmentation to the landscape.

Why active management? It is clear that our past land use has impacted the natural landscape, it is even more clear that our current decisions are drastically impacting our natural landscape. There can be no more “preservation” as a rule of thumb. We need to accept “no action” as an active management strategy that might work in some areas. Look at the non-native invasive plants and insect species that are driving the landscape’s natural development, creating monocultures. We want to create a cooperative of private landowners that have natural and healthy functioning ecosystems, and we would like to use eco-types from these members to restore and diversify the landscape. Active management supports the local economy, local resources, local farmers, local energy sources, and most importantly the creation of mosaic of patches.

Jeff started out in the construction industry after an enlistment in the US Coast Guard. After working as a laborer, equipment operator and commercial truck driver, Jeff went to Norwich University to earn his Civil Engineering degree. Since then, he earned his Connecticut Professional Engineer license and has worked on some of the biggest and most challenging construction projects in the USA and beyond. These projects include numerous contracts on the Big Dig in Boston, the Amtrak Electrification and hundreds of infrastructure projects across Connecticut.