The R/V Lake Guardian’s recently completed survey of all five Great Lakes is not an unprecedented feat. In fact, this survey—which collected samples at over 100 stations this August alone—has taken place twice a year since the early 1980s, once each spring and again in summer.
Something that is new, however, is how much of the work is accessible to us landlocked lovers of the Great Lakes.
As the person at the helm for the @LakeGuardian Twitter account, I was overjoyed to spend the first nine days of August on board for the Michigan and Huron legs of this year’s summer survey. Officially called the Open Lakes Water Quality Monitoring Survey, this particular research cruise is important to highlight because it brings together scientists from around the basin to focus on contributing research to a long-term monitoring program that has been assessing the health of the Great Lakes for over 30 years.
The fast-paced, round-the-clock nature of research cruises—especially one of this magnitude—hardly allows time for the scientists or crew to communicate the work they’re doing.
But for me, being in the middle of all the action was the perfect time to gather and produce material to share with the Lake Guardian’s Twitter followers. Using the hashtag #SummerSurvey2016, I chronicled the exciting, enlightening, and at times obstacle-laden journey of the survey through live Tweeting updates, photos, and videos from the Guardian’s sampling decks and onboard labs.
Working first and foremost as science personnel for the EPA water quality program, I labored 12-hour shifts each day. From 4 p.m. until 4 a.m., I had to suit up in steel-toed boots, a life vest, rubber gloves, and hard hat every time the ship arrived at a station and head out to the rosette deck to collect the water samples taken from several depths and specific layers of the water column.
Bringing milk-crates full of water samples back into the wet lab, I then had one of two tasks: filter the water and preserve it for four different nutrient analyses or run board chemistry to determine the pH, conductivity, alkalinity, and turbidity of each sample.
While this water-quality portion of the survey is being conducted, samples are taken simultaneously on the fantail, or back of the boat, to collect plankton and sediment. Any station reached after the sun goes down is also sampled for Mysis, an aquatic animal that resembles shrimp and is only active at night.
All three onboard labs are constantly buzzing with sample processing and preserving—with researchers doing things like extracting chlorophyll a or flash-freezing microbial cells in liquid nitrogen.
In every spare moment I tried to capitalize on the flurry of activity relating to both science and ship life. Showing off the research as it’s happening, making it accessible and informative, is the best way to tell the important story of the work being done to monitor and protect the Great Lakes.
By the time I left, the Lake Guardian was preparing for her next trip, the Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative. The scientists have already started #CSMI2016, so be on the lookout for updates!
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
Forest Preserve District of DuPage County, Illinois, home to 25,000 acres and more than 29 actively managed water bodies, now displays over 120 signs bearing the Be A Hero—Transport Zero™(BAH)message. The change from the older “Protect Your Waters” signage grew out of the recent statewide adoption of BAH as the primary invasive species awareness campaign in Illinois.
Illinois law was changed on January 1, 2013 to prevent the spread of invasive aquatic plants and animals by boats, trailers, and vehicles.
Dan Grigas, a fisheries ecologist at the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County, was heavily involved in getting the signs installed with the help of Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The signs also serve as an important reminder to boaters to follow the law that makes it illegal to leave a waterbody with aquatic plants or animals attached to a boat or trailer.
“We’re trying to keep everybody on the same message,” Grigas said. “And now that there are more signs in places where there’s boater access, people won’t be able to say to law enforcement, ‘I didn’t know.’”
In 2013, Pat Charlebois, IISG aquatic invasive species coordinator, and her team developed the campaign that encourages recreational water users to take simple steps—remove, drain, and dry—after a day on the water.
An IISG survey of boat show attendees found that people who have heard these messages are more likely to take action to prevent the spread of invasive species.
“We’re excited that DuPage has joined the campaign in such a big way,” Charlebois said.
“We gladly welcome new partners to Illinois’ Be A Hero campaign—terrestrial and aquatic!”
The first thing IISG Assistant Research Coordinator Carolyn Foley does each morning is feed her kids. Then, while toast is toasting or oatmeal is warming up, she checks the IISG real-time buoys.
“Jayson Beugly, Angela Archer, and I all monitor the buoys to make sure they’re transmitting OK,” Foley said. “But I also look for cool things that are being captured.”
Foley shares these “cool things” via the @TwoYellowBuoys Twitter feed that was conceived during a 2015 IISG staff meeting.
“Jay and I were sitting next to each other during a talk about engaging with social media,” Foley recalled. “He turned to me and said, ‘We should make a Twitter account for the buoys.’ And we both began to laugh.”
Carolyn admits she didn’t know much about Twitter before starting @TwoYellowBuoys, but it seemed like a great platform for communicating the graphs and images constantly generated by the buoys.
“I think visually, and my favorite part of writing scientific manuscripts is putting together graphs in order to tell a story. I hope that seeing how the data illustrate trends and phenomena helps people better understand how scientists use the data to answer complex questions,” said Foley.
“And it doesn’t hurt that looking at the webcam pictures reminds me why I do what I do, especially when I haven’t been able to get near the water lately.”
IISG owns and operates two nearshore buoys in Lake Michigan, one in Michigan City, Indiana and another in Willmette, Illinois. The weather buoys serve a variety of audiences, from the National Weather Service to recreational water users. Data from the buoys, including information on water temperature, wind speed, wave height, solar radiation, and more, is transmitted every 10 minutes.
Foley is especially partial to posting thermocline data on Twitter because she knows anglers make decisions based on water temperature.
The buoy dashboards provide this data in both numerical and graphical form, and users can even access historic data. In addition, webcam images are captured every hour during daylight hours and shared online.
Using @TwoYellowBuoys, Foley has featured local and Lake Michigan-wide comparisons of water temperatures, air temperatures, wave heights, wind speeds, and more. She also pulls together images from the webcams atop the buoys to share with followers.
“It’s not up to us to predict what’s going to happen—the National Weather Service and others use the data for that purpose,” said Foley.
“But to be able to visualize what has happened and link it to real things that people have experienced, like storms or temperature shifts, is really fun and hopefully neat for people to see and understand.”
“The site doesn’t glow!” assured Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (Michigan DEQ) geologist Sarah Pearson, to the relief of local teachers stepping foot on the land of what used to be the Zephyr oil refining facility in Muskegon, Michigan. The site is now home to a fertilizer company.
The 14 educators were taking part in a week-long West Michigan Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative that brought them to an area of wetlands that endured repeated oil spills during the decades prior to the 1990s that Zephyr was in business—refining, then switching to bulk storage.
Teachers gather to look at a map of the Zephyr site.
Today there’s little visible indication of those frequent spills, which sometimes resulted in fires. Now and then you can still catch a whiff of oil or spot some sheen on the ground, but for the most part the landscape is picturesque.
The grasses are tall and the wildlife has started to return. But contamination, including petroleum products and heavy metals like lead and copper, remain just out of site in the sediment of Muskegon Lake.
“The funny thing is that you knew it existed, back in the day. But when we drove back there, you couldn’t see it. So it’s more out of sight, out of mind,” said Shannon Delora, Muskegon area transition coordinator for students in special education.
“Unless you are taken there, you don’t know all that’s happening, the good and the bad of it all.”
Tanks that at one time stored oil by Zephyr are now used by a fertilizer company that owns the land.
Ben Wegleitner, IISG social science outreach assistant, was on hand to introduce the latest version of Helping Hands, a curriculum that engages upper elementary and high school students in Great Lakes environmental stewardship. It is designed for schools located in Areas of Concern, like Zephyr, but can be applied to any Great Lakes community where large-scale environmental cleanup projects are ongoing.
The lessons touch on a variety of topics, like the effects of pollution and invasive species, and include hands-on activities.
“If you need an opportunity to get your students out in the field and get involved in natural resources and pollution,” Wegleitner told the teachers, “there’s no shortage of opportunities to get your kids interested. Muskegon is a uniquely positioned area for that.”
The Zephyr cleanup, which is funded through the Great Lakes Legacy Act, involves the U.S. EPA, Michigan DEQ, and IISG. The plan is to remediate 36,000 to 45,000 cubic yards, followed by habitat restoration. It’s slated to get started within the next six months and will take about a year and a half to complete.
“I was very unfamiliar with Zephyr,” said Beth Sipperley, a third grade teacher at Oak Ridge Elementary School.
“To go there and see it and to have the curriculum that really ties into it—one that’s so connected to Muskegon—is great.”
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
Abigail Petersen spent the summer as a community sustainability intern with IISG Sustainable Communities Extension Specialist Kara Salazar at Purdue Extension. Abigail graduated in May from the University of Illinois in natural resources and environmental sciences. She will be pursuing a Master’s degree in this fall in agriculture education at the University of Illinois.
Throughout the summer, I was able to see community development programs from the very beginning stages of curriculum development all the way through the final stages of implementation and training.
I had the opportunity to learn Purdue Extension’s processes and duties through observation and through being involved in the process, and I think the experience will contribute to my success in the future. This was truly an invaluable summer of experiences that has provided me with opportunities that have helped me shape my future career and also inform my future coursework.
I attended two planning meetings where the team designed the curriculum and made major decisions about the direction of the program regarding the topics, theoretical frameworks, and resources. Sitting in on this process as well as making some minor contributions was a wonderful experience that will definitely help me in my future graduate school work and career path.
When returning to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to begin my Master’s in agriculture education, I will take these experiences with me and use the skills and knowledge I’ve gained to make informed decisions about curriculum design and development to make positive impacts in communities.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
Jordan Lillybridge interned in Chicago with IISG Water Resource EconomistMargaret Schneemann. He is a senior at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin majoring in geospacial science with a minor in geographic information systems.
One of the biggest stresses of a college student going into his/her last year of school is finding an internship or long-term job that will help them grow as a person. When I was offered the position of Green Infrastructure Workforce Intern with IISG, I felt as if everything was coming together.
I knew I had a great opportunity to explore the green industry. Coming into the internship, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my geospatial science and GIS degree, but I knew I needed some work experience to realize what my real desire was.
This internship gave me the opportunity to understand a significant problem that underdeveloped or low-income communities have – flooding. Before the internship, I had little knowledge about the process of installing and maintaining green stormwater infrastructure.
Over the past three months, I have had an opportunity to be a part of the Calumet Stormwater Collaborative (CSC). CSC is a group of stakeholders that has come together to tackle flooding issues within the Millennium Reserve (southern Cook County). As a part of the Training & Maintenance working group within the CSC, I focused on issues and gaps related to training skills and workforce development. One of my tasks was to assess what other cities have done before us to address these issues and create summaries of these reports. We had monthly collaborative meetings, which was my chance to update our working group on new information as well as get key feedback from local case studies.
Aside from reading and reporting to our working group about areas to focus on, I had opportunities to step out of the office and network with different organizations. The first was a Center of Neighborhood Technology (CNT) presentation about their RainReady Initiative at the South Suburban Mayors and Management Association. CNT was educating the community and potential at-risk citizens on their community and neighborhood green infrastructure programs.
The second was a GreenCorps action plan meeting. GreenCorps is an organization that trains workers with barriers on how to maintain the environment including green infrastructure installations. People who were a part of the meeting gave valuable feedback to GreenCorps on how to help them grow.
Many of us who attended were able to meet past and present trainees. For me, understanding their perspective was pivotal considering some of the trainees grew up in the same neighborhood as me. To see people wanting to make a difference in their community by focusing on sustainability makes me appreciate everything that organizations like GreenCorps and OAI Inc. do for the low-income and underdeveloped neighborhoods. Workforce development for the green infrastructure industry is key.
The past three months working in the CSC with Margaret Schneemann has given me an opportunity to not only impact neighborhoods close to mine, but to also gain valuable communication, analytical, and planning skills along the way. It has also narrowed my thoughts on what I want to do as a profession – renewable consulting.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue University Extension.
Lauren Schnoebelen interned in Chicago with IISG Water Resource EconomistMargaret Schneemann. Lauren is a recent graduate from Northern Michigan University with a major in environmental science, a concentration in natural resources, and a minor in sustainability.
This summer I spent my time working as the Water Policy and Pricing intern for IISG at the offices of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. I didn’t really know what to expect. I was excited to work on policy issues and get familiar with township and village ordinances for water pricing, but I had never worked with large data sets before.
At first I was a little overwhelmed, but once I started getting the hang of it, I really enjoyed it because I got the opportunity to see what so many communities around me were doing to manage their water systems. After working for a month and a half on collecting as much data as I could get on water, sewer, and possible storm water rates, I needed to call village halls and water facilities to get any missing information.
The hope was to have all the rates available for the 2017 fiscal year. This gave me the opportunity to improve my communication skills by talking to dozens of people about what they charge their residents for water and sewer services. With this project done, I’m really excited to see how the final presentation of it will be in the Northeast Illinois Water and Wastewater Rates Dashboard.
Another opportunity that I was given was becoming a co-author of a published literature review. I helped to write about the economic value of ecosystem services in the Great Lakes region. This project allowed me to create and organize multiple tables displaying all the studies that were used in the paper and write summaries based on their subcategories of threatened ecosystem services. I also helped in editing and arranging the final layout of the literature review.
Throughout my summer, I was going to monthly meetings for the Northwest Water Planning Alliance and was involved in creating a community outreach brochure on establishing new lawns through seed or sod and their water requirements. This helped me see what communities are currently doing to work on water conservation and also how community outreach can lead to suggestions for policy change.
This internship gave me an opportunity that I haven’t had before. I worked on so many different aspects of water conservation which gave me great experience in creating a database, academic research and writing, and community involvement and outreach. With these skills, I know I will be extremely competitive in finding a full-time position in my field.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue University Extension.
David Kovacic from the Illinois Natural History Survey says constructed wetlands are “more fail safe” than some of the other nitrogen loss reduction practices highlighted in the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy. Through droughts and floods, heat waves and early frosts, these shallow depressions placed at the edge of farm fields remove an annual average of 25-60 percent of the nitrogen in water carried through tile lines.
Those reductions are key for water quality in Illinois and downstream. By most estimates, the Prairie State is the largest contributor of nutrients to the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. More than 400 million pounds of nitrate-nitrogen leave the state through the Mississippi River system each year. And according to the science assessment at the root of the state’s strategy, the bulk of that comes from the tile-drained region of central and northern Illinois.
Hear more from Kovacic, along with University of Illinois’ Lowell Gentry and The Nature Conservancy’s Maria Lemke, on the benefits of constructed wetlands in the latest video from IISG and the Illinois Water Resources Center.
Using state-of-the-art sensors, the teachers, alongside four research scientists from Minnesota and U.S. EPA, took part in water sampling—all day and night—to evaluate the presence of zooplankton, aquatic invasive species, and water quality and nutrient differences over time.
Teachers working in the lab on the Lake Guardian.
The teachers analyzed the samples in on-board laboratories and presented their findings after the ship dropped anchor. But their work is just beginning. The teachers now have the task of inspiring their own students to become Great Lakes scientific explorers.
“So many of our labs we do in class, the students have to do an experiment that simulates what would happen in real life,” Ashlee Giordano a science teacher at Northfield Jr./Sr. High School in Wabash, Indiana. “It is meaningful, however, showing students what I did, and the data we collected would really hit home for them.”
This year’s cruise received some special attention from University of Illinois Extension’s radio personality Todd E. Gleason who interviewed IISG community outreach specialist and liaison to U.S. EPA Kristin TePas over the phone while she was still on the trip. The interview was aired on stations throughout Illinois.
“We really want them to be more comfortable with science and understanding the process of research,” TePas said.
This year the teachers hailed from seven Great Lakes states. Two were from Illinois and one from Indiana.
The exhaustive effort scientists go through was not lost on Cheryl Dudeck, a biology and human anatomy teacher at King College Prep High School in Chicago.
“I was surprised by how many people it takes to complete one week of research. I also was surprised to find out that the research happens 24/7 and how it changes with the weather conditions,” Dudeck said.
“I think that most people do not understand the importance and complexity of the Great Lakes.”
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue University Extension.
Join the Invasive Crayfish Collaborative for an exciting webinar featuring Purdue University master`s student Izzy Paulsen. Izzy will share her mixed method study exploring how and why teachers use live crayfish and their interest in outreach. Her study draws from interview and survey data conducted in Great Lakes states.
Deadline extended! The IISG program, in cooperation with the @nationalparkservice at @indianadunesnps and @UrbanRivers in Chicago, is offering two internship opportunities to support conservation policy efforts. Sea Grant’s national Community Engaged Internship (CEI) program aims to broaden participation in coastal, ocean, Great Lakes, and marine sciences providing training and mentorship to the next generation of scientists, decision-makers, and citizens.
The program will do so by recruiting, retaining and engaging students in place-based research, extension, education, and/or communication that respects and integrates local ways of knowing.
Meet IISG grad student scholar, Lena Azimi! Lena is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Purdue University, specializing in geomatics with a background in environmental engineering. During her master’s program, Lena encountered remote sensing technology, which provides a way to collect data from a distance, especially remote or hard-to-reach places. This experience led her to pursue a Ph.D. degree and dive deeper into remote sensing and tackle urgent environmental challenges.
Join us this Thursday for a seminar on the latest fish biology, ecology, and fisheries science happening in Lake Michigan.
Speaker will include: -Anna Hill (Purdue) with an update on alewife diet and growth rates in Lake Michigan -Charlie Roswell (INHS) with an update on Lake Michigan and Calumet River smallmouth bass movement -Dan Makauska (IL DNR) with an update from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources
