IISG is excited to welcome four student interns this summer to help our specialists with everything from needs assessments, to outreach, to strategy facilitating, to economic valuations—and more. These four will spend 12 weeks working closely with a Sea Grant specialist on the issues affecting the Great Lakes.
Jordan Lillybridge
Green Infrastructure Workforce Intern Margaret Schneemann
Located at Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning
Jordan is a senior at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin majoring in geospacial science with a minor in geographic information systems.
He will be conducting a needs assessment and market analysis to ensure that training and workforce development efforts are in line with the Calumet region’s occupational and employment needs, leveraging the relationship gap between stakeholders and the community, and making sure all aspects (skill gaps, design standards, municipal regulations and the regional environment policies) are being looked at when achieving a Green Infrastructure program
Abigail Petersen
Community Sustainability Intern Kara Salazar
Located at Purdue University
Abigail graduated in May from the University of Illinois in natural resources and environmental sciences. She will be pursuing a Master’s degree in August 2016 in agriculture education at the University of Illinois.
During her summer internship, Abigail will collaboratively develop new extension education and training materials (case studies, fact sheets, excerpts of guide books) related to public spaces, rain gardens, and watershed management topics. She will also be help campus specialists deliver extension and training programs to communities across Indiana.
Abigail has hit the ground running in the two weeks since her internship began. She has attended the inaugural train the trainer program for the Enhancing the Value of Public Spaces program, supported the first meeting and launch of the advisory board and program development effort for the new Natural Resources Leadership Program, attended strategic planning meetings for IISG in Chicago, and helped to host a community meeting to start the Enhancing the Value of Public Spaces program in Columbus, Indiana.
Ashley Rice
Science Writer and Nutrient Strategy Facilitator Intern
Anjanette Riley, Eliana Brown, and Lisa Merrifield
Located at University of Illinois
Ashley comes to us from the agricultural communications program at Illinois State University, where she is about to start her senior year.
This summer, Ashley will wear two hats: a science writer and nutrient strategy facilitator. For her part in the communications team, Ashley oversees the Illinois Water blog, writing news and feature articles on IWRC research projects and important water issues facing the state.
She will also work closely with IWRC and IISG’s Eliana Brown to help facilitate Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy implementation and support Eliana’s other stormwater and water quality outreach efforts. Lauren Schnoebelen
Water Pricing Intern Margaret Schneemann
Located at Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning
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.
She will be working on the Ecosystem Services Project helping with organizing tables of articles and writing the literature reviews on their economic valuations.
Lauren will also be on the water rates database where she will be working with water rates and pricing ordinances.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension.
Daniel Walker is IISG’s new community planning extension specialist located in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University. He will collaborate with Purdue Extension staffers, community leaders, stakeholders, and interest group representatives in the Great Lakes region through programs that combine research-based tools with community planning to help determine and achieve the public interest.
Daniel is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, and joins IISG with five years of municipal planning and economic development experience with the City of Lafayette, Indiana.
Daniel earned a Master’s degree of urban and regional planning from Ball State University and a Bachelor’s degree in history from Monmouth College. He is a licensed secondary educator in Illinois.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension.
Schoolchildren once again got the chance to explore and learn from the environmentally remarkable Grand Calumet River at the remediated Roxana Marsh in northwest Indiana.
Seventy students from fourth and sixth grades atHarrison,McKinleyandCarrie Gosch elementaryschools worked one-on-one with scientists and experts doing activities like fish identification, macroinvertebrate sampling, bird watching, and tree planting. The mayor of East ChicagoAnthony Copeland even stopped by and helped the students plant a swamp white oak, a tree native to the area.
For a long time, the Grand Cal was referred to as the most polluted river in America. Through Great Lakes Legacy Act funding, almost 2 million cubic yards of river and wetland sediment have been removed or capped and 84 acres of habitat have been restored, including Roxana Marsh.
“It builds pride-in-place,” said Caitie Nigrelli, IISG environmental social scientist who’s been organizing the event every year. “It also helps encourage kids to take part in future stewardship efforts.”
Carrie Gosch Elementary sixth-grader Gerald Lewis was impressed by all the birds and insects and fish he saw.
“I didn’t know we were going to see this much, like eggs on the ground and stuff,” Lewis said. “And we saw some of the fish that was polluted by the oil.”
But his new-found interest in the environment didn’t end there. It made him want to do something about it.
“I felt sad at first when they showed us the fish that was getting hurt and killed,” Lewis said. “That made me want to think, like when I get older, I can help them.”
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension.
Ben Wegleitner is our new social science outreach assistant. He will be working with communities at multiple contaminated sediment sites as part of the Great Lakes Legacy Act. He is helping Caitie Nigrelli, IISG environmental social scientist, to create outreach materials, host educational events, and maintain a social media presence to connect communities with large-scale remediation projects on their waterways.
The only member of the cod family to live solely in freshwater, the burbot is commonly described as a cross between a catfish and an eel. This benthic beast gets its name from the single whisker-like barbel hanging under its mouth.
But the burbot is known by many other names depending on where you go—like “the lawyer,” “lush,” “mud blower,” “eelpout,” and “poor man’s lobster,” to mention a few. Such diverse calling cards are not surprising. The burbot can be found all over the globe north of the 40th parallel, ranging from the United Kingdom to Asia, across northern Europe, as well as North America.
In the United States, populations span from Alaska to Delaware, in all the Great Lake basins, and as far south as Missouri and Kansas. It can be found primarily in deep and cold waters of almost any substrate—silt, mud, gravel, rubble, you name it. During winter it will migrate to shallower depths, (and brackish waters for some populations) to spawn underneath the ice. This is one of the strongest factors connecting the burbot to saltwater cod, which also spawns in winter.
The fins of the burbot are relatively small, indicative of a low tolerance to strong currents. This poses no issue in terms of predation, however, as its yellow-brown color and dark mottling act as a kind of camouflage, enabling it to ambush prey. A juvenile burbot eats mainly small crustaceans like water fleas and zooplankton, but as it matures, its diet becomes more adventurous and the burbot feasts almost solely on other fish, like northern pike, yellow perch, walleye, and trout. Some of those fish rival the burbot in size, and, as with the northern pike and some lamprey, also act as predators. This pescatarian proclivity combined with the burbot’s habit of eating fish eggs can make it a nuisance species in non-native waters.
Because of their voracious appetite, burbot are relatively easy to catch. Anglers will have the best chance of hooking one during the evening or at night, when burbot are most active. (During the day they will remain near the bottom of the waterbody to keep cool in rising water temperatures.) If caught, burbot has been known wrap around and cling to the body holding it—its small embedded scales making the burbot smooth and slimy to the touch.
When cooked, burbot can taste similar to American lobster (thus the nickname), and their liver and roe are considered delicacies in Finland. Even the liver itself presents something of a peculiarity, being about six times as large as the livers of other freshwater fish of similar size. It was once used as an alternative to cod liver oil, having about eight times the potency of vitamin D and vitamin A. This discovery was made some time in the 1920s, when Theodore H. Rowell, a druggist and conservationist, found that the pelts of the foxes he raised increased in quality after feeding them burbot.
Populations of burbot are difficult to study and manage due to the fact that they spawn under ice, and their small scales makes determining their age challenging.
Although some populations of burbot have been threatened or made extinct by pollution, invasive species, and damming, currently the burbot is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a species of least concern, with management being a low priority in most regions.
The Coastal Management Fellowship was established to provide on-the-job education and training opportunities in coastal resource management and policy for postgraduate students and to provide project assistance to state coastal zone management programs. The program matches postgraduate students with state coastal zone programs to work on projects proposed by the state.
Starting in August, Monica will be working with the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management, aiding in the assessment of the hazard vulnerability for communities living on the coast, and their needs for support in improving their resilience. She received a Master’s degree in public affairs from Indiana University this past spring.
“I am incredibly excited to be a part of this fellowship, and more specifically to be a part of the project in North Carolina. My graduate studies focused on social and ecological resilience in the face of a rapidly changing environment, with a focus on vulnerable coastal communities,” said Monica.
“This fellowship is a dream come true!”
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
The Wilmette buoy returned to Lake Michigan earlier this week. But a few days before it departed, several of its biggest admirers stopped by to meet it at Lloyd Park in Winnetka, Illinois.
Wil, as some of the IISG scientists call it, lay prone in the parking lot withstanding the blustery winds and cold temperatures. The ugly weather didn’t stop the 10 or so Chicago-area sailors from coming to the open house, leaning in close and examining the body of the machine they’ve come to rely on after only one season.
One remarked at how much smaller it was than he thought. Others stood and posed with it for pictures.
It’s hard not to anthropomorphize the buoy. Once in the water, the weather and lake condition data and images it provides are like sage advice coming from a reliable friend.
“I’m with the Glencoe Boat Club and we were excited when it was put in,” Eric Brislawn of Buffalo Grove, Illinois said. “We’ve been watching data on it all summer and using it. We—the boaters, the sailors up here—had nothing like this anywhere nearby…so this really filled a nice gap for weather information.”
The buoy might not have made it in the water without the help of Laurie Morse of Glencoe, Illinois, who along with Purdue University, helped secure a grant to fund it.
“We have already noticed since it’s been in the water since 2015 that it’s made a difference in the quality of our marine forecast and it’s really important to all us recreational boaters,” said Morse, who was with her husband at the open house.
“Well, we look for it in the water,” Morse remarked. “I’ve never been successful in finding it on the lake, but this is the first time I’ve seen the buoy. So this is very exciting.”
Jay Beugly, IISG aquatic ecology specialist, and scientists Ed Verhamme and John Bratton from LimnoTech, organized the open house and were on hand to talk about all the nearshore environmental-sensing this bright yellow, 610-pound buoy is capable of.
“We were happy that people came with lots of questions. Some didn’t know much about it. Others followed it closely last year,” said Beugly. “This is the first full season that this buoy will be deployed, and we want people to know that it’s out there. We were excited to be able to stand next to the buoy while it’s out of the water and talk to folks and see how we might improve their experience.”
Do you have expired or unused medicine sitting around your house? How you choose to get rid of those drugs could hurt our waterways.
“Research has shown that there can be negative effects to animal health and reproduction from pharmaceuticals that haven’t been removed from wastewater,” said Sarah Zack, the pollution prevention extension specialist for Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. “Wastewater treatment plants weren’t designed to remove many of the compounds getting into them.”
So, how should you get rid of your drugs? Instead of putting medicines in the trash or flushing them in the toilet, bring them to National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day 10 a.m.-2 p.m. April 30. There are 310 sites in Illinois and 135 sites in Indiana. The day is being hosted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and people can find the nearest drop off location on the DEA’s website.
There is a large and growing body of research available about the environmental impacts of pharmaceuticals in waterways, but any potential long-term human health impacts are not yet clear. So in the meantime, making sure we properly dispose of unwanted medications is a good bet.
“There are other reasons besides just water quality for making sure that your medicines are disposed of properly,” Zack said, adding that pets and children can get into unused medicines around the house.
Besides taking medicine to take back programs, Zack said people should make sure they’re communicating with their physicians about getting the appropriate quantities of medicine.
“Don’t take a 90-day supply of a medicine if a 30-day supply is sufficient,” Zack said.
Being cognizant of what’s in your medicine cabinet and being willing to say “no,” to samples of medication you don’t need are other ways to decrease the amount of prescription drugs you own.
More than 5.5 million pounds of pills have been collected since the event was created in 2010, according to the DEA’s website. Pills and patches may be dropped off, but the program cannot accept liquids or needles or sharps. The day is free and anonymous.
“It’s really important that we have these events to give the public an opportunity to ensure that they are being responsible with medicines,” Zack said.
If you are interested in setting up a permanent medicine disposal site in your local police station, contact Sarah Zack. You can also reach here on Twitter:@SarahAZack.
Ali Braboy is a senior studying journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Do you have questions about Lake Michigan monitoring? Or do you just want to see a buoy up close? Come visit the Wilmette Buoy Open House on April 26 from 5-7 p.m. at Lloyd Park in Winnetka, Illinois!
Jay Beugly, IISG aquatic ecology specialist and Ed Verhamme, project engineer from LimnoTech will be on hand to talk about all the nearshore environmental-sensing this bright yellow, 610-pound buoy is capable of.
“We’re happy to answer questions about anything people are interested in,” said Beugly. “This is the first full season that this buoy will be deployed, and we want people to know that it’s out there. We’re also excited to be able to stand next to the buoy while it’s out of the water and talk to folks and see how we might improve their experience.”
The buoy—once launched later in the week—will be moored roughly four miles off the coast of Wilmette, Illinois. From May to October, it relays information on wind speed, air and water temperature, wave height and direction, and other environmental characteristics each year.
Current lake conditions are updated every 10 minutes and are available at the IISG Wilmette Buoy page. Photos (taken once per hour during daylight) and video footage is available at the LimnoTech Webcam gallery. The mobile-friendly sites highlight conditions of particular interest to recreational users, such as wave height, wind speed, and surface water temperature.
Information collected from the buoys is also fed into the National Data Buoy Center operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Great Lakes Buoy offers more localized information.
Forecasters, researchers, and others can download raw historical data for Michigan City buoy ID 45170 or Wilmette buoy ID 45174 from any of these websites.
This event is free and the public are encouraged to attend!
IISG is hiring an experienced communication coordinator to oversee communication and lead efforts to develop and maintain programs and products that promote science-based knowledge and highlight IISG’s research, outreach and education efforts. Learn more at the #linkinbio.
Jordan Lillybridge
Lauren Schnoebelen
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