January 24th, 2013 by Irene Miles
Phragmites Australis, also know as the Common Reed, is a wetland plant that is not native to the Great Lakes. The invasive plant grows and spreads rapidly in the wetlands around the Lakes, and as a result can crowd out native plants that are beneficial to the local ecosystems.
Researchers at Michigan Tech are working on mapping the spread of the plant, though, in an effort to better understand its spread and plan for managing and reducing it.
From Upper Peninsula’s Second Wave:
“The common reed, or phragmites australis, isn’t native to the Great Lakes, but grows quickly in our climate conditions into large, tall stands that can threaten wetlands habitat.
The plant hasn’t been studied very much, or mapped, which was the goal of the Tech scientists, in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey, Boston College and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Together, teams first mapped the U.S. coastlines of all five Great Lakes using satellites.
Then, they did field studies along the coastlines to confirm the satellite findings, and plot the locations of large stands of the reed, in a first-of-its-kind map.”
Read more about the map at the link above and in the article at Science Daily.
January 18th, 2013 by Irene Miles
The National Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal program (P2D2) has had a great deal of success lately. After placing third in the international Volvo Adventure Award competition, the program partnered with the second place winners of the Volvo competition to start a P2D2 program in Erechim, Brazil. The P2D2 program began in 2008 as a collaborative effort between local pharmacies, law enforcement agencies, officials, and Pontiac Township High School students in Paul Ritter’s Ecology class and Eric Bohm’s Illinois Studies class.
The P2D2 program’s mission is to educate the public about the harm done to the environment due to current drug disposal practices and to provide communities with an alternative disposal approach that ensures the quality of water for future generations. Their good idea has quickly caught on; the P2D2 program is now available in more than 54 counties in Illinois, 21 other states, and now goes international with the addition of the Brazil P2D2 program coordinated by Paul Hubner.
January 14th, 2013 by Irene Miles
The folks at Wildlife Forever have teamed up with several partners including the North American Fishing Club to produce a series of television programs about aquatic invasive species that are threatening our waters.
Episode three of “Silent Invaders” offers an up-close and informative look at Asian carp, just one of several species that has either taken hold in our waterways or is threatening to spread and cause significant changes to important ecosystems.
You can watch the entire episode online here, as well as episodes providing information about Zebra and Quagga mussels and round Gobies.
January 11th, 2013 by Irene Miles
Sarah Zack and Danielle Hilbrich, members of IISG’s aquatic invasive species outreach team, set up a booth and talked with hundreds of visitors at the Let’s Go Fishing Show in Collinsville, IL January 4-6. They attended the show in order to provide more information to fishermen and boaters about the dangers of aquatic invasive species, and introduce them to some simple practices that can help reduce the spread of invasives.
Many visitors to the IISG booth had experienced Asian carp jumping at their boats while on the water, and were very interested in ways they could protect themselves while fishing and boating in infested waters. In addition, Danielle and Sarah encouraged anyone that catches an Asian carp – accidently or on purpose – to cook it up and eat it. Asian carp have mild-tasting, white, flaky flesh that takes seasoning and marinades very well. Asian carp are a healthy choice too, since they’re low in contaminants and high in omega-3 fatty acids. Many attendees said they were willing to try cooking Asian carp, so Danielle and Sarah shared recipes with them as well as copies of Louisiana Sea Grant’s video on how to fillet Asian carp.
The booth was highly visited throughout the weekend, and Danielle and Sarah had the chance to hand out hundreds of Stop Aquatic Hitchhikers!™ stickers and brochures while offering people more information about invasive species. The booth was even featured on a 92.3 WIL, a popular St. Louis country radio station, and radio host Bo Matthews briefly talked with Sarah Zack about AIS prevention steps that people can take to stop the spread of AIS – inspecting for and removing aquatic plants and animals from equipment, draining all water, disposing of live bait in the trash, and drying recreational equipment before visiting another waterbody. Bo Matthews strongly supports IISG’s AIS-prevention message, and even put a Stop Aquatic Hitchhikers! sticker on the radio station truck to help spread the word.
January 3rd, 2013 by Irene Miles
The University of Illinois’ Learning in Community (LINC) program provides service-learning opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience in a variety of fields while earning course credit towards their degree. The program also gives various departments and units at the University a chance to expand their mission and get students involved in critical issues. This past fall term, the LINC Program offered a Sea Grant-focused course for eight University of Illinois students where they learned about environmental threats to local and regional waterways. They designed and executed projects based on what they had learned about proper disposal of unwanted medicines.
At the conclusion of the course, students developed five activities focused on water issues, informing a larger audience about their importance and local impacts.
The projects included:
– A presentation and activity for Urbana High School’s science club students
– An article in the Green Observer and accompanying Facebook page about the importance of proper disposal of pharmaceuticals
– Placement of brochures at the McKinley Health Center in coordination with the Directors of Health Education and the Pharmacy
– A plan to spread the message about proper medicine disposal at student dormitories and to involve students in medicine collection events in 2013
The course and projects that resulted informed current University of Illinois students about important environmental issues, while giving them experience collaborating with each other, working with local organizations and businesses, and performing outreach to share the information they learned with residents of Champaign-Urbana.
January 2nd, 2013 by Irene Miles
A new law set to take effect in Illinois this year is aimed at helping to curb the spread of aquatic invasive species throughout Illinois’ waterways.
From WBEZ 91.5:
“The agency has targeted 39 other plant and animal species as “high-risk” threats to the Great Lakes region. Now, the state of Illinois is hoping to put a dent in the critters’ spread with a law aimed at boaters.
The new state regulation, which goes into effect at the start of 2013, makes it illegal for a boat in one river or lake to pick up plants and then go into another body of water — at least without being cleaned first.”
Read more and listen to the radio segment about the new law at the link above.
December 21st, 2012 by Irene Miles
Making a Great Lakes-themed riff on a holiday classic, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has compiled some aquatic invasive species information in the form of a modified “Twelve Days of Christmas.”
Seven carp a-leaping, perhaps? Check out the full article, written by our friends at Wisconsin Sea Grant, and learn a little more about aquatic invasives in the process.
From everyone at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, have a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season.
December 19th, 2012 by Irene Miles
Activities associated with the purchase, sale, and use of commercially available organisms or “organisms-in-trade” can potentially result in the introduction of aquatic invasive species (AIS) to waterways such as the Great Lakes. Preventing these introductions is a much more cost-effective way to protect waterways, as opposed to the cost and effort involved in controlling or managing them once they become established.
Building on a University of Notre Dame-led project to examine the environmental risks posed by certain “organisms in trade” (OIT), Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant has been awarded grant funding through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) for a project titled “GLSGN OIT Initiative – Expanding Risk Assessment Outreach.”
By creating an opportunity to remove these potentially invasive species from circulation, risk assessment is one way to prevent non-native species from becoming invasive. Risk assessment information is also important to AIS education, because studies have shown that education and outreach encourage and shape the behavioral changes necessary for preventing species introduction. For example, horticulturists decided against purchasing a given species once they learned it had the potential to become an invasive species.
This new GLRI grant provides for the creation of new risk assessment and OIT outreach tools including webinars, a training video, non-technical summaries of state laws and regulations, and publications for people involved with fish, reptile, and amphibian commerce. Development of these tools will be guided by a survey that assesses the needs and preferences of OIT user groups. The goal of all these efforts is to reduce the introduction of potentially invasive species, thereby helping to protect and preserve waterways from invasive threats.
This initiative, a collaboration among the Great Lakes Sea Grant Network, North Carolina State University (NCSU), the National Sea Grant Law Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law (NSGLC), and IISG, will also help educate and inform the public about alternatives to high-risk aquarium, water garden, bait, live food, and classroom species.
For more information, visit our webpage about aquatic invasive species.
December 18th, 2012 by Irene Miles
Will Tyburczy, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Chicago, and Najwa Obeid, a Ph.D. student working with Dr. Charles Werth at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, were the two IISG-sponsored graduate students selected for the John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship. As part of the fellowship, each of them spent a week in Washington, DC interviewing with leaders in marine policy and were selected for positions related to their research and career interests.
Will Tyburczy writes, “I ultimately selected a fellowship position in NOAA’s Office of Program Planning and Integration. Specifically, I’ll work with a nationwide network of employees across NOAA’s various offices and centers known collectively as the Regional Collaboration Network. The network specializes in finding collaborative solutions to achieve NOAA national and regional priorities. As a fellow, I will help to further develop the existing regional network and synthesize input from each of the network’s eight regions in order to brief NOAA leadership on how efforts are progressing across the country. I will also have the opportunity to meet with top administrators throughout NOAA and gain a working knowledge of how policy is used to effectively manage our oceans.”
Najwa Obeid also wrote to share her experience and her excitement at being selected for one of the fellowships. “Like many of my fellow fellows, I found Knauss placement week to be like speed dating or rush week. Every 30-minute interview was an experience in itself – from traveling to a host office to learning more about what each does. Placement week allowed me to learn in more depth about the breadth of topics and research related to the Great Lakes, coastal waters, and atmosphere that NOAA undertakes, and gave me the opportunity to meet a dynamic group of people dedicated to upholding NOAA’s mission and vision of the future.
My placement at National Science Foundation meshes well with my current research, which takes a multidisciplinary approach to managing urban stormwater runoff in communities around the Great Lakes. I will be working in the Coastal Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability Program (SEES) where I will be exposed to all facets of coastal ecosystems. These include land that is closely connected to the sea, with its beaches, cities, wetlands, and maritime facilities; the Great lakes, the continental seas and shelves; estuaries; and the overlying atmosphere. A goal of the Coastal SEES is identification of natural and human processes that will better inform societal decisions about the use of coastal systems. Likewise, my research contributes to assessing the impact that restoration activities have on hydrologic processes, and also provides insights on decision making through economic evaluation. In general, it presents a modeling approach based on the concept of coupled human-natural systems.”
Congratulations to both Will and Najwa on being selected as Class of 2013 Knauss Fellows. To learn more about the fellowship program, visit the National Sea Grant College Program Dean John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship website.
