Mike Allen’s interest in biology and nature flourished at a young age as a Boy Scout spending his time camping and exploring the woods of New York state. However, at the time he probably couldn’t have envisioned that his youthful fascination with the environment would lead him to play a role in the United States government’s response to one of the worst environmental crises in decades – the Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010.

Allen was in the third month of his Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant fellowship with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) when there was an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20, 2010 that killed 11 workers and resulted in oil being pumped in the Gulf for almost three months.

“We won’t know the full effects and the real answers for years,” said Allen, who received his Ph.D. in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009. “It is very disheartening because the Gulf is already a stressed ecosystem, and (the spill) is one more major kick in the gut. It is going to be interesting to see what happens over the next five to 10 years.”

The National Sea Grant College Program established the Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship in 1979. Graduate students accepted into the program travel to the Washington, D.C. area to work on marine policy in legislative and executive offices.

Soon Allen’s office, the Office of Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes, located in Silver Spring, Md., was tasked to put together a group that would coordinate major components of the science and research response to the oil spill disaster.

“NOAA is the lead science agency for oil spills, so all aspects of the enterprise came into play,” Allen said, adding that they worked on researching seafood safety, dispersants, oil properties in the water, and more.

Allen worked with the federal agency’s leadership to track activities in the Gulf; develop and submit science proposals with the laboratories; and secure reimbursement and new funding for completed, ongoing and proposed activities.

While Allen was never sent to the actual site of the spill, he said the experience gave him a new perspective on how the government responds to a crisis of this magnitude.

“We were just one agency among many that had a mandate from Congress to respond to a spill like this,” he said. “Setting up the coordination mechanism across government agencies to make this happen was just incredible to see.”

During his fellowship, Allen also worked as the primary liaison between NOAA’s administrative headquarters and the three “wet labs” – the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, and the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

Allen’s yearlong fellowship ran through the end of January 2011, when the program allowed him to transition to a contract position with 2020 Company, LLC, which has placed him in NOAA as a policy analyst.

“(The fellowship) has been an absolutely fabulous experience for me,” he said. “Being here in D.C. and seeing how the agency works and interacts with other agency offices has been very eye-opening for how the government functions and how people get things done.”

He also said the fellowship gave him the opportunity to travel to various offices and laboratories as well as develop valuable contacts.

“I encourage other people in Illinois and Indiana to consider applying for this fellowship because it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience policy in Washington, D.C.,” Allen said. “It will open your eyes to the way government works.”

Applications for the 2012 Knauss fellowships are due by Feb. 18. For more information, go to our Fellowship page.

IISG’s new environmental social scientist is Caitie McCoy. Caitie will focus on communities interested or involved with the Great Lakes Legacy Act, which provides resources to clean up U.S. EPA Areas of Concern. She will be working on outreach related to contaminant remediation and restoration (including economic and societal benefits), user needs assessments, communications plans, and case studies.

According to Caitie, she will work closely with local residents so that remediation projects are in line with community interests. She will bring together scientists, landowners, and other participants, including underserved audiences in the community, to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

She is located in the U.S. EPA Great Lakes National Program Office in Chicago.

Caitie recently finished her M.S. in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University. Her graduate work combined communication, collaborative conservation, and education to build the adaptive capacity and resilience of local communities. She has participated in a number of research projects focused on the connection of people and nature. She has some teaching experience and has worked for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

From the Environmental News Network:

Predicting future climates on planet Earth is an extremely hard task due to the myriad of factors involved. To make the necessary calculations requires computers with capacities far beyond the average home computer. However, climate models are become ever more reliable thanks not only to greater computing power, but also to more extensive observation efforts of the current climate, and an improved understanding of the climate system. Read more.

From the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel:

The cutting-edge “environmental” DNA sampling method that sparked a multistate lawsuit to force lock closures on the Chicago canal system has for the past year been dismissed by lock closure opponents as a junk tool. A big reason: The science behind it had never been peer-reviewed and published in a scientific journal.

That argument no longer holds water.

On Wednesday, the pioneers behind isolating DNA from water samples to confirm the presence of Asian carp in the Chicago canal system published their article in the peer-reviewed journal Conservation Letters. It asserts the survey tool is not only valid, but also that the risk of an Asian carp invasion of Lake Michigan is imminent. Read more.

From the Environmental News Network:

Global dimming is a less well-known but real phenomenon resulting from atmospheric pollution. The burning of fossil fuels by industry and internal combustion engines, in addition to releasing the carbon dioxide that collects and traps the sun’s heat within our atmosphere, causes the emission of so-called particulate pollution—composed primarily of sulphur dioxide, soot and ash. When these particulates enter the atmosphere they absorb solar energy and reflect sunlight otherwise bound for the Earth’s surface back into space. Read more.

From the New York Times:

Scientists long believed that the collapse of the gigantic ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica would take thousands of years, with sea level possibly rising as little as seven inches in this century, about the same amount as in the 20th century.

But researchers have recently been startled to see big changes unfold in both Greenland and Antarctica.

As a result of recent calculations that take the changes into account, many scientists now say that sea level is likely to rise perhaps three feet by 2100 — an increase that, should it come to pass, would pose a threat to coastal regions the world over. Read more.

Margaret Schneemann (left), water resource economist with IISG and the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), and Bud Mason (center), technical assistance provider for the Rural Community Assistance Program, have partnered together to help address financial management and rate setting issues faced by local utilities. This partnership came about through the northeastern Illinois water supply plan, WATER2050, developed by CMAP and the Regional Water Supply Planning Group, and the continuing partnership between IISG and CMAP.

Earlier this month, CMAP launched the region’s new comprehensive plan, GOTO2040. GOTO2040 emphasizes that our communities can be more livable if, among other things, we combine land use and water supply planning, and if we implement water conservation and efficiency strategies described in WATER2050. Meanwhile, the population in the region is predicted to increase by 25 percent by 2040. CMAP’s Tim Loftus, who directed WATER2050, explains, “Therein lies the central issue … How does the region accommodate millions more people with water supplies that are constrained? To avoid future shortages, water providers need to work together and consumers need to increase conservation.”

These are issues with which McHenry County Water Resources Manager Cassandra McKinney (right) is very familiar. McKinney worked over the past three years to develop the McHenry County Groundwater Resources Action Plan (WRAP) and is now bringing a series of speakers to the county to address the plan’s key implementation areas, including water conservation and rate setting.

On October 14, Schneemann and Mason spoke to the McHenry Groundwater Task Force on Water Conservation and Rate Setting on their technical assistance efforts in the region and how these could help the county implement WRAP. “Key to our efforts” McKinney said, is “proactively reaching out to stakeholders to ensure that our water supply planning efforts are coordinated with state and regional planning efforts through events such as this.”

IISG’s new research coordinator is Tomas Höök, an assistant professor in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University. Höök received his BS, MS and PhD from the University of Michigan and prior to coming to Purdue he worked at the Cooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystems Research and as a visiting scientist at Stockholm University, Sweden. His area of expertise is fisheries and aquatic sciences with a focus on fish and fisheries ecology in the Laurentian Great Lakes.

The threat of Asian carp invading the Great Lakes may not be as dire as some fear. According an Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant study, the lakes’ open waters do not provide sufficient food for the fish to grow.

Asian carp species—for example, bighead and silver carp—are filter feeders. They eat microscopic plankton that provides the base of the food chain. Since these fish grow quite large, they potentially pose a threat to the Great Lakes ecosystem if they thrive in these waters.

With funding from NOAA-National Sea Grant College Program, Sandra Cooke and Water Hill, Illinois Natural History Survey ecologists, sought to answer the question of whether Asian carp can survive and thrive in the nutrient-poor Great Lakes. They estimated the energy required for the carp to survive and grow, taking into account varying body sizes, swimming speeds and reproductive stages. These numbers were analyzed in light of available food sources in the Great Lakes.

According to their modeling results, there may be sufficient plankton in some harbors and other near shore areas, but not in open waters. “Flourishing populations of filter-feeding Asian carp are historically associated with conditions that feature abundant phytoplankton and zooplankton,” said Hill. “Most areas of the Great Lakes feature relatively low abundances of these plankton.”

Ironically, the carp may just be late to the Great Lakes plankton buffet because other invasive species have already depleted the supply. “Prior invasions of the Great Lakes by zebra and quagga mussels have reduced the potential for the carp to establish populations because these mussels have reduced plankton biomass,” said Hill. “They are filter feeders too.”

But don’t write the carp off in the Great Lakes altogether. Cooke and Hill speculates that bighead and silver carp may still have significant impact on fish communities in areas where there is sufficient plankton—in harbors and nearshore areas, as well as other productive locations such as Green Bay and western Lake Erie. “Many nearshore habitats can serve as important nurseries for larval fish, including walleye and alewives,” said Cooke.

The situation is also subject to change. For example, climate change may lead to conditions in which plankton are more abundant. An increase in nutrient levels can have the same effect. As plankton numbers increase, so does the likelihood that the carp will grow and thrive.

Hill does not see these results as a reason to relent on efforts to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. “Given the potential consequences to Great Lakes ecosystems if these filter feeders do prove capable of establishing reproducing populations, efforts to keep Asian carp out the Great Lakes must not be lessened,” he said. Rather, this work can provide insight for resource managers to direct their monitoring and prevention efforts to areas that are most at risk.

Results from this research are published in the October 2010 issue of Freshwater Biology (55).