Managing stormwater has become more challenging as urban development increases, storms get bigger and sewer systems can’t keep up. Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant funded a University of Illinois project to help communities add green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) to their strategies to prevent local flooding.

The research and outreach team set out to incorporate information about local soils as well as other factors in planning and designing GSI sites.

Mary Pat McGuire in the U of I Department of Landscape Architecture led this multidisciplinary research project, adding to her knowledge and skills with those of geologists, water resources engineers, and a community outreach specialist. With this range of expertise, and students contributing throughout, the project encompassed research, modeling, design and engagement.

“At the beginning of the process, we had to learn to communicate with each other because we brought different professional languages to the table,” said David Grimley, a Quaternary geologist at the Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS). “By the end, we all got the bigger picture—we all learned from the experience.”

The team focused their efforts in the Calumet region, which encompasses the southeast side of Chicago along with nearby suburbs. This flat, low-lying area has historically been particularly prone to flooding. Add to that, long-standing, traditional infrastructure is aging and is frequently in need of repair or upgrading. Many communities in the Calumet region, as well as elsewhere, do not have the financial resources to update their sewer systems, which at best, may still be insufficient.

Green stormwater infrastructure offers a nature-based way to enhance traditional or “grey” infrastructure. The idea of GSI is to increase opportunities for rainfall to be absorbed where it lands, whether into a well-placed rain garden or even onto permeable pavement, instead of running off parking lots, streets and sidewalks and into sewer systems, potentially overwhelming them.

Permeable pavement helps rainwater absorb on-site.

But GSI doesn’t always work as well as it might. Rain gardens are sometimes too small or are placed convenient for human activities, but not ideal for drainage. McGuire, however, thinks that effective GSI needs to be considered from a more wholistic perspective—about reconnecting to the land and retrofitting neighborhoods for water.

“We might solve urban stormwater problems by looking back at the pre-urban landscape—what was there before the city was there,” she explained. “Tracing those patterns back, we can try to find stormwater design solutions that don’t just perform like checking off boxes but actually start to reconnect with the natural history of the site.”

Understanding natural history and planning effective GSI includes studying subsoils, which sit under the topsoil and have been there for many millennia.

Soil Maps

Pilot projects began to take shape in two Calumet region municipalities, Calumet City and Midlothian. “We chose communities that we felt would be receptive to the research—these communities were at a place in their process where they wanted to learn more about the science and it would likely inform their green infrastructure planning,” said Margaret Schneemann, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant water resource specialist.

McGuire and Schneemann worked closely with local officials to discuss potential sites for installing GSI to reduce flooding as well as enhance the neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, ISGS Quaternary geologist Andrew Phillips, along with Grimley and several students, set out to fill in data gaps in these two communities in terms of soils—both at and below the surface. Their work built on earlier soil mapping overseen by state and federal agencies.

“Some data from previous surveys was old or incomplete,” said Phillips. “By doing field tests at six sites in both Calumet City and Midlothian we were able to update information in these two locations to be more accurate and more site specific.”

Piotr Szocinski, an ISGS student worker, loads soil samples dug at Amoozemeter stations. (Photo courtesy of Mary Pat McGuire)

For planning GSI, the key soil characteristic is how water moves through it. For example, sandy soils, which have relatively large particles, will allow rainfall to pass through much quicker than smaller, denser clay particles that absorb water. To gather this data, the soil team used a device called an Amoozemeter, which measures soil saturated hydraulic conductivity, or how quickly water passes through.

In terms of understanding soil types and distribution, it helps to take a page from a geologist’s mindset, which is tuned into a long view of history. The geologic parent materials for Midlothian subsoils were likely formed during and just after the time when glaciers moved through the region, creating and shaping Lake Michigan—about 20,000 years ago. 

These soils tend to be fine grained but are quite variable, not just from site to site, but in terms of depth, sometimes changing back and forth from sand to clay as you dig down.

From left to right, Kristine Ryan and Sarah Smith, Natural Resources Conservation Services soil scientists helping out on the project, describe soil characteristics in a core. (Photo courtesy of Mary Pat McGuire)

“As the glacier retreated, melting water running off the ice into the lake added complexity to what eventually became the Midlothian soil parent material,” said Grimley. 

Calumet City soils are much younger—more like 5,000 years old. By then, the glaciers were gone and what would one day be the south suburb provided beachfront along Lake Michigan’s southern shore. There, the soil is sandy. Like Midlothian, other parts of the city have clay soils.

“In both Midlothian and Calumet City we found that there was a lot of variability in the soil profiles, and we found that location matters—you need data for your particular site,” said Grimley.

Green Infrastructure Models

Assessing the impact of soil variability on GSI effectiveness was part of the task of the team’s modelers in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Ashlynn Stillwell, a U of I water resource engineer, and Reshmina William, a graduate research assistant, brought the project back to the present, while incorporating the updated knowledge of local soils.

“We were primarily working to answer the question of how green infrastructure relates to the history of a place through its soils as well as present conditions—what’s on the surface, including the human presence through development over time,” said Stillwell.

From a hydrology and hydraulics perspective, they were interested in understanding how GSI functions in response to different land surface conditions and to different rainfall conditions. But what defines whether green infrastructure is working well? What are reasonable expectations in terms of reducing runoff and flooding? Through the modeling process, the researchers set their rate of success.

“In our simulation, we used an 80% runoff reduction standard, which is higher than where most policies are currently set,” said Stillwell. “We found that for a lot of situations, we can achieve that. We can design good infrastructure that’s highly functional—we can have stringent policies and actually achieve them in many of these locations.”

One important factor in whether green infrastructure is successful is its size—a bigger surface area is usually better, especially if subsoils are denser. Another is how much of the land upstream of the GSI is hard surfaces, leading to more runoff flowing toward the rain garden or permeable pavement, perhaps overtaxing it.

“The most effective green infrastructure is distributed throughout a watershed rather than having all the rainfall collected and sent to one big detention basin at the end,” said Stillwell. “End-of-pipe solutions are more likely to fail and more likely to have continued localized flooding challenges than green infrastructure distributed in space.”

Stillwell and William’s modeling evaluation tools were later applied to the project designs for Calumet City and Midlothian.

The Landscape Designs

McGuire led the process of designing GSI plans for two 250-acre neighborhoods, recruiting her students to take them on as semester-long projects. 

“It’s critical that we involve our students directly in our design research so that they take interdisciplinary, engaged research with them into professional practice,” said McGuire. “In this project, our geology, landscape architecture, and engineering students were involved in every aspect of our work and contributed immensely to the research and outcomes.” 

Divided into two groups, the students focused on one of the two communities. For both, the plans were designed for public land in residential areas—in Midlothian, the Jolly Homes neighborhood, and in Calumet City, the Yates neighborhood.

The GSI plan for Calumet City, titled “Before the City, there was the Sand,” won a 2019 American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Award in the Student Collaboration category.

The students had visited regional nature preserves as well as the Yates neighborhood for inspiration as they looked for ways to reconnect residents with the forgotten dune and swale landscape.

In their project description, the students proposed to “. . . create places for water that ameliorate the pattern of street and basement flooding through a new pattern of green infrastructure inspired and informed by the distribution of sandy sediments underneath the city.”

Their design replaces many hard, compacted surfaces with permeable pavement, rain gardens and trees on streets, alleys, vacant land, parking lots, a public park and at an elementary school.

The students for both teams joined McGuire and Schneemann to present their green infrastructure designs to the two communities at public meetings. Calumet City officials were particularly enthusiastic.

The design plans sparked a lot of discussion in terms of possibilities, according to Schneemann. “There was a really positive reception and an aspiration to know what to do next. The designs really sparked a lot of momentum.”

“Through their research, the students created great ideas and used a variety of plants,” said Val Williams, Calumet City Director of Economic Development. “It was amazing just how much water could actually be stored and slowly released, right on site.”

The design for Calumet City used a variety of plant species on public land in the Yates neighborhood.

What’s Next

Calumet City officials continue to seek funding opportunities to implement the GSI design plan, and in the meantime have started a pilot Green Alleys project through the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago’s Green Infrastructure Program. The largest of the four pilot sites, where alleys will be redeveloped to better absorb rainwater, is in the Yates neighborhood.

This success in moving forward is, in part, due to the U of I research that inspired Calumet City to dig deep and learn more about what’s underground—specifically, mapping the city’s sewer system. The city was incorporated in 1893, making it one of the oldest communities in the region, and its infrastructure was laid not long after that.

“Everything has been done since then has been a band aid,” said Williams. “In some cases, some of the infrastructure is so old that you can barely read any of the historical records and in some cases, historical records just don’t exist anymore.”

“The city is doing a new sewer assessment and inventory of what’s there and what’s been installed and is trying to get all the sewer atlases up to date in the GIS database,” said Matthew Buerger, a Calumet City engineering consultant.

The thinking is that flooding problems can be addressed from several angles. Now that the city knows that much of the soils are well-draining, understanding the status of the sewer system is another piece in the puzzle. By installing green infrastructure where it can do the most good and upgrading and cleaning out sewers where necessary, Calumet City can efficiently and affordably manage stormwater.

The data from the soil survey has also proven to help open doors for more opportunities.

“The University of Illinois study was great because it showed that the soils throughout the entirety of Calumet City are very conducive for green infrastructure to work,” said Bueger.

The data has been a valuable resource in securing around $15 million in grant money from a variety of sources. While the focus of these grant projects runs the gamut, addressing flooding and green infrastructure are always a component.

“Green infrastructure—when we’re talking about plantings and permeable pavement, or we’re talking about things that can absorb and mitigate—these are included in every single piece of what we do now,” added Williams.

This research was recently published in Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability.

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.

Writer: Irene Miles

In small-town Indiana, a conversation with local decision makers about how they are responding to climate change may depend on defining the risks. While the concept of climate risks may be not be considered relevant by some local officials, flooding problems, for example, most definitely are.

William Bianco, a political scientist at Indiana University, discovered this and much more about community attitudes and actions related to climate change through his Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Scholar project.

Through Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute (ERI), Bianco’s team of six students interviewed local officials in the summer of 2020 using the institute’s Hoosier Resilience Index, which is designed to help communities understand the importance of taking action to contend with climate change.

“We were trying to get a sense of the facts on the ground—to understand why some communities see climate risks differently than others and are making different choices,” said Bianco.

They found that when it comes to preparing for the impacts of climate change, regardless of what side of the political fence they land, local decision makers in Indiana want to be good stewards of their communities. Some may be skeptical about climate risks, but they want their communities to be resilient.

“When we talk about communities not being ready for climate change, it’s really a definitional question,” said Bianco. “We have to ask the question differently— are they aware that stormwater patterns are changing, rather than, are they accommodating climate threats.”

These conversations with local leaders also revealed that whether a community in Indiana is preparing for the impacts of climate change depends on access to resources.

“Insofar as we’re asking local communities, by default, to carry the burden of accommodating climate risks—one of the big problems we face is that not all communities are created equal,” said Bianco. “A lack of intention is not driven by ideology—it’s simply they don’t have the capacity to take action.”

There are some doable steps that communities can take to be better prepared. The student researchers pulled together a list of these options and shared them with local leaders, both to learn what they are already doing and to raise awareness as needed. The options include enrolling in the federal flood insurance community rating system, developing invasive species management areas, and forming formal structures for disaster management—a COAD, or Community Organizations Active in Disaster.

Setting up a COAD helps local leaders connect with emergency services and provides a path to develop a protocol for how to respond in a disaster.

Through the Environmental Resilience Institute’s engagement with local leaders, communities are talking to each other about responding to climate risks at conferences and other avenues. The ERI is publicizing success stories by having local officials talk about what they are doing—they are sharing their plans and activities with their counterparts in other communities.

“We learned that what communities are doing is a function of the actual risks they face, which is hopeful,” said Bianco. They may not call it ‘preparing for climate change,’ but they are nonetheless aware. There are untapped opportunities for informing local leaders and in making policy changes, not through persuasion, but by simply providing them tools.”

Bianco is one of nine faculty and seven graduate students who are or have been Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant scholars. The program helps develop a community of scientists to research critical issues related to Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes region through funding and other opportunities for one year.

Master’s student Marissa Cubbage came to Purdue University to study the young life stages of fish in the Great Lakes. Arriving in West Lafayette in the summer of 2019, she laid out the plans for her research on lake whitefish in Lake Michigan. But just two weeks before her sampling was set to begin, state agencies and the university shut down all out-of-state field work due to the pandemic.

A change in plans was in order, so Cubbage opted to use previously collected larval samples by the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians. The tribe had collected samples from 2015 to 2019 and were willing to share them with her, offering a unique glimpse at a longer window of data than the one-to-two years of sampling that a traditional Master’s degree allows.

This analysis informed Cubbage’s thesis, which addresses how the decline of zooplankton populations has affected the diet of larval whitefish.

Cubbage presented her research findings to the tribal biologists and technicians through virtual presentations and meetings. She also created an informational handout that will be distributed along with subsistence and commercial fishing licenses.

Cubbage was funded through Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and both Tomas Höök, IISG director, and Paris Collingsworth, Great Lakes ecosystem specialist, served as her thesis advisors.

Read the full story on the Purdue University Department of Forestry and Natural Resources news page.

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.

In the wake of the devastating tornados that ripped through at least six states last weekend, bouncing back for these communities will likely be a formidable undertaking. Community resilience is often considered in reference to coping with and recovering from major disasters, but it is also relevant in the face of ongoing challenges that communities frequently contend with, for example, pollution and urban flooding.

While many programs and agencies are focused on providing necessary help to desperate communities in dire need, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant funds research and engages communities in the Great Lakes region over the long haul to help them protect and restore their natural resources. Here are a few examples.

Through the work of Veronica Fall, Kara Salazar, and Margaret Schneemann—specialists dedicated to climate readiness, sustainable land use, and water supply planning, respectively, community outreach includes providing needed data for local officials and managers to make informed choices for future resilience. For example, through Tipping Point Planner, a land use decision support tool, communities can learn how best to steer clear of irreversible shifts in ecosystem functions.

To help communities make small changes that can help in managing stormwater, in 2021, Kara brought the Purdue Extension Rainscaping Education program over the border and it is now a University of Illinois Extension program, overseen by Eliana Brown. The Rainscaping program provides training and resources for installing rain gardens and other green infrastructure practices in residential settings or small-scale public spaces. The 10 demonstration rain gardens planted at Indiana workshops thus far have reduced stormwater runoff by nearly 410,000 gallons each year.

We are also leading the process to bring Leslie Dorworth’s Indiana Master Watershed Steward Program to Illinois. Master watershed stewards are trained volunteers who understand how watersheds work and are willing to help with watershed improvement efforts in their communities.

Through federal and local funding, Great Lakes Areas of Concern (AOC), waterways that bear the burden of legacy pollution, are being cleaned up and restored. In the St. Louis River AOC, Ashley Belle is organizing and facilitating outreach teams to inform residents and stakeholders about contaminated sediment cleanup projects. With onsite posters and online photo galleries, residents can learn about the project benefits and see how the work is going.

We also fund research that complements our coastal resilience outreach efforts, including two Illinois State University scientists, both taking part in our Faculty Scholars Program. Pranshoo Solanki is experimenting with using dredged material (like from AOC cleanups) as a concrete ingredient, potentially providing a useful fate for material that is difficult to manage. And, Sundeep Inti is working to making permeable concrete in parking lots more sustainable with the aim of ultimately reducing runoff and flooding. Another faculty scholar, Sophie Taddeo from the Chicago Botanic Garden is using remote sensing images to improve monitoring of restored wetlands, which can absorb and filter polluted rainwater.

At a whole lake scale, Cary Troy and Aaron Thompson at Purdue University are working with scientists around Lake Michigan to assess coastal erosion levels, causes, and management options from physical, social and community perspectives. In addition, a recently published, interdisciplinary University of Illinois study led by Mary Pat McGuire incorporated soils data into green infrastructure planning and design for two communities in the Calumet region.

These are a handful of examples of our projects that foster community resilience in Illinois, Indiana and Great Lakes wide. In the new year, we look forward to continuing these efforts and the rest of our work, as well.

Happy holidays to all!

Tomas Höök
Director, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.

Every day, remote sensing is used to collect data about any number of on-the-ground conditions in environments all around the world. An Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant faculty scholar is studying how this rich data set can be used to help better monitor and manage restored wetlands.

In Illinois, for example, 90% of wetlands that once covered nearly a quarter of the state’s landscape have been drained for agriculture and urban development. But wetlands play important roles in the environment, from filtering contaminants to providing a home for rare flora and fauna, so natural resource managers are restoring wetlands or creating them in new locations.

How are these restored or created wetlands faring over time—especially with threats from encroaching invasive species, climate change and other stressors? Monitoring can provide some insights, but regular visits to some sites can also be challenging.

“Oftentimes, water levels in these sites are high and beyond one’s waders,” said Sophie Taddeo, a faculty member in Plant Biology and Conservation at Northwestern University and conservation scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden. “And some wetlands are just difficult to access—you might need a boat to get there.”

Sometimes it comes down to a lack of funding for short- or long-term monitoring.

On the other hand, remote sensing data—which is acquired from satellites, airplanes, or by cameras or other instruments not actually on the ground—is abundant and available. NASA, for example, has more than 30 years of free, high-quality satellite data.

Taddeo is using a data set from the Illinois Natural History Survey, which monitors more than 100 wetlands, to see is if trends seen on the ground at those sites match the trends that are visible from the skies in satellite images.

She is also using this data to develop metrics, such as shifts in species composition or a decrease in diversity, for practitioners and managers to assess changes in wetlands as they mature.

“Using Google Earth Engine, I’m applying long-term data to see the trajectory of different restoration projects and how they’re evolving over time,” said Taddeo. “I’m writing a code that can be adapted by students, scientists or project managers to use remote sensing to evaluate how their site has changed.”

Taddeo’s literature search on related uses of remote sensing data—understanding how a site recovers after a disturbance, such as a fire—showed that remote sensing is often used to compare sites across the board to see if many of them are responding to stresses or management activities in the same manner. If so, what do these sites have in common?

The answers can help inform management choices going forward.

“Remote sensing data can enable us to monitor wetlands on broad scales and to keep an eye on them individually in between field sampling efforts,” said Taddeo.

She is one of nine faculty and seven graduate students who are or have been Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant scholars. The program helps develop a community of scientists to research critical issues related to Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes region through funding and other opportunities for one year.

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.

Writer: Irene Miles

Contact: Carolyn Foley

The 2021 issue of Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant’s magazine, The Helm, is now available. This annual publication is a collection of program research, outreach and education success stories as well as ongoing activities to address coastal concerns. This issue is focused on rain gardens, aquaculture, marine debris and more, including a Chicago artist who photographs things he finds while walking along Lake Michigan beaches. 

Here are some headlines from this issue:

• Great Lakes litter contributes to larger microplastic problem
• Explorer series offers educators searchable and adaptable lessons and activities
• IISG helps aquaculture producers diversify their marketing opportunities
• Master’s students’ research highlights Lake Michigan
• Purdue Rainscaping Program brings rain garden training to Illinois Extension

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.

It takes a lot of energy to make concrete—in fact, the process accounts for 8% of all carbon emissions. Making and installing concrete can also be a drain on limited natural resources. To address this, two Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant faculty scholars explored different ideas that might help make concrete more environmentally friendly.

Sundeep Inti, a civil engineer at Illinois State University (ISU) turned his attention to making permeable concrete in parking lots more sustainable. Permeable concrete can absorb rainwater and, therefore, reduce flooding after storms and help protect water quality, but constructing it can use a lot of energy.

Thick layers of aggregate, like crushed rocks, are frequently placed under the concrete to clean and store water. However, aggregate is becoming a scarce resource in many cities and needs to be hauled from longer distances, increasing the cost and the carbon footprint.

“The cost of aggregate transport in congested urban areas can be three to four times more expensive,” said Inti.

He experimented with replacing the aggregate with permeable low-density cellular concrete—a mixture of cement, water and preformed foam.

“It resembles shaving foam, which contains internal microscopic pores,” Inti explained. “When the foam is mixed with cement and water, the air voids occupy a significant volume and, when the liquid concrete has hardened into a solid, provides a porous texture.”

By using cellular concrete to replace half the aggregate, Inti landed on an effective recipe, both for strength and permeability. “The developed material is strong yet lightweight, which reduces the burden on weak soils in the southern Lake Michigan area,” he said.

One drawback of using the cellular concrete—the water released is higher in alkalinity than from natural materials like sand and stone. Inti is experimenting with additives to reduce that. He also suggests that the water can be filtered before it is released into the environment.

Pranshoo Solanki, who along with Inti, teaches at ISU in the Department of Technology, is also exploring ways to reduce the use of aggregate in construction. His idea is to make use of the extensive supply of dredged material that is taken from waterways to open navigation channels.

Dredged sediment is composed of different sized solid particles and a high quantity of water. And there is a lot of it—available dredged sediment could cover 23,585 football fields a yard deep, so finding more uses for dredged sediments could be a win-win.

“Dredged material is considered problematic for use in concrete because of its lack of strength, its variability and its potential to be contaminated,” said Solanki. Instead, he experimented with a variation on concrete—flowable fill—to see if dredged sediment could effectively replace sand in this product.

Flowable fill, or non-structural controlled low-strength materials, is a cement-based construction material commonly used for backfilling trenches or other excavations, and in soil stabilization. As the name implies, it is a flowable liquid and it allows voids to be easily filled but is sufficiently low in strength to allow for easy re-excavation.

From left to right, Harsh Chauhan, an Illinois State University Master’s student and Pranshoo Solanki gather sample dredge material from Calumet Harbor.

Using dredged material samples from two locations, including at Calumet Harbor in the southern Lake Michigan region and along the Illinois River, Solanki tested nine different mixes for critical flowable fill qualities. He found that the results varied depending on the characteristics of the dredged material itself but that overall, the sediment can be used as a substitute for sand in flowable fill.

“The use of dredged sediment in flowable fill could reduce barriers to reusing dredged material more broadly as a sand substitute in concrete mixes,” said Solanky. “The risks from under performance in flowable fill are small compared to structural or pavement concrete. Local ready-mix plants can gain experience and confidence with dredged material, encouraging its application in other concrete mixes.”

Solanky and Inti are two of nine faculty and seven graduate students who are or have been IISG scholars. The program helps develop a community of scientists to research critical issues related to Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes region through funding and other opportunities for one year.

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.

Writer: Irene Miles

Contact: Carolyn Foley

For community leaders and homeowners looking for ways to reduce the threat of flooding, especially in the face of bigger storms due to climate change, rain gardens can be part of the solution. Good news for these folks and others in Illinois—the Purdue Extension Rainscaping Education program has expanded its reach and is now a University of Illinois Extension program too.

Rainscaping incorporates sustainability into landscape design. The focus is installing and maintaining rain gardens and other green infrastructure to manage stormwater, which can run off pavement and other hard surfaces, picking up contaminants and flowing into nearby waterways. The plants and soil in a rain garden absorb stormwater where it falls.

The Rainscaping Education program provides training and resources for practices that can be installed in residential settings or small-scale public spaces. Workshops throughout Indiana have been attended by representatives from organizations and agencies, including stormwater utilities, soil and water conservation districts, and relevant non-profits, plus Master Gardeners and landscape contractors.

“This program is a very accessible way to train large groups of people on how to appropriately site, size, install and maintain rain gardens,” said Kara Salazar, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and Purdue Extension assistant program leader, extension specialist for sustainable communities and Purdue Rainscaping Education program coordinator.

At the end of the 15-hour workshop, participants get their hands in the dirt to plant a demonstration rain garden in a public location.

As with most educational opportunities, the workshops became totally virtual in 2020 and the planting of demonstration gardens as a group was suspended. More recently, the workshops have been presented with much of the training online that culminates in planting the rain gardens in person again.

“Through planting these gardens, participants gain real-world experience,” said Salazar. “They can go back to their communities and be rain garden ambassadors—bringing knowledge of the benefits of rain gardens as well as how to create them. Through this process, we are developing community networks.”

The 10 demonstration rain gardens planted in Indiana have reduced stormwater runoff by nearly 410,000 gallons each year. Rain gardens installed by participants or their partners back in their communities reduce runoff even more. In addition to reducing the risk of flooding, these gardens can improve water quality.

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant led the process to bring the rainscaping program to Illinois. The first Illinois Extension training sessions in the state kicked off this year in May in Jackson County, with two more workshops coming up in September in Effingham and Champaign counties.

“It’s exciting that in a few years, like Purdue, we’re going to have demonstration gardens all over the state,” said Eliana Brown, IISG stormwater specialist and Illinois Rainscaping Education program coordinator. “As knowledge grows with every installation in both states, we can all help each other have successful rain gardens.”

“Many Master Gardeners, consultants and agency folks now have rainscaping expertise and are teaching others or using this knowledge for their own green infrastructure projects,” said Salazar. “One community, in particular, has their own rainscaping group, so they’re going out talking to people about rain gardens.”

Brown thinks of rain gardens as having the capacity of being beautiful and functional, but also inspirational.

“A rain garden is something that, on a homeowner scale, is achievable—it’s an action that a person can do to be responsible for the water that’s shedding from their roof and other impermeable surfaces. Then, if your neighbors are inspired to install rain gardens, we have them working at the neighborhood scale. Then you’re really making a difference.”

For more information about the Rainscaping Education program, visit the program website.

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.

Writer: Irene Miles

Contacts: Illinois – Eliana Brown, Indiana – Kara Salazar

Every summer, Lake Erie’s central basin develops hypoxia, or a dead zone, where oxygen is too low for most aquatic life to survive, but the size and distribution of that zone varies from year to year. To help in monitoring the lake’s hypoxia extent and concentrations, as well as assessing the quality of its fish habitat, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) researchers have developed a 3-dimensional model that maps out low oxygen areas.

Hypoxia can develop when phosphorus, often from nearby farm fields or industry, drains into local waters, leading to rapid growth of algae on a lake’s surface. As these organisms die off, they sink to the bottom and decompose, a process that uses up much of the available oxygen. As the shallowest of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie is particularly prone to algal blooms and hypoxia.

“The lake is predisposed to particularly drastic swings in habitat quality over time,” said Joshua Tellier, a biologist with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy who worked on this project while he was a Purdue University master’s student. In the central basin, in summer, the water develops distinct temperature layers, separating the lake’s colder bottom from oxygen-rich surface waters, setting the stage for hypoxic conditions.

Tellier used nearly 25 years of monitoring data from the U.S. EPA Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO) and U.S. Geological Survey that consistently measured dissolved oxygen levels and temperatures at numerous sites throughout the central basin to model hypoxia in Lake Erie. This 3-D model also reflects changes in habitat quality.

“The main component negatively affecting habitat quality is the seasonal decrease in oxygen levels. We can connect the oxygen concentrations and the extent of hypoxia to habitat quality for fish over time,” he said.  

This project is part of Tellier’s thesis for his master’s degree in Purdue’s Department of Forestry and Natural Resources. IISG’s Paris Collingsworth, Great Lakes ecosystem specialist, and Tomas Höök, director, are his advisors. Funding comes through IISG’s long term grant with U.S. EPA GLNPO.

The team tested how hypoxia and habitat quality affect three Lake Erie fish species—rainbow smelt, round goby and yellow perch. These three fish are common in the central basin, but they also each have different life strategies. Smelt are on the surface and eat plankton that float in open waters; gobies, on the other hand, are bottom feeders; and yellow perch are adaptable, taking advantage of both strategies.

The modeling revealed habitat quality for the three fish species over time, reflecting hypoxia’s impact on their ranges and locations.

With hypoxia situated at the lake bottom, when it is severe, gobies often need to move to another location where conditions are more suitable for them. Smelt have a more complicated story. They prefer to be in colder water, so when the lake’s upper layer heats up during the summer, they move down lower in the water. But, the low oxygen conditions at the bottom don’t work either.

“We find that when hypoxia is present, the smelt are basically sandwiched into the tiny interface layer between the bottom hypoxic water, and the upper warm water. We think they’re being thermally squeezed from above, and squeezed by oxygen stress from below,” said Tellier.

Looking at the central basin of Lake Erie from top to bottom using Tellier’s 3-D model reveals that during the hypoxic season, smelt find refuge in a thin band of habitat, shown here in the bluish area.

“Because they are adaptive, perch have many foraging strategies that they can use to survive in a wide range of conditions,” he explained. Studies have shown that perch will dive down into hypoxic waters because the benthic prey there is richer in energy than what they could otherwise find. “The perch are taking some sort of tradeoff where they’re saying, ‘it might tax my metabolism and my health to go down into this water, but there is a rich food resource in there—that’s worthwhile,’” Tellier added.

“Josh’s research is timely,” said Collingworth, “because the management community in Lake Erie is currently considering ways to determine if their actions are producing noticeable changes in the lake. These models can be used to provide meaningful biological endpoints related to fish habitat quality.”

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.

Writer: Irene Miles