As 2019 draws to a close, I’m pleased to report that here at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, we’ve had a very good year, and that remained the case through the latter months.
In October, IISG underwent its program site review, which takes place every four years. Through this process, we presented our work from our last omnibus as well as our current activities to the external site review team. The review provides a great opportunity to reflect on our accomplishments and to look forward to new efforts.
The review team was very positive in its response, which, in large part, is due to not only the hard work of the IISG team, but also the great amount of support from our diverse partners, many of whom directly participated in the review.
This fall, we expanded our communication tools and products to share information about the Great Lakes with wider audiences. Inspired by a rich collection of photographs taken by Peter Essick, who works with National Geographic, IISG led the development of a photo essay called Great Lakes Resurgence about Areas of Concern in the region. The Great Lakes Sea Grant Network collaborated to tell the stories of these degraded waterways, to describe the progress of cleanup efforts and report local impacts of coastal restoration.
IISG now has a monthly podcast series, Teach Me about the Great Lakes, which debuted in December. Hosted by Stuart Carlton, the program’s assistant director, the podcast helps Stuart—and listeners—learn about the biology, ecology and natural history of the Great Lakes. Stuart is a social scientist who grew up in the south, so he is fairly new to Great Lakes issues. The first installment dove into concerns about microplastics, which have been found in the Great Lakes and many waterways all over the world. The next episode, available in early January, will focus on the geological history of the Great Lakes.
Autumn also brought awards season for the Sea Grant program, both regionally and nationally. We are proud of Pollution Prevention Specialist Sarah Zack, who was honored with the Great Lakes Sea Grant Network Early Career Award at the regional meeting in Sault St. Marie, Michigan. Irene Miles, strategic communication coordinator, won the Communications Service Award at the Sea Grant Extension Assembly, Communicator and Research Coordinator Conference in Savannah, Georgia. Also at the Savannah meeting, Brian Miller, IISG’s former director, was selected for the William Q. Wick Visionary Career Leadership Award, one of Sea Grant’s most prestigious honors.
As we all look forward to 2020, we wish you the best in the new year. For IISG, 2020 will bring an even greater focus to Lake Michigan. Scientists from around the Great Lakes basin will converge on the lake to conduct intensive research through the Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative (CSMI). IISG has just released an ESRI story map, Lake Michigan Health: A Deeper Dive, to share the results from the 2015 CSMI field year on Lake Michigan.
The Shipboard Science Workshop will also take place on Lake Michigan in the coming year. During this week-long workshop on the EPA research vessel the Lake Guardian, organized through the Center for Great Lakes Literacy, teachers from the region work side by side with scientists to study one of the Great Lakes. This coming year they set sail on Lake Michigan. We look forward to new science and stories that will emerge from both of these exciting initiatives.
Lake Michigan gets regular health checkups, but like many people, it sometimes needs special monitoring or scanning to get to the bottom of symptoms or concerns. The latest results from some of these tests and evaluations are now available in an Environmental Systems Research Institute Story Map, Lake Michigan Health: A Deeper Dive.
The Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative (CSMI) intensive examination of Lake Michigan occurs every five years through an initiative that rotates around the Great Lakes—scientists in the region coordinate their efforts to answer critical questions and fill science information gaps for each lake.
Each year since 2002, through CSMI, multiple federal, provincial, state, and university scientists have joined forces on one of the Great Lakes to take part in coordinated research. This binational program is organized through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes National Program Office and Environment and Climate Change Canada in support of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement Science Annex.
Unlike your medical records, information on the health of Lake Michigan is available to everyone, including environmental managers, scientists, educators, students, boaters, anglers and lake enthusiasts in general. On the story map, information is presented through interactive graphics, easy-to-understand diagrams and photos of science in action.
Lake Michigan Food Web: Changes throughout History
“Having this straight-forward tool that helps us explain to anglers and other stakeholders how bottom-up factors affect fish populations is a great thing and very timely, given the changing Lake Michigan ecosystem,” said Vic Santucci, Lake Michigan program manager, Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Lake Michigan: A Deeper Dive, which was developed by Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, includes a brief history of the lake as well as information on several key areas of study from 2015—Lake Michigan’s most recent CSMI field year focusing on the lower food web, prey fish and contaminants.
The invasive quagga mussels featured prominently in the scientists’ reports. They found that their lakewide numbers have declined, but that quagga biomass has increased as mussels age and grow larger. In deeper parts of the lake, quagga mussel populations increased between 2010 and 2015.
One way that scientists can assess the number of quagga mussels on the lake bottom is using a towed benthic sled, which, equipped with a camera, visually records mussel distribution and numbers at the bottom of the lake. While visiting the CSMI story map, you can ride along on the benthic sled and see what the scientists saw. Also, Lake Michigan: A Deeper Dive provides graphic illustrations of how the lake food web has changed since the influx of invasive species.
Another key finding is that, in general, larval fish are growing about half as fast as they did before quagga mussels were established in the early 2000s. In fact, quagga mussels, by filtering large amounts of plankton, may be having a negative impact on fish production.
Next year, CSMI scientists will once again gather on Lake Michigan for monitoring and testing to assess the health of the lake. To set 2020’s research priorities, scientists and resource managers came together in 2018 to discuss the latest findings and to define critical data needs. Over the next couple of years, scientists will report the results of their fieldwork and the CSMI story map will be updated with information from this upcoming Lake Michigan checkup.
This project was supported by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
A team of 13 University of Illinois students recently won an American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Honor Award in the Student Collaboration category. The winning project—Before the City, there was the Sand—is part of an Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) research project focused on addressing urban flooding throughout communities in the Chicago-Calumet Corridor.
The IISG project is led by Mary Pat McGuire in the U of I Department of Landscape Architecture who recruited her students to take part in the research as part of their classwork. The award recognizes the collaboration of students from a variety of disciplines who, with help from faculty advisors, developed a comprehensive urban stormwater redesign for a 300-acre neighborhood in Calumet City, Illinois, a suburb southeast of Chicago.
“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 our Sea Grant project, our science, design, and engineering students were involved in every aspect of our work and contributed immensely to the research and outcomes. Through this work, they learned the need to address the larger issue of urban flooding as it is uniquely faced by each community.”
Honored students from the Department of Landscape Architecture are Yang Xia, Mengdi Chi, Jingyi Li, Lauren Mathias, Bo Pang, Jinyu Shen, Xi Wang, Lixian Zeng and Yi Zhao; from the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences and Department of Geology are Avery Clark and Piotr Szocinski, respectively. Reshmina William and Gabrielle Bethke are students in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. In addition to McGuire and IISG’s Margaret Schneemann, Andrew Phillips, David Grimley and Ashlynn Stillwell are part of the IISG project team and served as faculty advisors.
The ASLA awards jury described the winning project: “Uniting the diverse disciplines of landscape architecture, geology, and civil and environmental engineering, this design and planning project in Calumet City near Chicago addresses the pressing issue of urban flooding by examining the geological legacy of sandy ridges and swales that once characterized the area but have since been obliterated. Taking cues from the vanished landscape, the team developed a multi-faceted approach to stormwater management that uses a variety of designed surfaces, a palette of native plants and inventive models for new green infrastructure in this flood-threatened neighborhood.”
The students received the award at the Annual ASLA Convention in San Diego on November 18, 2019.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
As part of the state’s ongoing commitment to reduce nutrient losses, the directors of the Illinois Department of Agriculture (IDOA) and Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the release of the state’s second Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy Biennial Report. This report describes actions taken in the state during the last two years to reduce nutrient losses and influence positive changes in nutrient loads over time.
The Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy (NLRS) is one of many state strategies developed and implemented over the 31-state Mississippi River basin that are intended to improve water quality. Illinois’ strategy provides a framework for reducing both point and non-point nutrient losses to improve the state’s overall water quality, as well as that of water leaving Illinois and making its way down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico.
“The report illustrates all facets of agriculture coming together to promote best management practices,” said John Sullivan, IDOA director. “The next step is transitioning more farmers from awareness of nutrient loss practices to application.”
“The 2019 biennial report describes some the dramatic reductions in total phosphorus discharges from some of the largest wastewater treatment facilities in the state,” said Illinois EPA director John Kim. “We’ve already nearly met one of our 2025 goals of 25% reduction of phosphorus from the point source sector, and we look forward to continued nutrient reductions.”
These reductions are a direct result of investments by wastewater treatment facilities to meet more stringent nutrient permit limits. Illinois officials expect to see continued progress in meeting long-term goals as additional planned wastewater treatment facility upgrades occur.
Illinois NLRS was first released in 2015 with the long-term goal of reducing nitrogen and phosphorus in Illinois waterways by 45%. Interim goals include reducing the amount of phosphorus by 25% and nitrogen by 15% by 2025.
Implementation efforts are led by strategy partners in the Policy Working Group and other sector committees, guided by IDOA and Illinois EPA, with assistance provided by University of Illinois Extension. Illinois NLRS is part of a broader effort being implemented by states in the Mississippi River basin to reduce the amount of nutrients entering the Gulf of Mexico, which causes a “dead zone” of oxygen-depleted water.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG), working closely with IDOA, Illinois EPA, University of Illinois Extension and other partners, developed and produced the biennial report. Eliana Brown, IISG stormwater specialist, led the effort throughout.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
This article is based on a press release from IDOA and Illinois EPA. Contacts are Krista Lisser (217)558-1546 and Kim Biggs (217)558-1536.
I am happy to announce the publication of Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant’s (IISG) latest impacts in Illinois, Indiana, and the Great Lakes region. This booklet provides an opportunity to raise awareness of critical coastal issues, proudly share our success stories, and thank our partners.
While the impacts reported in this publication by no means encompass all of our efforts, they do provide insight into many of the activities and issues we focus on. Impacts include training communities to address flooding concerns through green infrastructure, informing the decision process to deal with the threat of aquatic invasive plants in Illinois, Indiana and beyond, and having a positive influence on the careers of researchers and their students. We also helped inform natural resource planning on the community and regional scale, supported local efforts to dispose of medicine safely, and through workshops and other support, helped educators bring aquatic and Great Lakes science to their classrooms.
Through the dedication and creativity of IISG staff members, as well as support from our many partners who provided funding, networks, expertise, and other resources, IISG is able to make a difference in the Great Lakes region, particularly in Illinois and Indiana.
I would also like to take a moment to share some IISG staff changes. Our program aims to address topics that are highly relevant for Illinois and Indiana, while also ensuring that our activities align with National Sea Grant and NOAA-wide initiatives. As priorities evolve both locally and nationally, so does our program.
Over the past several years, the National Sea Grant Office has increased investments to enhance aquaculture production and improve marketing and economic opportunities related to fish farming. This national focus on domestic aquaculture is due in part to the need to make up for the global exploitation of wild fish stocks, as well as the US’s large trade-deficit for fish and seafood products. Our area of the country is a huge food producer, and we believe there is now a great opportunity to also grow fish production here.
Aquaculture has long been a focus of IISG, going back several decades. Since 2006, Kwamena Quagrainie has been our aquaculture marketing specialist, working closely with producers to improve production and tap into new markets. Now, Amy Shambach has joined the team as the program’s aquaculture marketing outreach associate. In this new position, co-funded by the North Central Regional Aquaculture Center, she will help investigate consumer-side demand for food-fish aquaculture throughout the Midwest. Amy’s work will contribute to the new Great Lakes Aquaculture Collaborative, helping to inform producers as well as future research.
As we welcome new Sea Granters, we also must say farewell to those who have moved on to other endeavors. Thank you to Yu-Feng Lin who served as IISG’s associate director since late 2017. Yu-Feng provided administrative oversight for the University of Illinois side of the program. He will now be focusing on his other duties, serving as principal research hydrogeologist with the Illinois State Geological Survey and director of the Illinois Water Resources Center. Until a new permanent associate director is named, Pat Charlebois, IISG’s outreach program leader, is serving in this role.
Six Great Lakes Sea Grant programs have been awarded $1 million to work together on a three-year project to increase aquaculture production and sales in the region.
The Great Lakes Aquaculture Collaborative is one of 42 research projects and collaborative programs totaling $16 million aimed at advancing sustainable aquaculture in the United States funded by the National Sea Grant Office. The awards are dependent on the availability of federal funds.
Despite the fact that the Great Lakes comprise one of world’s largest freshwater ecosystems, aquaculture production in the region is failing to keep pace with increases in consumer demand for fish and seafood. This contributes to a national seafood trade deficit of $14 billion, second only to oil in the ranking of natural resource trade deficits.
“Through the Great Lakes Aquaculture Collaborative, our goal is to lay the foundation for an environmentally responsible, competitive and sustainable aquaculture industry,” said Stuart Carlton, IISG assistant director. “And from the consumer perspective, to provide more opportunities to buy locally raised protein in the form of farm-raised fish.”
Minnesota Sea Grant will lead the collaborative, and for its part, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) will explore perceived barriers to successful aquaculture operations in the Great Lakes region. Amy Shambach, IISG aquaculture marketing outreach associate, will interview producers, food distributors, grocers, restauranteurs and other key players to provide insights that inform efforts to improve aquaculture production and marketing.
“It is vital to the growth of the aquaculture industry in the Great Lakes region to not only assess the industry’s needs but to then get that information into the hands of farmers,” said Shambach.
The Great Lakes Aquaculture Collaborative is funded by National Sea Grant’s Advanced Aquaculture Collaborative Program. This program seeks to build the capacity of Sea Grant and its partners to advance aquaculture in areas where a foundation of knowledge and activity currently exists but where significant barriers to sustainable domestic marine and Great Lakes aquaculture remain.
“These investments are critical to advancing United States aquaculture in sustainable, thoughtful ways using the best science and talent across the country,” said National Sea Grant Director Jonathan Pennock. “With our 2019 investments, we can address critical gaps in information, understanding and connectivity of science to industry.”
IISG was also awarded a second grant to study challenges to raising walleye in aquaculture production. “Walleye has a local identity—it has a strong association with the Midwest, is available in restaurants as a commercially caught species, and may be suitable for aquaculture,” said Kwamena Quagrainie, IISG aquaculture marketing specialist.
Currently farm-raised walleye in Illinois and Indiana is minimal. Quagrainie, along with Carlton and Purdue University researchers Robert Rode and Joseph Balagtas, are leading a working group that aims to understand the business and real-world production barriers to raising these fish in an economically sustainable manner. National Sea Grant awarded them $96,000 to find answers.
“There is reason to believe that walleye aquaculture could be a boon in the two states, but a lot of background work needs to be done to see if it is even feasible,” added Quagrainie.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and the Illinois Natural History Survey are hiring an aquatic invasive species (AIS) outreach coordinator/AIS associate scientist to develop, plan, direct, and conduct scientific outreach programming for a variety of stakeholders about AIS affecting Lake Michigan and the inland water of Illinois and Indiana.
In addition to engaging in outreach, some responsibilities of this position include:
Evaluating effectiveness of the AIS program’s outreach activities through survey research.
Applying for and administering grants including budgeting, reporting, and other principal investigator duties.
Supervising staff to achieve success and foster innovation.
This appointment is a full-time 12-month position, eligible for full University of Illinois benefits. It is located at the Botanic Gardens in Glencoe, Illinois.
To learn more about duties, required qualifications and application timing, visit Jobs at Illinois.
Life on Earth is dependent on microbes to create the air we breathe and transform nutrients. This is of course true for Great Lakes ecosystems, but previously, no comprehensive research has looked at what microbial populations are in these waters.
Now, University of Chicago researchers are the first to systematically identify the species and abundance of viruses, bacteria and other microscopic life in all five Laurentian Great Lakes.
Maureen Coleman and members of her lab have been collecting samples aboard Great Lakes research vessels since 2012. In 2015, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant began supporting their work to build a baseline understanding of microbial communities. Now, the team, which includes Sara Paver, Justin Podowski and María Hernández-Limón, have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to continue their studies.
“The primary pattern we found is that microbes differ with depth,” said Coleman. “When the lakes are stratified in the summer, the surface heats up and the bottom stays cool. At that point, we see very different communities in the surface and the deep water. It’s driven by temperature and light, probably.”
The microbial communities on the surface are different in the upper lakes—Superior, Michigan and Huron—than the lower lakes—Erie and Ontario. “This makes sense because the upper and lower Great Lakes diverge physically and chemically,” said Coleman. “In addition to temperature, nitrogen, phosphorus and chlorophyll levels are different between the upper and lower lakes. The microbes respond to that.”
Tony Briscoe, environmental reporter with the Chicago Tribune, has more of the story: “Minuscule microbes wield enormous power over the Great Lakes. But many species remain a mystery.”
Flash flooding can happen quickly, potentially disrupting emergency access, transportation and other everyday activities—not to mention, posing a threat to life and property. But, if weather predictions can pinpoint locations at higher risk, emergency managers and residents alike may be more prepared to heed flash flood warnings.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and Wisconsin Sea Grant funded researchers Beth Hall and Paul Roebber to develop models that can help identify sites at highest risk of flooding from heavy rainfall in the Chicago/Romeoville and Milwaukee/Sullivan National Weather Service (NWS) regions. The two scientists created tools that take historical data into account, in addition to atmospheric signals associated with flooding events.
Roebber, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, focused his efforts on improving meteorological forecasting. “We’re using modern machine-learning approaches to figure out how we can identify and then put together the best factors that allow for better prediction,” he said.
He explained some of the factors and challenges. “For example, you might have a series of thunderstorms that are moving over the same area—that’s called training convection—and it’s a pretty common way for flood events to happen. Particular meteorological conditions encourage those kinds of events to occur, but it’s very difficult to pinpoint exactly where that is and the precise timing.”
At the Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC) at the University of Illinois, Hall and her team tackled this project on two fronts. First, they developed a map that considered relatively unchanging factors such as land cover, slope, population or type of vegetation, highlighting areas that historically produced flash flood reports due to extreme precipitation.
“We found the strongest correlation when we divided land surfaces into whether they absorb water or they don’t—in other words, impenetrable surfaces,” said Hall, who is now at Purdue University.
Hall’s team relied on flash flooding data in NWS Local Storm Reports for this study. These are official reports, covering a 4-kilometer or 2.5-mile square area, sent to local offices or the NWS Storm Prediction Center. “We chose not to include basement flooding or insurance reports because we didn’t want socio-economics to be a factor,” said Hall. “We wanted as much as possible for it to be an independent and unbiased historical dataset.”
(Center for Neighborhood Technology Photo)
Acknowledging the downside of this measure—that not all flash flooding is reported to NWS, Hall explained, “We understand that what we are assessing, in fact, is the risk of a flash flood report.”
Using reported flash flood events between April and October from 2002-17, Hall’s team created an artificial intelligence model that incorporates previous rainfall into the risk assessment. They created algorithms on historical precipitation data as well as the timing and location of a flash flooding report.
Specifically, the model considers how much rain fell in the six days prior to when a flash flood was reported compared to six days of precipitation that did not lead to a flash flood report. The researchers were looking at the effect of ground that may be saturated from previous rainfall.
“This flash flood risk-potential project developed by the Midwest Regional Climate Center is an intriguing and novel way to look at flash flood prediction,” said Scott Lincoln, senior service hydrologist with the Chicago NWS.
“Our typical methods for predicting flash floods either use models of water moving over the land surface or comparisons of rainfall rate to a predetermined threshold. This method, instead, looks at the problem in reverse—known reports of flash flooding are evaluated to find the soil conditions and rainfall rates that made the flooding more likely.”
The Chicago NWS office is adding Hall’s model to its spring hydrology training program so it can be evaluated later this year during actual heavy rainfall events. “Having multiple methods of monitoring potential flash flooding can increase forecasters’ confidence in determining whether a warning is needed,” said Lincoln.
Roebber summed up the larger goal of this Sea Grant project. “For the general public, it’s just better information. When you hear a weather warning, you’re going to pay more attention if it tends to verify. There will be fewer false alarms and better information to act on.”
For more information on this project and to see flash flood report maps for the region, visit the MRCC website.
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