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We all know buoys are critical for water safety on the Great Lakes, but did you know data is collected from an entire network of technology for scientists to analyze regional trends, natural resource managers to improve their work and policy makers to make informed decisions?

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In Episode 10 of Teach Me About the Great Lakes, titled “A Lot of Different Kinds of Data,” Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant’s Stuart Carlton and Hope Charters talk with Kelli Paige, chief executive officer of the Great Lakes Observing System (GLOS), about how GLOS works with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and other partners across the Great Lakes to collect and visualize important and useful data. We also discuss how data use has changed as technology has changed and about GLOS’ Smart Great Lakes Initiative.

Teach Me About the Great Lakes is a monthly podcast in which Carlton—a social scientist who grew up in the South near the Gulf of Mexico—asks people to explain the biology, ecology and natural history of the Great Lakes. A new episode will be released on the first Monday of each month. The latest episode is embedded below.

If this isn’t enough buoy content for you, check out our How Buoys Help page and Two Yellow Buoys on Twitter. 

Love this episode and want to hear more in the future? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or use the RSS feed in your favorite podcast player.

If you have questions you want answered about the Great Lakes, reach out to Stuart Carlton.


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

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Explore the history, impact, and educational power of Meaningful Watershed Educational Experiences (MWEEs).eeLEARN: MWEE 101 is a free, self-paced online course that walks you through the MWEE framework with examples, planning tools, and downloadable resources that you can use immediately.Start learning today at the link in bio.
Some partnerships just make sense. Happy Valentine’s Day from IISG! 💕
This February marks a major milestone: 30 years of aquatic invasive species outreach by our team! To celebrate, IISG Director, Stuart Carlton, and Strategic Communication Coordinator, Renie Miles, sat down for a Sea Grant Chat with two key figures in IISG’s AIS history: Pat Charlebois, our assistant director and program leader, who spent over two decades leading our prevention efforts, and Katie O’Reilly, who took over that role in 2022. We discussed the evolution of the invasive species issue in the Great Lakes, the shift toward understanding human behavior, and the creative strategies that make this team so effective. Dive into the full interview at the link in bio.