Nitrogen contamination in groundwater of the Southern Lake Michigan region endangers both the potability of well water in the region and contributes a source of ‘legacy nitrogen’ to the surface waters of the southern Lake Michigan region. Using a data-driven approach leveraging machine learning and GIS, this graduate student scholars project will for the first time provide an estimate of how much nitrate is stored within the aquifers of the Upper Mississippi River Basin and Lake Michigan watersheds.

The main project objective is to empower underserved students by directly involving them in innovative Great Lakes-based antibiotic discovery and providing exposure to careers in the environmental and biomedical sciences. Our team is uniquely suited to integrate community-based education into advanced, technology-driven problem solving in a remote or hybrid environment. Importantly, our program will allow students in afterschool programs like the Boys and Girls Club to go beyond workbook science and into real world problem solving. 

Aim 1. Supervised sample collection from the Chicago River and Lake Michigan lakefront.
Aim 2. High-throughput robotics to build a library of bacteria from their samples.
Aim 3. High-throughput robotics to test bacterial libraries against the human pathogens Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus.

Short-term outcomes

1. Determine the capacity of bacteria derived from the Great Lakes to produce novel antibiotic leads via environmental collection, bacterial library generation, and screening against pathogens.
2. Assemble and educate up to 20 middle school students over the course of the project period (broken down into two student cohorts, ~7-10 students per year).
3. Engage the student cohorts in multiple steps of Great Lakes-based antibiotic discovery.
4. Expose the student cohorts to weekly exercises that focus on environmental problems facing the Great Lakes.
5. Expose the student cohorts to possible careers in STEM-based Great Lakes research via weekly guest career talks.

Long-term outcomes

1. Discover and develop locally sourced antibiotics via spectroscopic identification and in depth biological profiling experiments.
2. Expand our university-community partnership to other Chicago area BGC’s. 
3. Acquire NSF funding to expand to up to five additional clubs and engage large numbers of youth in a pipeline toward STEM careers based on topics important to Great Lakes health.
4. Disseminate the blueprint of our university-community partnership via detailed open-access publications, conference presentations, and other media promotions to the greater academic world and inspire the creation and improvement of similar programs nationwide.

Aquaponics food production systems produce more food on less land, using less water than conventional food production systems. Further, they can be located near population centers, diminishing the carbon footprint of long-distance transportation of foods. Fresh food supplies in urban cities in the US takes advantage of the developing trends among consumers seeking sustainable, fresh, locally grown food supplies. Marine aquaponic systems are capable of producing fresh seafood and plant crops with high market value and strong consumer demand, but few species combinations have been developed well enough for practical applications. In this project, we propose continuing our ongoing efforts to explore marine aquaponics and provide operational guidelines for successful production.

Objective 1 – Complete our developing list of salt-tolerant plant species with a focus on seed availability, recommendations for germination, growth rates, and chemical composition data;
Objective 2 – Evaluate the long-term sustainability of a shrimp/plant marine aquaponic system, and evaluate salinity tolerance of 3-6 halophytic plant crop in marine aquaponics systems; and,
Objective 3 – Determine characteristics of the Asian markets in Chicago for products from marine aquaponic FPS and estimate total poundage of market demand.

Our overall goal is to is to is to gain insight into the basic biology of Craspedacusta in order to better predict its ecological impact in response to climate change. In particular, we are interested in the following questions:

1. What are the environmental cues for Craspedacusta jellyfish blooms and can these cues predict when and where Craspedacusta blooms will occur in southern Lake Michigan?
2. Can these conditions be replicated in a laboratory environment to induce jellyfish formation?
3. Are the genetic mechanisms that control jellyfish blooms in Craspedacusta similar to that of their marine relatives, and thus likely to have a parallel response to climate change?

To address these questions we have three primary objectives:

1. Determine environmental parameters required for jellyfish blooms through field work and citizen science approaches;
2. With the involvement of undergraduates we will design and conduct laboratory experiments utilizing environmental parameters and zooplankton composition data from objective 1, with the intention of culturing Craspedacusta medusae to their reproductive stage.
3. Conduct transcriptional analyses to document differential gene expression in the different life cycle stages to determine the genetic cues for life cycle transitions. 

We have a fourth objective to improve scientific literacy on invasive aquatic species though developing educational modules with live Craspedacusta jellyfish for the public, K-12 classrooms, focusing on underserved communities.

High lake levels have reduced beach sizes across Chicago, but we have little understanding of how much was passive inundation versus sediment remobilization. Ongoing collaborative efforts with the Chicago Park District and the Illinois Coastal Management Program are focused on observations of process-landform dynamics using camera arrays at select beaches and integrating UAS-based imagery, topographic information, wave data, and camera footage. However, while efforts are underway to understand the subaerial dynamics here (e.g., shoreline behaviors), little is known about littoral dynamics and sand transport across the highly fragmented urban nearshore environment, where prior studies have inferred a complex lakefloor geology that includes outcropping Silurian bedrock reefs, heavily scoured and dissected glacial clay tills, and thin, discontinuous sand veneers. We wish to capture the geologic configuration of the nearshore at the surface and map the shallow subsurface architecture as a means of quantifying sand volumes and relating them to the broader geologic template and the urban infrastructure with its influence on nearshore hydrodynamics.

Little progress has been made toward reducing fatal drowning incidents in the United States (U.S.) in the last 20 years. Recent data from the Great Lakes indicate the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in excess drownings during summer 2020. Chicago has 26 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and 24 free, public beaches that are punctuated with piers and jetties. The resultant structural currents pose unique risks to patrons who often access the lake outside of the official summer season and in the summer season after lifeguards go off duty at 7 p.m. There is an urgent need for effective education programs to raise awareness about recreation safety in Lake Michigan, the deadliest of the Great Lakes, and to increase water competence in diverse communities that have historically been excluded from swimming. The community-engaged injury prevention and water safety experts in Chicago are uniquely situated to respond.

Objective 1: To assess the impact of Chicago Park District’s Community Water Safety Trainings on program participant knowledge and skills, community-level knowledge, and distressed swimmer events and drownings.

Objective 2: To implement, pilot, and evaluate the Swim to Survive Program enhanced with Great Lakes safety education in Evanston, IL and adapt the program for implementation in Chicago communities.