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New video offers an introduction to Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant
September 28th, 2012 by Irene MilesA delicious solution to Great Lakes algae issues?
September 25th, 2012 by Irene Miles“The radishes planted in northwest Ohio go in about this time of year and are left in the ground to die, explained our host, Allen Dean. Planting doomed radishes, it turns out, is an innovative technique he has used in recent years to improve soil nutrients and reduce runoff from his Williams County farm.Here’s the basics on how it works: Farmers plant seeds for a plant called an oilseed radish. It doesn’t actually have to be that plant, but it needs to grow a foot or longer into the soil during the fall in a tubular shape, like a carrot or a parsnip. It also needs to grow a fair amount of foliage up on the ground. Radishes are usually more affordable.It’s important that the plant drill down into the soil so that when it dies, usually during a mid-January freeze, it decays and leaves behind a v-shaped hole for snow and water to penetrate deeper. The decayed radishes Dean showed us looked like organic socks.Oilseed radishes are particularly good at absorbing nutrients from the surface and sending them down into the soil as the tubular plant drills it way into the ground.”
IISG and Purdue University launch Lake Michigan buoy to provide real-time data
September 17th, 2012 by IISG IISG staff members and interns traveled to the Indiana shoreline earlier this week to help launch an environmental sensing buoy four miles off the coast of Michigan City, Indiana. They were joined by researchers from the Purdue University School of Civil Engineering, who partnered with IISG to develop the buoy, and staff at the Indiana DNR.
“If I had to describe the launch process in one word, it would be ‘meticulous.’ The approximately 6-hour process was carefully divided into a series of steps: Steps for the final calibration of the real-time data sensors, steps for placing the 2,000 lb anchor on the lake bottom, steps for rigging the buoy up to be dragged behind the DNR boat to its final destination in 62-foot water, and still more steps for attaching it to the anchor’s line. To a passer-by the process must have looked a little hectic, with people running around securing lines and popping back-and-forth from the building to test light-sensitive sensors. And maybe things were a little chaotic at times, but a chaos complete with checklists.
This is not to say that the day played out without any hiccups. In fact, the whole thing almost had to be scrapped for another day because of a malfunctioning light needed to announce the buoy’s existence to nearby boaters. Cary Troy, the lead researcher on the project, had brought four of these lights from Purdue just in case one didn’t work. Four proved to be too few, though, when the time came to install it atop the buoy. We knew going in that the buoy might not be able to go out that day. There was always the chance that the weather would not be on our side that morning and we would need to wait for another, better day. But with the weather the best it had been for several days, the anchor sitting on a barge at the Port Authority ready to be carried out into the lake, and the buoy all working as planned, a small but important light stood in the way.
To keep the day moving, the team decided to divide and conquer. Cary Troy and graduate student Jun Choi rode the four miles out into the lake on a flat barge carrying the buoy’s anchor, hoping to at least get that in place on the scheduled day. A temporary buoy was attached to the anchor to mark the location and hold the line that secures to buoy in place until the real thing was ready.
Meanwhile, IISG’s Naoki Wada set about trying to repair the light. As a summer intern, Naoki was a key player in the buoy development and continued to lead the way during much of the launch. Step one in the repair process was to hook the light up to a car battery to charge. Once out on the lake, the light is designed to charge during the day using a series of solar panels and flash in 15-second intervals at night or when overcast. That afternoon, though, the sun was replaced with the faster-acting car battery. Step two involved making a series of alterations to the light to test why the now-charged light was not consistently functional. In the end, the launch date was saved when Naoki discovered that removing an internal screw was enough to keep the light working as designed.
With the light finally mounted in place, IISG and crew from the Indiana DNR set about rigging the buoy to safely lower it into the water. The weight and the sensitivity of its sensors meant that the crew needed to be in constant control of the buoy’s movement from the minute it entered the water—something much easier said than done with a machine designed to float. The rigging and lowering process was perhaps the most meticulous part of the day, with as many as eight people at one point tying rope, connecting chains, checking the balance of weight, supporting the buoy into the water, and preventing it from floating under the boat as it drove away from the dock.
The same ropes and chains were then used to transport the buoy four miles into the lake at about 5mph, the manufacturer-recommended speed for dragging a buoy behind a boat. The last step was to remove the drag lines and attach the buoy to the anchor line put in place earlier that day in a process that looked much like the rigging of an hour earlier acted out in reverse. Months of work planning, developing, and launching the buoy were capped off by the whole launch crew snapping photos of the now-operational buoy as the DNR boat sped back to shore.”
In the news: Identifying potential causes of harmful algae in Lake Erie
September 10th, 2012 by Irene Miles“Financial viability is the bottom line for most farmers here along the Maumee River. The Maumee passes through 4.5-million acres of farmland before entering Lake Erie at Toledo. Along the way it picks up a lot of topsoil from farm fields. Attached to that soil are fine particles of phosphorus, one of the nutrients that helps crops grow, but also feeds algae blooms. No-till farming has reduced particulate phosphorus runoff by nearly 40-percent. But researchers from Heidelberg University say their thirty years of water quality data shows that another form of phosphorus – called dissolved phosphorus – has risen dramatically in recent years. And to reduce that nutrient enough to curb Lake Erie algae blooms will take a whole new set of techniques.”
“The sport fishing industry, beach resorts, amusement parks – all took a hit from the 2011 algae outbreak. Connor says cities …not just farms…have to do more to stay on top of it.
Overflows from sewage systems that collect storm water and waste water are a fairly regular occurrence in Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit and other communities around the lake. And it’s a huge cost to fix it.”
In the news: Chicago Canal not the only potential path for Asian carp
September 6th, 2012 by Irene Miles“At the top of that list of secondary pathways is an area in northern Indiana called Eagle Marsh, which separates the Mississippi basin’s Wabash River from the Maumee River basin that feeds Lake Erie. The two watersheds have a history of merging in extreme rains, so to reduce the threat of carp making the jump into Lake Erie, the federal government has erected a fence between them.”
Climate change on the Great Lakes touches all areas
August 22nd, 2012 by Irene Miles“For decades, the mathematics of waterborne transport here were simple. For every 10 to 11 metric tons of cargo that moved into and out of the Toledo port, about one metric ton of sediment left the channel. (Last year, 10.4 million metric tons of cargo were handled at the port.)But with climate change, the equation is almost certain to get more complex and more expensive, say scientists and port managers. More mid-winter snow melts and rainstorms — and more frequent heavy rainfalls, especially in spring — may lead to higher soil-erosion rates, meaning that Great Lakes rivers are likely to carry more soil into harbors. Higher air temperatures already are warming the Great Lakes, blocking ice from forming, and increasing rates of evaporation that may lead to lower lake levels.”
Sea Grant staff take to the sea for research
August 10th, 2012 by Irene MilesCommunity outreach specialist Kristin TePas rinses a PONAR dredge used to collect sediment containing benthic organisms. |
IISG Great Lakes ecosystem specialist Paris Collingsworth deploys a net to collect zooplankton. |
“The Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) is responsible for monitoring the offshore water quality of the Great Lakes to evaluate water quality over time and identify any emerging water quality problems. Comprehensive water quality surveys are conducted in all five Great Lakes in both the spring, when the water is cold and well mixed, and in the summer, when the lakes are biologically active. The R/V Lake Guardian is currently being used to conduct the summer water quality survey.”
In the news: New Illinois law helps prevent spread of AIS
August 2nd, 2012 by Irene MilesAs an amendment to the Boater Registration and Safety Act signed into law by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, aquatic plants and animals would need to be removed from seaplanes and watercraft before moving between bodies of water. The requirement is an important step in preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species throughout the state of Illinois, as well as between states and bodies of water where these vehicles might travel.
Summer interns helping to move IISG projects from paper to practice
July 27th, 2012 by Irene Miles
Naoki Wada
As a native of Japan, Naoki was particularly struck by the results of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami: “My home country, Japan, where the supply of natural resources is very scarce, experienced one of the largest earthquake and tsunami last year, putting most of their nuclear power plants out of operation due to the safety concerns and…forcing the nation to rethink their future energy security. As an island nation surrounded by the ocean, utilizing oceanic energy by means of wave/tidal/current/power generation can be a remedy.” Naoki feels that the United States can also benefit from technology related to ocean-generated power; in addition to providing sustainable energy, it doesn’t require as much land as solar or wind farms and may be more palatable to planners and developers. After his graduation at the end of this year, Naoki intends to pursue graduate work in this field.
Meredith explains more: “I am working with Dr. Paris Collingsworth this summer and we are conducting a study to compare zooplankton community data collected by the Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO) with data collected by the Interagency Lower Trophic Level Monitoring Program of the Lake Erie Committee Forage Task Group (LEC-FTG). We are using statistical models to calculate zooplankton community similarity metrics at specific sample sites through time and space. This study will determine whether the LEC-FTG survey is capturing zooplankton community characteristics that are unique to those captured by the GLNPO data set.”
Lainey will be entering her junior year at the University of Illinois this fall, majoring in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, with a concentration in Resource Conservation and Restoration Ecology.
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- Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant announces funding for southern Lake Michigan region research
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