Great Lakes Echo (http://greatlakesecho.org/author/KHirai/)
Seventeen state troopers who ordinarily patrol Michigan’s roads also serve underwater.
They recover bodies and crime weapons. But they also patrol shipwrecks, documenting features and artifacts.
Profiling is allowed for solving this kind of crime.
Health authorities type bacteria to identify sources of pollution contaminating beaches.
Stormwater clogs wastewater treatment systems, causing overflows that contaminate beaches and drinking water. It also washes roads, parking lots, and other surfaces of oils, sediment, chemicals and debris that end up in rivers, oceans, lakes and wetlands. Trees can help. A search with the Arbor Day Foundation’s National Tree Benefit Calculator shows how. Type in your zip code and get a list of tree species native to it.
Great Lakes shorelines may pose s challenges for soft shoreline engineering–use of natural materials to control erosion and many states encourage its use but don’t require it.
Working Bugs, an East Lansing based company, is doing big things with small microorganisms. It is a small part of a growing biomanufacturing industry hoping to replace petroleum in plastics, clothing, fuel and other products.
Focus remains on current, non-native residents in the Great Lakes, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration did a “scientific census” of nonindigenous species looking to take up residence in the Great Lakes.
Winners of an urban water data World Water Day challenge designed a mashup that compares water supply and use. Generate your own water footprint or print labels to show how much water is embodied in products.
Along the Detroit River, industry’s backdoor was transformed with concrete and steel into 31 miles of hard engineering. A new approach, soft engineering, is turning these sites from gray to green with native plants, habitat creation and landscaping. March 15, 2011
Softening the way we think about shorelines
The Detroit River’s hard edge isn’t so great for river species looking for a place to live, the costs to repair its crumbling or cracking rim and for the eyes of Detroiters. Rising in its place is the concept of soft shoreline engineering. March 24, 2011
Industries that created hard shorelines are now softening them
Detroit Edison Energy Co.’s River Rouge Power Plant site is a recent example of industrial organizations re-engineering the Detroit River shoreline.
Industrial giants that built the Detroit River’s hard shoreline are now replacing it with natural habitat for fish and wildlife.
Use this easy tool to find national wildlife refuges in your Great Lakes state, search by zipcode or view all of them from a list.