Echo

Weighing the risks and benefits of eating Great Lakes fish

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By Sarah Coefield
Oct. 15, 2009

The Great Lakes teem with fish, but anglers looking to them for their next meal should be cautious. The fish contain an array of contaminants, including some known to threaten human health.  Methyl mercury inhibits brain development. PCBs can suppress the immune system and thyroid development and may cause cancer. The contaminants have lead to consumption advisories on many popular fish species, such as walleye, lake trout and salmon.

Echo

Sarah Coefield

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E-mail: sarahcoefield@gmail.com

Sarah’s stories on Echo

Sarah Coefield has been a reporter with the Great Lakes Echo since May 2009.  She also works as an editorial intern for Environmental Health News.  Before coming to the Echo, Sarah climbed trees and pestered great horned owls as part of her master’s research in environmental toxicology. Sarah is originally from Montana and completed her undergraduate degrees in biology and chemistry at Whitworth University in Spokane, Wash.

Echo

Farmers defend Great Lakes crops from deer

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By Sarah Coefield
Coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Sept. 23, 2009

Countless deer descend on crops in the Great Lakes region, leaving in their wake torn corn silks, leafless soybeans, devastated orchards and millions of dollars in damage.  It’s a drop in the bucket for the agriculturally rich region but nonetheless painful for individual farmers. “In the grand scheme of things, it’s a minor amount, but it can be your entire crop,” said Paul Zimmerman, the public affairs executive director for the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation. While damage may be little noticed on large farms, it can be devastating for small operations where deer can quickly wipe out a field of young soybeans. “Welcome to raising crops in Mother Nature,” Zimmerman said.

Echo

Presidential politics prompt soaring gun sales, help Great Lakes’ wildlife

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By Sarah Coefield
coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Sept. 15, 2009

A run on guns and ammo in the wake of President Barack Obama’s election last year may be a boon to Great Lakes wildlife. A federal tax on the manufacture and import of firearms, ammunition, bows and arrows is distributed to states for wildlife conservation and hunter education programs.

And those tax collections are climbing fast. Background checks for gun purchases hit record levels in November and corresponded with significant gun and ammunition sales. Gun enthusiasts say they’re stocking up because they fear interference in gun rights by the Obama administration.

Echo

Federal agency proposes to study urine and blood of residents to evaluate effectiveness of Great Lakes Restoration Initiative

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By Sarah Coefield, coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Aug. 26, 2009

Editor’s note: This story is part of an occasional series on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative
With more than 100 projects vying for a piece of the $475 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, taxpayers may wonder:  Are they worth it? At least one agency is poised to find out if restoration projects will lower pollutants in people. Eighteen of the proposals in the initiative to clean or protect the Great Lakes address contaminants.  The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry intends to monitor some of those projects by checking for contaminants in Great Lakes residents’ blood and urine.  The goal is to analyze them before cleanup and then several years later, said Steve Dearwent, the chief of health investigations in the agency’s division of health studies.

Land

Great Lakes cities not so walkable; rate your own community with this widget

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Find out your home’s Walk Score:

By Sarah Coefield, coefield@msu.edu
August 19, 2009
Great Lakes Echo

Despite rising gas prices and growing concern over greenhouse gases, many Great Lakes residents find it difficult to leave their cars at home. The Web site www.walkscore.com ranked the walkability of 40 large cities across the United States. Of the five Great Lakes cities that were examined, only Chicago made the top ten. So what makes a city walkable? Dan Burden says a walkable community is “built around the human foot.”  He founded Walkable Communities Inc. and has worked with cities nationwide to identify trouble and encourage pedestrian-oriented development.  Burden is also on the board of advisers for Walkscore.com.

Echo

Phytofilters: Turning brownfields green

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By Sarah Coefield, coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Aug. 13, 2009

Some Great Lakes brownfields will turn green if Congress passes a $475 million restoration package. Literally. The U.S. Forest Service seeks $2 million of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative to transform  unusable industrial lots into parks and trailways – and clean up some contaminants in the process. While the forest service has  long restored natural vegetation and has an urban forestry division, this will be its first foray into phytoremediation, said Steven Davis, a watershed specialist with the forest service’s Northeastern Area State and Private Forestry division.

Echo

Bacteria in Lake Huron sinkholes may hold keys to new cancer treatments, antibiotics

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By Sarah Coefield
coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
July 16, 2009

The colorful cyanobacteria coating the sinkholes in Lake Huron may be ancient, but researchers are hoping they will provide new medicines for cancer and infection treatments. Cyanobacteria produce a plethora of complex molecules. Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asked Dave Sherman to take a look at the bacteria to see if he could find any hints of medical applications. He did. Sherman, the Hans W. Vahlteich Professor in the Life Sciences Institute in the department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Michigan, studies chemicals produced by microbial organisms and looks for molecules that can fight cancer and infection.

Echo

Sinkhole backgrounder

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Additional information about Lake Huron sinkholes

The Lake Huron Sinkholes Overview

El Cajon Sinkhole

Middle Island Sinkhole

Isolated Sinkhole

Glossary of terms and concepts
The Lake Huron Sinkholes

This map shows the locations of three sinkholes scientists are studying in northern Lake Huron.  The gray area is Michigan and the color gradient represents lake depth. Sinkholes and caves are karst formations created when mildly acidic rain and groundwater dissolve calcium carbonate in the limestone, carving tunnels and holes into the rock. The sinkholes in Lake Huron were most likely formed thousands of years ago, before the formation of the Great Lakes but after glaciers retreated.  When the Pleistocene glaciers retreated 10,000 years ago, they scraped the landscape clean of any older karst formations.  As a result, karst formations in the Great Lakes region formed between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago when low lake levels exposed the limestone bedrock. The sinkholes in Lake Huron range in diameter from a tabletop to a football field. They lie both near the shoreline and in the deeper waters.