Echo

Photo Friday: The gulls of Lake Erie

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On the shores of Lake Erie near Cleveland, Ohio, adjacent to an industrial area housing the Cleveland Browns Stadium, the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, and the Great Lakes Science Center, is home to a large colony of ring-billed gulls. The gulls build their nests on the ground and line it with grass, reeds and rushes and typically hatch 2-4 eggs at a time. Mom and Dad share the sitting duties. These photos show the colony, the nest sitters, a nest and the “guards” who line the fence to warn the parents-to-be of impending intruders.  

 

 

Echo

NASA satellite shows Great Lakes region hit hard by drought

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NASA’s Earth Observatory has a remarkable view of the impact of the summer drought. Parts of the Great Lakes region are among those hardest hit. The image depicts plant health in the central U.S. with data collected by the space agency’s Terra satellite. Brown areas show where plants have taken a hit, cream indicates normal growth  and green indicates lush vegetation.  Gray indicates where data could not be collected because of snow or cloud cover. Things look particularly bad in southern Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois.

Echo

It’s 11:55 p.m.; Do you know where your Asian carp are?

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Longtime environment writer Jeff Alexander just launched a nifty feature to track the Asian carp crisis. It’s modeled after the Doomsday Clock that scientists created in the 1940s to track how the world inched toward nuclear holocaust. The Asian Carp Doomsday Clock features hands made of images of bighead and silver carp – two of the species biologists and others fear could devastate the Great Lakes ecosystem. Jeff does a nice round up of a week’s worth of bad news along the carp Maginot Line to justify setting the hands at a mere five minutes before midnight. When the original Doomsday Clock was launched in 1947, it was set at seven minutes to midnight.

Echo

Carp czar meets in Chicago; here’s Gary Wilson’s take

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The federal government’s carp czar is holding a public meeting in Chicago today to discuss efforts to prevent Asian carp from establishing in the Great Lakes. Here’s what Great Lakes Echo’s Gary Wilson had to say about the issue on WMUK in Kalamazoo, Mich. The White House Council on Environmental Quality Asian Carp Director John Goss is leading the meeting of the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee.  Information at the bottom of this post explains how to participate at 2 p.m. Central time (3 p.m. Eastern) via webcast.