Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/author/khirai/page/2/)
The Detroit River shoreline was hardened with concrete and steel to accommodate the loads of freight shipped along its banks for manufacturing.
Engineers are now softening that edge to accommodate river wildlife and Detroiters.
The Great Lakes Association of Science Ships has a new way of tracking U.S. and Canadian vessels researching the sweetwater seas.
There are about 100 such vessels.
The association’s ship locator is meant to help researchers collaborate and more efficiently use the vessels.
Raise your secchi disks and get out the thermistor–it’s lake monitoring season and you can be the scientist. The Michigan Clean Water Corps is recruiting volunteers to monitor the quality of the state’s inland lakes. Secchi disks gauge water clarity–a major lake health indicator. Thermistors measure water temperature. Volunteers also sample native and exotic aquatic plants at different depths, measure dissolved oxygen and collect algae and water samples for chlorophyll and phosphorus tests.
To combat ice sheets on the Ottawa River in Canada, you might say explosives are this team’s dynamite. Ice builds up on a 9-kilometer stretch of the Ottawa River each winter, creating an icy problem should water swell behind an ice jam and flood any of the 900 buildings nearby. A quick remedy–dynamite. “Ice blasting” started in the 1880s according to a BBC article. By the 1960s and 1970s, the explosive practice became an annual flood prevention measure.
You can get cash if you get wet and wild with urban water data. Visualizing.org, a data design website, and a Traverse City, Mich.-based news organization specializing in global water issues called Circle of Blue teamed up for the World Water Day data visualization challenge. They’re asking for people to visualize urban water issues caused by the mass migration of rural residents to urban areas and a lack of city planning. The organizations want data to tell that story and hope to glean the water information and new ways to visualize it from data designers and experts. The contest launched Feb. 21 and runs until March 15.
Four Great Lakes states rank in the top ten–for 2010 power plant carbon dioxide emissions. A recent report by the Environmental Integrity Project shows carbon dioxide emissions from power plants rose 5.56 percent nationwide. More than 2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide, a common greenhouse gas, were released nationally. Texas topped the list with about 257 million tons. Ohio led the Great Lakes states and placed third nationally.
Runoff from urban and agricultural activities has a bad rap–a recent white paper said nonpoint source pollution accounts for 76 percent of Great Lakes water pollution. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources said nonpoint pollution can range from “lawn chemicals, fertilizers, road salts and petroleum products to sediment (dirt) and excessive nutrients from cities, malfunctioning home-sewage treatment systems and livestock operations.”
Ohio is taking the problem into its own hands to clean up Lake Erie. But how do you attack the source when you don’t know where it is? An easy answer: educate the humans. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources granted $75,000 toward three coastal nonpoint pollution education specialists in Lake, Lucas and Ottawa counties.
So many people didn’t get outdoors prior to 2007 that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources asked why. What’s keeping Minnesotans away? Lack of time, equipment, outdoor skills and event information, they say. Maybe that’s because kids aged eight to 18 years old average seven hours and 38 minutes per day on their cell phones, iPods, computers and televisions, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation study. The department announced recently that plans developed after the department’s study to get people outside have worked.
It’s not easy being old–the Barney Devine served Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources missions on Lake Michigan and is now close to retirement at the age of 74. Construction just finished on the boat’s replacement, the Coregonus.
A U.S. Geological Survey water availability study released today says Great Lakes water is great, but not infinite. Researchers behind the five-year study note uneven water distribution could lead to local shortages. Areas like Milwaukee and Chicago may see an estimated 100-foot drop in groundwater levels by 2040 if groundwater pumping continues in these areas, the study reported.