Echo

Lake Huron sinkholes give clues to ancient life

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

The scientists studying the Lake Huron sinkholes know the colorful bacteria they host have a prehistoric ancestry, but a major question remains: Where did it all come from? The purple cyanobacteria mats in the Lake Huron sinkholes resemble mats found in ice-covered Antarctic lakes.  Bopi Biddanda, a research scientist with the Grand Valley State University Annis Water Resources Institute, suspects they may have a similar ancestry.  This suspicion relies on a theory that microbial life is already distributed across the planet, and comes out of hiding when conditions are just right, he said. The Lake Huron mats provide clues for how ocean and lake currents could have spread the bacteria.  Microbial gases in the sinkhole sediment force portions of the cyanobacteria mats to protrude like purple fingers pointing toward the lake’s surface.  The protrusions sometimes tear off and float away on the currents. “I think it is one of the ways (the bacteria) get distributed to other distant regions where groundwater may be coming out,” Biddanda said.  “And if they land there, they can populate with the same kind of microbes.” If the bacteria spread on currents, it likely happened long ago.  “We think they’re survivors of the past, that upon conditions returning to favorable conditions they were able to thrive and reestablish and keep going,” Biddanda said.

Echo

VIDEO: Lake Huron discovery is a window on the past and future

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By Sarah Coefield, coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
July 14, 2009

Lake Huron’s depths hide a colorful, ancient world that holds keys to the planet’s history and clues for new cancer treatments and antibiotics. The locals in Alpena have long known about sinkholes just offshore from their northeast Michigan community.  But it will take researchers several years to unravel the local diving spots’ mysteries. The story of the Lake Huron sinkholes and their exotic ecosystems begins on a ship.  While surveying shipwrecks in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 2001, Steve Ruberg and his colleagues were surprised to detect underwater basins 300 feet below the surface.  To their trained eyes, the basins looked like sinkholes. The discovery warranted further investigation. “Looking at the data and understanding what was going on, we actually came back and revisited the sites in 2003,” Ruberg said.  Ruberg is an engineer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory and a project leader for the sinkhole research.

Echo

Cow power comes to the Great Lakes region

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By Thomas Morrisey, tmorrisey@gmail.com,
and Sarah Coefield, coefield@msu.edu,
Great Lakes Echo
July 7, 2009

A new multimillion-dollar research project at Michigan State University will transform manure from a bothersome waste to a green energy powerhouse. The East Lansing, Mich. university’s Anaerobic Digestion Research and Education Center, will focus on developing small digesters that use bacteria to break down manure into biogas. It is part of a group of similar efforts across the Great Lakes region. Biogas is made up of mostly methane, carbon dioxide and effluent sludge, a nitrogen-rich substance that can be used as fertilizer. The biogas, which can be generated from dairy, swine or poultry manure, can be burned to generate electricity and the sludge can be spread on fields as an alternative to using untreated manure.

Echo

Great Lakes, great wind bring great federal investment

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DOE-funded wind energy projects in the Great Lakes

By Sarah Coefield, coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
July 2, 2009

Great Lakes wind power is getting a turbo boost. The Great Lakes region will receive nearly a third of the $8.5 million federal officials recently set aside for wind energy development. The region will see $475,929 to study wind energy environmental impacts, $100,000 for development of small turbines, $1,446,942 for wind energy education and training and $587,029 to bring wind energy to market. The projects are aimed at challenges identified in the Department of Energy’s 2008 report, which sets a goal of using wind to supply 20 percent of the country’s energy needs by 2030. Of the $2.6 million coming into the region, nearly $100,000 is going to the Great Lakes Commission, an Ann Arbor-based multi-state agency that coordinates environmental and conservation policy in the Great Lakes basin.

Wildlife

Great Lakes fish hatcheries could benefit from new test for deadly VHS virus

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There may be hope for fishery managers still reeling years after a dangerous virus appeared in the Great Lakes. The month-long wait for a viral hemorrhagic septicemia test has hobbled hatcheries that must test fish before introducing them to the region’s lakes and streams. Genetics researchers at the Lake Erie Research Center at the University of Toledo are working on a test that will speed up that diagnosis to a matter of hours. The research, supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is one of several projects around the Great Lakes studying a virus that has cost the region tens of millions of dollars in staff time, lost hatchery capacity and research. The tourism and ecosystem impacts are as yet unknown, Marc Gaden, communications director for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, wrote in an e-mail. About $1.2 million from various sources has been spent on projects that seek to better understand the virus and develop diagnostic tests, said Gary Whelan, the fish production manager for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Division

The virus was first detected in the Great Lakes in 2005 and 2006 after it killed large numbers of fresh water drum, muskellunge, round gobies and yellow perch.

Echo

In a jam: Report points to ’84 ice pileup for St. Clair River scouring

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By Sarah Coefield, coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
June 4, 2009

An ice jam that stalled the St. Clair River for nearly a month in 1984 may have caused Lake Huron to drain faster in subsequent years. Lake Huron water levels have been dropping the past 40 to 50 years. That prompted a Canadian group of Georgian Bay cottage associations, upset that the low water threatened wetlands and diminished waterfronts, to search out the cause. Consultants for the Georgian Bay Association in 2004 identified the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ dredging of the St.

Water

Landmark Wisconsin diversion of Great Lakes water is both praised and blasted

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By Sarah Coefield, coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
May 22, 2009
A Great Lakes water diversion to replace a Wisconsin city’s radium-contaminated wells has been both hailed as a responsible application of new water use regulations and blasted as unwarranted and precipitous. New Berlin is the first city with residents outside of the Great Lakes basin to receive water under the latest version of the Great Lakes Compact, a federal agreement approved by bordering states and ratified by Congress in 2008. The diversion was approved Thursday by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Because New Berlin is both inside and outside of the basin — the land that drains to the Great Lakes – Wisconsin had sole discretion in approving the city’s application.  Cities completely outside the basin must receive approval from all the Great Lakes states. Under Wisconsin’s conservation standards, New Berlin will return all the water it withdraws from Lake Michigan and also contribute local water to the lake.  That net gain for Lake Michigan represents a successful application of the Great Lakes Compact, Andy Buchsbaum, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes region, said Friday.