Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/tag/echo/page/150/)
Echo commentator Gary Wilson’s take on Wisconsin environmental rollbacks picked up some attention from Changing Gears: Remaking the Manufacturing Belt. That’s a project using journalism and public engagement to look at the future of the industrial Midwest. It turns out that Gary’s got a pretty good radio voice. Hear him elaborate on his Echo column.
By Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason
Editors note: Great Lakes SmackDown! Terrestrial Terror is an ongoing Great Lakes Echo series. Teamwork helped the Chinese and Japanese Mystery Snails and the beech scale defeat Round 1 terrors. So what will happen when the odds are evened in the next round? How did the giant stinky snail tag team fair against the Bark Butcher and his trusty fungal side-sick?
By Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason
Editors note: Great Lakes SmackDown! Terrestrial Terror is an ongoing Great Lakes Echo series. In Round 2, The Beast crushed Colonel Mustard into the ground in the brackets and the polls. Seventy-one percent of pollsters chose the feral swine over the garlic mustard. In the brackets, 47 percent of bracketeers picked the feral swine and 21 percent chose the garlic mustard.
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.
By Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason
Editor’s note: Great Lakes SmackDown! Terrestrial Terror is an ongoing Great Lakes Echo series. With the help of a fungal sidekick, The Bark Butcher was able to come from behind and beat out The Knapster, a favored snack of the honeybee. Another duo, the Mystery Snail Tag Team, sidelined a much smaller opponent: The Spiral of Doom. Now the two pairs double-team each other.
By Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason
Editor’s note: Great Lakes SmackDown! Terrestrial Terror is an ongoing Great Lakes Echo series. Colonel Mustard uprooted the Purple Plague in Round 1 with a two-pronged attack consisting of covering forest floors and dominating the root systems beneath. The Beast earned its heavyweight title against the The Hulk with this strong skill set: carrying various viruses and parasites, trampling wildlife and killing baby deer. Now the Garlic Mustard and the Feral Swine face off.
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.
By Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason
Editors note: Great Lakes SmackDown! Terrestrial Terror is an ongoing Great Lakes Echo series. It was a crapshoot, but Shakespeare’s Darling whipped The Egg-beater with its skills of damaging crops and contaminating areas with diseased droppings. The Extreme Defoliator overpowered The Stale Wind, which was just a not-so-stinky nuisance in comparison. The European Starling causes millions of dollars of agricultural damage a year and is extremely adaptable. But millions have also been spent on Gypsy Moth research the last 10 years and in larvae form can defoliate and kill trees.
By Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason
Editors note: Great Lakes SmackDown! Terrestrial Terror is an on going Great Lakes Echo series. With an aggressive demeanor, The Silent Foul breezed by The Warbler’s Woe in Round 1. And the Emerald Ash Borer hit a home run against the little leaguer Miley Cyrex. But which formidable foe is feisty enough to fight its way into Round 3?