Echo

Two series highlight trip around Lake Superior, fisheries in Lake Huron and Lake Michigan

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By Jeff Gillies
Great Lakes Echo
June 25, 2009

Here are couple of recent and on-going series on Great Lakes topics. Dave Spratt of Great Northern Outdoors has written a good three-part series that tells the story of shifting food webs in lakes Huron and Michigan. Parts one and two look at the collapse of Chinook salmon and the rise of walleye in Lake Huron — changes driven by the impact of zebra and quagga mussels on the once abundant alewives. Part three heads to Lake Michigan, where alewives are down but haven’t disappeared, and competing interests from five resource departments in four states make consensus on fish sticking decisions tough. The story is the third one listed on the Great Northern Outdoors main page.

Echo

Special Report: On the (Lake) Level

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The International Joint Commission spent $3.6 million to study water levels of lakes Michigan, Huron and Erie. A five-part series on the controversial results. What did the study find, who still isn’t happy and what happens next? Day 1: Report blames natural causes, not dredging, for low lake levels
When the Great Lakes are high, shoreline houses risk erosion that could tumble them into the water. When they are low, more structures are exposed to wind damage, boaters can’t pull up to docks and ships can’t transport as much cargo.

Echo

VIDEO: New perennial wheat easier on soil, passes cookie test

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By Steven Davy, stevenrdavy@yahoo.com
Great Lakes Echo
June 23, 2009

Crop and soil sciences researcher Sieglinde Snapp hopes her work at Michigan State University produces a more sustainable wheat. The variety she’s developing doesn’t have to be planted every year, and early research suggests it is easier on the soil, needs less fertilizer and contains more protein and micro-nutrients. It tastes good, too. Federal agriculture officials like the wheat so much they recently awarded the university a $1 million grant to help bring it to market. Snapp and graduate student research assistant Brook Wilke explain in this video the wheat’s research, potential and cookie test.

Echo

Stimulus-backed high-speed rail could benefit Great Lakes region; environmental benefits uncertain

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By Allison Bush, bushalli@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
June 22, 2009

The prospect of traveling from Chicago to Detroit at 110 mph might be more feasible with the recent release of federal rules for obtaining a piece of the $8 billion in stimulus funds for the high-speed rail. The criteria looks good for the Great Lakes region as it favors multi-state proposals. Regional transportation officials have proposed a high-speed rail with a central hub in Chicago that travels to Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis and other cities. But will people give up their automobiles and make the shift? “The high-speed rail can look really good environmentally,” said Mikhail Chester, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.

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

Most Americans believe global warming harm not yet here; Great Lakes residents less concerned than national average

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By Allison Bush, bushalli@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
June 17, 2009

Although a new federal report says global warming is already causing harm, many Americans believe it is tomorrow’s problem – that it won’t hurt people for another 10 years. And those surveyed in five Great Lakes states are less worried than the national average, according to a recent study by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. The study found six levels of concern about warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels for energy and transportation. These “six Americas” were defined as alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful and dismissive. “Basically, we believe you can find the six groups in any community – just different proportions,” Anthony Leiserowitz, study co-author and a research scientist at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies wrote in an e-mail.

Echo

VIDEO: Minnesota polar explorer finds evidence of climate change in the Arctic

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By Allison Bush, bushalli@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
June 16, 2009

Minnesota native and nationally renowned polar explorer Will Steger has watched ice melt practically under his feet in the coldest regions of the world. “About 15 years ago, scientists predicted that changes in global warming would first be seen in polar regions,” Steger said recently. “So unfortunately, most of the changes people have not seen yet.”

But Steger, who has traversed both Antarctica and the Arctic, and has spent more than 40 years leading and participating in polar expeditions, says that he has seen the changes first-hand. Along with five other explorers, he crossed more than 3,700 miles of Antarctica in 1989 and 1990. Temperatures were at average 80 degrees below zero, and the team spent six months at an altitude above 7,000 feet.

Echo

Lake levels report weighs Great Lakes basin’s glacial legacy

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By Jeff Gillies, jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
June 8, 2009

Even today the Great Lakes landscape is bouncing back from the glaciers that retreated 10,000 years ago. A key question researchers recently sought to answer is whether that has anything to do with fluctuating lake levels. Here’s how it might work: The massive ice sheets pushed down the earth’s crust like a person pressing on a basketball, said Grahame Larson, professor of geology at Michigan State University. And when the ice is gone, the relatively pliable layer under the Earth’s rocky crust rebounds, though more slowly than the surface of a basketball. “When you stop pushing on the basketball, the basketball surface pops right back up,” Larson said.

Echo

Climate variation main cause in Huron and Michigan’s dropping levels, report says

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By Allison Bush, bushalli@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
June 5, 2009

Some shoreline cottage owners blame dredging and other human-caused activities for eroding the St. Clair River and lowering Lake Huron. But experts with the International Joint Commission cite variations in climate as the main cause for dropping lake levels in recent years. Although erosion from both human and natural causes contributed to the declining water levels in lakes Michigan and Huron, it has only played a small part in recent years, said Frank Quinn, a participant in the IJC study. “The change in (the lake levels) was maybe 50 centimeters from the 1990s to the present, and my finding was that between five and seven centimeters was due to erosion,” said Quinn, a former senior research hydrologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

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.