An interdisciplinary team of University of Michigan faculty members and students collaborated on this 45-minute performance work about the Huron River. The intricately layered piece interweaves live and recorded music, dance, video and poetry.
Professor Michael J. Wiley has been named the Theodore Roosevelt Chair of Ecosystem Management at the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE). Wiley, who has taught at the school since 1987, was nominated by fellow SNRE faculty and recommended by an internal screening committee. The announcement was made today by Rosina M. Bierbaum, dean of the school. "I'm honored that my peers recommended me and thankful to the committee members who reviewed the nominees," Wiley said. "I hope that during my tenure as the Roosevelt Professor, I can bring more attention to the science and policy of ecosystem management."
Allen Burton, professor and chair of the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Wright State University, has been named director of the Cooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystem Research (CILER) at the Universityof Michigan effective Aug. 1. Professor Burton will hold a simultaneous appointment as a professor in U-M's School of Natural Resources and Environment, which houses CILER.
The New Jersey-size Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" will likely grow in coming years unless federal policies to control it change, in part because the demand for corn-based ethanol fuel will worsen the problem, University of Michigan scientists say. The dead zone forms each spring off the Louisiana and Texas coast when oxygen levels drop too low to support most life in bottom and near-bottom waters. This summer the oxygen-starved zone swelled to 7,900 square miles, the third-largest Gulf of Mexico dead zone recorded since measurements began in 1985.
On June 8 University of Michigan students and faculty will meet with state and local stakeholders to kick off an innovative project intended to evaluate options for establishing sustainable eco-tourism in northeast Michigan. The Northeast Michigan Integrated Assessment project, coordinated by the Northeast Michigan Council of Governments and the Michigan Sea Grant program, is the largest collaborative effort of its kind in the state, according to Don Scavia, professor and associate dean of the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment.
The immune system of the Great Lakes is breaking down and the ecosystem is in danger of collapse, according to a new report released today by the region’s leading scientists. The report underscores the urgent need for comprehensive restoration to repair the “immune system” of the Great Lakes, and to reverse a pattern of decline that threatens to affect drinking water, swimming, fishing, tourism and other benefits derived from the largest body of fresh water in the world. “This report serves as a warning,” said Alfred Beeton, Ph.D., one of the lead authors and former director of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. “The Great Lakes are deteriorating at a rate unprecedented in their recorded history and are nearing the tipping point of ecosystem-wide breakdown. If we want to restore this resource, it is time to act now.”