A project led by SNRE Professor Dave Allan is among eight Great Lakes restoration and protection projects receiving $2.9 million from the U-M Water Center.
Eleven more faculty at the School of Natural Resources and Environment have become part of winning MCubed projects funding by the university under a new interdisciplinary program.
By Angela Fichera
West Eisenhower Parkway, Stone School Road and West Ellsworth Road – three heavily traveled thoroughfares in the city of Ann Arbor – each got a makeover thanks to graduate students in an SNRE experimental course titled “Urban Stormwater: Science, Design and Management course.”
A new $9 million University of Michigan Great Lakes research and education center will guide efforts to protect and restore the world’s largest group of freshwater lakes by reducing toxic contamination, combating invasive species, protecting wildlife habitat and promoting coastal health. With a $4.5 million, three-year grant from the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, the new University of Michigan Water Center will provide a solid scientific framework for more efficient and effective Great Lakes restoration.
Great Lakes beachgoers could spend a lot more time in the water if a beach forecasting tool under development by University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues is adopted throughout the region. The new forecasting tool would significantly reduce the number of days that Great Lakes beaches are unnecessarily closed to swimming due to inaccurate assessments of E. coli bacteria levels, according to David Rockwell of the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment. "My estimate is that 23 percent of the time that swimming is prohibited at Great Lakes beaches due to high bacteria levels, those decisions are actually mistakes," said Rockwell, beach water quality forecasting coordinator at the Cooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystems Research (CILER), a collaboration between the U-M and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
University of Michigan researchers are available to discuss the potential impacts of President Obama's proposal, announced Monday, to reduce funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
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.