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.
The Center for Geospatial Medicine at the University of Michigan is working to reduce death and disability from Type 2 diabetes under a grant announced today as part the nation's 2010 health care law. The center is part of a multi-state research team examining Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, in at-risk populations in four, underserved counties in North Carolina, Mississippi, and West Virginia. The Center for Geospatial Medicine, which uses systematic, spatially-based methods for analyzing environmental threats to people and communities, is housed within the Children's Environmental Health Initiative at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment.
One of the nation' leading researchers in children's environmental health, Marie Lynn Miranda, will be the new dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE), effective Jan. 1, 2012, pending approval from the Board of Regents.