Institute Profile: The University of Michigan Water Center

The University of Michigan (U-M) Water Center is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, adjacent to the U-M campus. Guided by Director Jennifer Read, the Center includes 18 professionals, including faculty fellows, research scientists, restoration and collaboration specialists, postdoctoral fellows, and others, and is governed by a multisector advisory board, including representatives from academia, industry, non-government organizations, Tribes/First Nations, and all levels of government. The Center facilitates an interdisciplinary network of U-M and other faculty working on water-related issues by supporting multidisciplinary research teams and providing networking opportunities through monthly lunch seminars, a local area modeling network, and periodic regional and campus-wide events. The Center is supported by multiple sectors and it is part of the Graham Sustainability Institute, which fosters sustainability through translational knowledge, transformative learning, and institutional leadership. The Center increases its impact by convening teams of scientists, resource managers, policy makers, and other stakeholders to address natural resource and sustainability challenges. Research teams work at a variety of geographic scales and address a diverse set of manager- and policy-identified issues related to freshwater and coastal estuarine science to produce relevant, usable products such as decision-support modeling and tools. Teams include decision makers that collaborate with researchers to both produce and apply the science-based outcomes, and include many disciplines (e.g., economics, business, natural resources, public health, urban planning, engineering, public policy, law, art, and design). Research teams tackle challenging freshwater and estuarine issues using innovative research and assessment approaches to deliver coproduced, usable science. Coproduction, in this sense, refers to scientists and end users jointly defining research questions and then sharing results as they evolve. Examples of end users include local, state/provincial, Tribal/First Nations, federal, and NGO decision-makers. The Center's collaboration experts work directly with project teams to help clarify research capabilities to end users, and ensure that researchers focus on end user needs throughout the research process. The Water Center's research process produces usable, timely results focused on improving the management of water systems, while simultaneously advancing water science. The highly collaborative process has multiple benefits. First, the ability to produce usable science is greatly enhanced when researchers understand and are responsive to the interests and needs of end users. Second, the application of research results increases when end users understand and are responsive to the perspectives and capabilities of the research. Finally, interesting and important new science questions often emerge from discussions with practitioners. Harmful algal bloom, Lake Erie, the Southeast Lake Erie shore of Pelee Island, Ontario, Canada 5 miles north of the international line (September, 2009). Photo by Tom Archer, Michigan Sea Grant. The Water Center is currently supporting a suite of ecosystem restoration projects in the Great Lakes region, leveraging federal investments in restoration through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The Water Center also supports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS) by running the NERRS Science Collaborative. The NERRS Science Collaborative supports efforts to address critical coastal management issues identified by the 28 reserves across the nation. The first round of NERRS projects will begin in 2015. Dr. Gregory Dick, at the U-M, is leading an interdisciplinary team of researchers to integrate “omics” data with environmental chemistry and ecosystem ecology to better understand the causes and consequences of harmful algal blooms (HABs) in Western Lake Erie. Of particular interest to the team is better understanding what environmental and biological factors control the toxicity of HABs. Massive new omics datasets being produced by the team, including genome sequences from cyanobacteria, bacteria, and viruses, are significantly enhancing the genomic coverage of freshwater microorganisms in the Great Lakes and worldwide. Further, the team is making these data publicly available for other researchers via a Great Lakes microbial database, and will host a regional workshop on omics for freshwater research to facilitate broader integration of omics approaches into freshwater research. Dr. Peter McIntyre, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is leading a team of agency (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, US Fish and Wildlife Service), non-governmental (The Nature Conservancy), and academic researchers to identify cost-effective barrier removals throughout the entire Great Lakes basin that can boost fisheries without jeopardizing control of invasive species. The project's main output is a state-of-art optimization model that synthesizes spatial information on tributary barriers, native fish species, and aquatic invasive species. This model will be publicly available for use by stakeholders, decision-makers, and funding organizations through a decision support website. Dr. Sandra McLellan, of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is leading a project demonstrating how alternative indicators and hydrodynamic modeling can be used to characterize the sources of fecal pollution (e.g., human, agricultural, and wildlife) entering the Great Lakes and to track its distribution in nearshore waters. This work will enable watershed managers to better target major sources of pathogens and allow them to design and implement more effective remediation strategies to improve water quality. Dr. Melissa Duhaime, at the U-M, is leading a team examining the ecological and environmental health risks of microplastic debris in the Great Lakes. The group of scientists is developing methods to identify and quantify plastics and their adsorbed toxins, using models to predict the transport of plastics through the lakes, and investigating plastic-dwelling microbes and the potential impact of plastics on Great Lakes food webs. The fate of microplastic debris and its role in freshwater ecosystem dynamics is an emerging environmental and policy issue; knowledge gained from this work will help inform future studies, remediation strategies, and the policy discussion about whether microplastics are a matter for regulatory agencies to address. Left panel: Researcher, Rachel Cable, looking for plastics in a manta trawl surface sample. Lake Huron, near Alpena, MI aboard Appledore IV. This sampling leg was an outreach project to educate middle and high schoolers in a summer program, Windward Bound, about the issue and train them how to sample. Photo credit: Captain David Leanza. Right panel: manta trawl sample of surface debris collected from Lake Erie, June 2014 on the ship Nancy K. Small plastic particles visible on a background of cottonwood seeds. Magnification 10X. Photo credit: Rachel Cable. The Water Center actively seeks research teams with interest and experience in working collaboratively with end users. Research teams must ensure that projects meet one or more policy and/or resource management-inspired need, such as those articulated by the National Estuarine Research Reserves, are collaborative, and emphasize usable and accessible outcome-oriented products. Look for a NERRS call for proposals, anticipated in the fall of 2015, on the Water Center website. Proactively, scientists may submit a request to join the research network and receive email notices about these and other funding opportunities. Links: University of Michigan Water Center http://graham.umich.edu/water Great Lakes Restoration Initiative http://greatlakesresortation.us National Estuarine Research Reserve System http://nerrs.noa.gov Elizabeth A. LaPorte, University of Michigan Water Center, 625 E. Liberty St., Suite 300, Ann Arbor, MI 48104, USA; elzblap@umich.edu