News

Humanity can farm more food from the seas to help feed the planet while shrinking mariculture’s negative impacts on biodiversity, according to new research led by the University of Michigan.

Research led by the University of Michigan arrived at a surprisingly unsurprising result while assessing the sustainability gap between public transit and services like Uber and Lyft.

Researchers from the University of Michigan measured hormone levels in capuchin monkeys to decode how the stress response helps these monkeys weather environmental challenges.

Water desalination plants could replace expensive chemicals with new carbon cloth electrodes that remove boron from seawater, an important step of turning seawater into safe drinking water.

According to a new report from the Center for Sustainable Systems, the Big Ten’s 2024 expansion will more than double the average conference game emissions for the University of Michigan football team.

Morning glory plants that can resist the effects of glyphosate also resist damage from herbivorous insects, according to a University of Michigan study.

Smarter use of processor speeds saves energy without compromising training speed and performance

A new study authored by University of Michigan highlights the opportunity for animal tracking data to help usher in a new era of conservation.

In a new long-term ecological experiment, researchers showed that elevated levels of carbon dioxide nearly tripled species losses in grasslands attributed to the long-term application of simulated nitrogen pollution.

The impacts of climate change can take varying degrees of time to show up in ecosystems but, in grasslands, the response to climate change is apparent almost in real-time, according to new research by the University of Michigan. In other words, forests accumulate climate debt while grasslands are paying as they go, said the study’s lead authors, University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) Associate Professor Kai Zhu and Yiluan Song, a postdoctoral fellow in the Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society affiliated with the Institute for Global Change Biology in SEAS.

Not all of us can afford to wear the latest styles fresh from the world’s maisons, so we often turn to fast-fashion retailers in order to participate in aesthetic trends. But our planet cannot sustain these habits, which cause an enormous amount of textile waste that unfairly burdens communities in the global South and actively harms the environment.

U-M has published a guidebook to help communities navigate the arrival of new battery energy storage systems amid changing energy policies.

This year’s survey will focus on critical topics including carbon neutrality, transportation, waste prevention, climate change, and food sustainability. New questions on climate anxiety will explore respondents' feelings about climate issues and their experiences with direct impacts.

Along M-22 in northwestern Michigan, people with mobility challenges can access breathtaking views of Lake Michigan from a 300-foot-high platform, explore rare birds and plants in a restored marsh or lose themselves in coastal dunes and forests once off-limits.

Hundreds of terrestrial and aquatic animal species live in the Boca do Mamirauá Reserve, located in the upper reaches of the Amazon, at the confluence of the Solimões and Japurá rivers. It is the first destination of the U-M Pantanal Partnership students this year.

The Maasai Mara National Reserve was established to protect wildlife, yet it has seen populations shrink among its large, iconic herbivores, including zebras, impalas and elephants, over the last few decades.

U-M has received a $25 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to support collaborative research initiatives addressing critical environmental challenges in U.S. coastal communities.

A new trailer is an exciting step forward in making fresh, local produce more accessible to the campus community.

Artisanal and small-scale mining plays a critical role in supplying the world with minerals vital for decarbonization, but this kind of mining typically lacks regulation and can be socially and environmentally harmful.

While ticks and the maladies associated with these minute vampirish insects get a lot of media attention, lurking in the not-too-distant shadows we find several other and potentially more ominous vectors of disease—the fungal pathogens.

Wetlands are threatened by a variety of factors, including nutrient runoff from lawns and agricultural operations. This excess of nutrients can promote the growth of invasive species and disrupt the delicate ecosystem balance.

The soils of northern forests are key reservoirs that help keep the carbon dioxide that trees inhale and use for photosynthesis from making it back into the atmosphere. But a unique experiment is showing that, on a warming planet, more carbon is escaping the soil than is being added by plants.

Greater human-wildlife overlap could lead to more conflict between people and animals, say the U-M researchers. But understanding where the overlap is likely to occur—and which animals are likely to interact with humans in specific areas—will be crucial information for urban planners, conservationists and countries that have pledged international conservation commitments.

Faced with an ecological crisis, public health emergencies and socioeconomic inequities, agroecology emerges as a transdisciplinary beacon of hope.

Southeast Michigan’s Huron River abounds with picturesque natural scenes, including burbling streams, graceful trumpeter swans, towering leafy trees, and… polluted foam? More than just an eyesore, this foam—now a common sight in waterways across Michigan and much of the U.S.—often contains a group of harmful synthetic chemicals called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which have been linked to a variety of negative health effects.

A grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Integrated Ocean Observing System will establish a Great Lakes Biodiversity Observation Network to coordinate with and learn from biodiversity observation networks along the U.S. coasts and ocean waters and other BONs in ocean and freshwater habitats worldwide.

A team of scientists, including a U-M aquatic ecologist, is forecasting an above-average summer “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico covering about 5,827 square miles—an area roughly the size of Connecticut.

Identifying public concerns and misconceptions about nuclear energy can target efforts to bridge these gaps as nuclear energy will play a large role in goals to decarbonize by 2050, replacing oil and gas as a stable baseload electricity source.

Improving electric motor efficiency, reducing costs and ultimately making them without heavy rare-earth elements are the goals of a new $2.6 million project led by U-M.

Michigan is home to 43 species of native freshwater mussels, 30 of which are considered to be at risk of extinction. Among the many factors that threaten the hard-shelled bottom dwellers are competition from invasive zebra and quagga mussels, water pollution, and—especially—dams.

The U-M Biological Station, a more than 10,000-acre research and teaching campus along Douglas Lake just south of the Mackinac Bridge, will host distinguished scientists, artists and authors from across the United States as part of its 2024 Summer Lecture Series.

As the world faces the loss of a staggering number of species of animals and plants to endangerment and extinction, one U-M scientist has an urgent message: Chemists and pharmacists should be key players in species conservation efforts.

One of the most important things people can do to address climate change is talk about it, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said. Citing statistics that two-thirds of people in the United States are worried about climate change, but only 8% are activated to do something about it, Hayhoe said talking about climate change doesn’t mean trying to change the minds of those who believe it is a hoax.

The most up-to-date understanding of the flowering plant tree of life is presented in a new study published today in the journal Nature by an international team of 279 scientists, including three U-M biologists.

For long-haul routes below 300 miles, electrification can reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas damages by 13%, or $587 million annually, according to the study. For long-haul routes above 300 miles, electrification of just the urban segments facilitated by hub-based automation of highway driving can reduce damages by 35%, or $220 million annually.

In the fall of 1881, with the opening of the School of Political Science, Professor Volney M. Spalding began teaching what was considered the first forestry course in the United States.

"Train travel in America is much more limited than, for example, in Europe. You often can’t get where you want to go. But you can get to Lincoln from Ann Arbor, with just one change in Chicago. What’s the carbon savings? A flight to Lincoln would add about 800 kg of CO­2 emissions to my annual budget. The train trip is more like 85 kg. Takes more time, for sure, but that’s a big part of why emissions from train travel are so much lower."

When climate scientists look to the future to determine what the effects of climate change may be, they use computer models to simulate potential outcomes such as how precipitation will change in a warming world. But U-M scientists are looking at something a little more tangible: coral.

Melinda Su-En Lee, PharmD’21, co-founded Parcel Health in 2019, while studying at the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy. The company aims to solve the waste problem caused by traditional plastic prescription bottles.

Mushrooms come with a seemingly endless list of things that make them unique, including some that glow in the dark, some that are poisonous, and others that have been living for thousands of years. In the natural world, they are known as efficient decomposers and fast growers that play an integral role in maintaining and restoring the ecosystem.

Rackham Ph.D. candidate Etienne Herrick-Sutton works with Great Lakes region farmers to identify strategies for improving the environmental and economic outcomes of cover cropping.

Six new research projects will investigate the shifting dynamics of harmful algal blooms, economic trends in coastal communities, emerging fish viruses, and other issues relevant to the Great Lakes.

As the architect of the Solar Energy Research Institute, which won 42 awards and was named the most energy-efficient building in the world, Rich von Luhrte knows how something is built is just as important as what is produced and why. That knowledge and his passion for addressing climate change have led him to establish a scholarship supporting students studying urban design.

U-M is a partner in the Great Lakes Water Innovation Engine, one of ten regional hubs the National Science Foundation announced this week as part of a program that’s among the largest broad investments in place-based research and development in the nation’s history, according to NSF.

New, nontoxic materials could one day keep solar panels and airplane wings ice-free, or protect first responders from frostbite and more, thanks to a new U-M-led project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Existing materials used to accomplish these feats come with serious downsides. For instance, road salts prevent pavements and streets from freezing but also corrode concrete and enter natural freshwaters through runoff, to the detriment of aquatic life.

This winter, researchers at the U-M Biological Station in northern Michigan are strengthening their snow science with new technology to track the snowpack at an hourly rate and get a deeper understanding of the complexities of global environmental change.

Four newly awarded sustainability “catalyst grants” at U-M are piloting innovative ways to bolster climate resilience and sustainability. Funded by the U-M Graham Sustainability Institute, these projects will explore renewable energy deployment in Nepal, climate justice in the Midwest, textile recycling innovation and equitable transportation planning.

Climate change is reshaping forests differently across the United States, according to a new analysis of U.S. Forest Service data. With rising temperatures, escalating droughts, wildfires and disease outbreaks taking a toll on trees, researchers warn that forests across the American West are bearing the brunt of the consequences.

A conservation easement permanently protects private land by limiting the type and amount of development on a property, and restricting other uses that would damage natural features such as rich soils and high functioning wetlands.

The need for a compact came when, twenty-five years ago, a Canadian company decided they could fill tanker ships with Great Lakes water to sell to countries with water shortages. Wanting to protect the lakes, the Great Lakes states, along with Ontario and Quebec, began the complex negotiations that would lead to the formal agreement detailing how they’d work together to manage as well as protect the Great Lakes.

Since 1930, U-M has maintained the Edwin S. George Reserve (ESGR) to provide research and educational opportunities, as well as preserve native flora and fauna. The 525-hectare fenced ESGR is located in Livingston County, Michigan (about 25 miles northwest of Ann Arbor) and hosts students, postdocs and faculty as well as biologists from other universities throughout the year.

This summer’s Chesapeake Bay “dead zone” was the smallest it’s been since monitoring began in 1985, according to data released by the Chesapeake Bay Program’s monitoring partners: the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Old Dominion University and Virginia Institute of Marine Science. The model used to make the annual forecasts was developed at U-M.

For his work refining agricultural waste into materials for lithium-ion batteries and other sustainable energy technologies, Michigan Engineering Professor Richard Laine has been honored by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.)

New research suggests that a realistic estimate of additional global forest carbon-storage potential is approximately 226 gigatonnes of carbon—enough to make a meaningful contribution to slowing climate change.

As part of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers’ new initiative aimed at planting 250 million trees in the Great Lakes region by 2033, the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability partnered with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources ( and GSGP to hold a ceremonial tree planting on November 9 at one of SEAS’ research natural areas.

LSA’s Detroit River Story Lab teaches students from elementary school through college about the past and future of the vibrant body of water.

“Elephants, in a way, are the giant versions of canaries in a mine for the planet. If we cannot sustain animals as big and as capable and as versatile as elephants, then that means we have ripped a hole in the fabric of life on Earth in a way that could actually be very dangerous to ourselves. It could lead to our own demise.”

Humans and wildlife, including large carnivores, interact at an unprecedented scale as they increasingly share the world’s landscapes. A new U-M-led study of human-lion interactions found that lions tend to avoid human-dominated areas unless they are facing food scarcity and habitat fragmentation.

Nearly $1.23 billion has been spent by the U.S. government since 2004 on the cleanup of toxic pollutants in waterways resulting from manufacturing activities in historic areas around the Great Lakes.

The U-M Museum of Zoology recently acquired tens of thousands of scientifically priceless reptile and amphibian specimens, including roughly 30,000 snakes preserved in alcohol-filled glass jars. The new acquisitions boost the university’s collection of reptiles and amphibians to roughly half a million specimens, including some 70,000 snakes. With the latest additions, U-M now maintains the largest research collection of snakes anywhere in the world, according to museum curators.

It’s well-known that birds and other animals rely on Earth’s magnetic field for long-distance navigation during seasonal migrations. But how do periodic disruptions of the planet’s magnetic field, caused by solar flares and other energetic outbursts, affect the reliability of those biological navigation systems?

Electric and hybrid aircraft, hydrogen power, advanced airframes and more were on the table at U-M's first symposium on sustainable aviation.

Agriculture can both help and hinder: It can act as an incubator of novel animal-borne microbes, facilitating their evolution into human-ready pathogens, or it can form barriers that help block their spread.

The old adage “the end justifies the means” is one way to critically paraphrase the philosophical underpinnings of the early 20th century environmental conservation movement. Historically, conservation leaders have stolen land from Indigenous people, enacted eminent domain land grabs, and perpetrated other unjust actions in service of environmental conservation. Rackham alum Rebeca Villegas (M.S., M.U.R.P. ’20) is changing that harmful dynamic.

A new University of Michigan-led study finds that farmers in India have adapted to warming temperatures by intensifying the withdrawal of groundwater used for irrigation. If the trend continues, the rate of groundwater loss could triple by 2080, further threatening India’s food and water security.

The BioMatters team at U-M has developed a fully biodegradable, reusable and recyclable material to replace the wasteful concrete formwork traditionally used across the construction industry. The base of this material is upcycled sawdust—millions of tons of sawdust waste are created each year from the 15 billion cut trees and often burned or dumped in landfills left to contribute to environmental pollution.

Bird populations in the U.S. and Canada have declined by nearly 30% since the 1970s. This alarming number highlights an urgent need for action. While the issue may seem daunting on a large scale, there are significant measures we can take at the local level to help stem this loss and create a positive impact for native birds.

Producing palm oil has caused deforestation and biodiversity loss across Southeast Asia and elsewhere, including Central America. Efforts to curtail the damage have largely focused on voluntary environmental certification programs that label qualifying palm-oil sources as “sustainable.”

"Join the conversations already happening rather than remake the wheel. Climate anxiety is very real, and research shows individual actions don’t help reduce that, but collective action—joining groups, clubs, green teams, nonprofit organizations, local watershed coalitions—actually does reduce climate anxiety and eco grief."

An updated textbook has been released that provides a fundamental introduction to aquatic life and ecosystems and multidisciplinary fish studies, including an understanding of the anatomical, environmental, and ethological topics of fish ecology.

In Detroit in 2019, there were four times as many hospitalizations for asthma than the state of Michigan as a whole, and Detroit ranks among the 20 most challenging cities for people with asthma to live.

The hemlocks of eastern North America are threatened by the hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA), an invasive, sap-sucking bug that was introduced to the eastern United States from Japan in 1951. Because HWA is a nonnative species, there are no natural predators to control its population size in eastern North America, and the region’s hemlocks haven’t evolved any resistance against it, so eastern hemlocks can be sucked dry by severe HWA infestations.

Lake Erie harmful algal blooms consisting of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, are capable of producing microcystin, a known liver toxin that poses a risk to human and wildlife health. Such blooms may force cities and local governments to treat drinking water and to close beaches, and they can harm vital local economies by preventing people from fishing, swimming, boating and visiting the shoreline.

The production of the fertilizer urea is one of the largest carbon dioxide emitters in the chemical industry, but it doesn’t have to be that way. With $1.3 million in funding from the W. M. Keck Foundation, a new, more sustainable approach for producing urea will be tested at U-M.

More efficient computing—potentially room temperature quantum computing—and recyclable rigid plastics are two projects to be undertaken by a new materials research science and engineering center.

In 2023, the dead zone is predicted to be 33% smaller than the long-term average taken between 1985 and 2022. If the forecast proves accurate, this summer’s Chesapeake Bay dead zone would be the smallest on record.

Discussions of valuable but threatened ocean ecosystems often focus on coral reefs or coastal mangrove forests. Seagrass meadows get a lot less attention, even though they provide wide-ranging services to society and store lots of climate-warming carbon.

A team of scientists including a U-M aquatic ecologist is forecasting a summer “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico that will cover an estimated 4,155 square miles, which is below the 5,364-square-mile average over the 36-year history of dead zone measurements in the region.

“I just thought it was an interesting story that this red alga looks so much like an animal, namely, a coral. It had been unnoticed as such, and then it turned out to have some distinctive features.”

The transmission potential of Zika or dengue in Brazil may increase by 10% to 20% in the next 30 years due to warming temperatures linked to climate change, according to U-M researchers.

Plant life plays a crucial role in fighting climate change by absorbing and transforming greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. For instance, over its lifetime, a tree can absorb more than a ton of carbon from the air and store it in wood and roots.

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is practically everywhere. Inexpensive to produce and highly versatile, it has been employed in a host of everyday goods. Its utility, unfortunately, is matched by its toxicity.

This year’s theme was “Global Change and Its Consequences for Green Life,” and focused on the Direct and indirect impacts of environmental change on green life survival, reproduction, and distribution, how green life can buffer the impact of global change, evolutionary responses of green life to environmental change/stress, green life functional traits and their environmental correlates, and agroecology.

In 1973, toxic flame retardant was mistakenly sent to Michigan farmers as livestock feed, causing an environmental health crisis. To this day, researchers continue to investigate the health effects of the contamination, and community members are active in advocating for clean-up efforts.

Birds across the Americas are getting smaller and longer-winged as the world warms, and the smallest-bodied species are changing the fastest.

Globally, health care plastics packaging was 14.5 billion pounds in 2020 with projections up to nearly 19 billion pounds by 2025. Around 25% of all waste generated at hospitals is plastic. Moreover, 35% of all waste generated at hospitals occurs in the operating room setting, ending at a landfill due to lack of viable recycling options. To address this sizable issue, the medical plastics recycling initiative was created.

The healthy herds hypothesis has even been used to suggest that manipulating predator numbers to protect prey might be a useful conservation strategy. Even so, hard evidence supporting the hypothesis is scarce, and in recent years many of its assumptions and predictions have been questioned.

Preserving the diversity of forests assures their productivity and potentially increases the accumulation of carbon and nitrogen in the soil, which helps to sustain soil fertility and mitigate global climate change.

Anesthesiology is a carbon-intensive specialty, including the recurring use of inhaled agents which can lead to significant greenhouse gas emissions and global warming over an extended period. The Green Anesthesia Initiative aims to implement environmentally sound health care practices while continuing to protect public health and provide excellence in patient care.

Now more than 100 years old, the Biological Station is a 10,000-acre property in the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan whose core mission is to advance environmental field research, engage students in scientific discovery, and provide information needed to understand and sustain ecosystems from local to global scales.

A U-M team, along with researchers and staff from Eastern Michigan University, Duke University and cleantech company 374Water, received $200,000 to fund research around converting lawn, garden and food waste from U-M’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens into valuable products, as well as heat and energy for the gardens’ facilities.

Anthropologists have long thought that our ape ancestors evolved an upright torso in order to pick fruit in forests, but new research suggests a life in open woodlands and a diet that included leaves drove apes’ upright stature.

"A lot of people think plants are boring because they don’t move in the way animals do, but I think it makes them especially interesting. Plants can’t run away from a creature trying to eat them but, instead, they have more interesting defense mechanisms to protect themselves."

U-M ecologists Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer examine competition among the ant community at a Puerto Rican coffee farm and the maintenance of species diversity there.

Researchers and staff from U-M, Eastern Michigan University, Duke University, and 374Water recently won a grant to turn Matthaei Botanical Gardens’ trash into treasure. The project aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by preventing organic waste from going to landfills, where it then rots and emits greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.

With more than half of the world’s population active on social media networks, user-generated data has proved to be fertile ground for social scientists who study attitudes about the environment and sustainability. But several challenges threaten the success of what’s known as social media data science.

Human well-being is often measured by economic prosperity metrics, like GDP and poverty rates. In a new article, Jenna Bednar argues that the framing needs to be expanded beyond purely financial targets to include an emphasis on community, human dignity, sustainability, and beauty.

There’s been a well-documented shift toward earlier springtime flowering in many plants as the world warms. The trend alarms biologists because it has the potential to disrupt carefully choreographed interactions between plants and the creatures that pollinate them. But much less attention has been paid to changes in other floral traits, such as flower size, that can also affect plant-pollinator interactions, at a time when many insect pollinators are in global decline.

The Graham Sustainability Institute’s Carbon Neutrality Acceleration Program (CNAP) announced $1,160,000 in funding for six new faculty research projects. They tackle a range of carbon neutrality topics and augment the CNAP portfolio, which addresses six critical technological and social decarbonization opportunities: energy storage; capturing, converting, and storing carbon; changing public opinion and behavior; ensuring an equitable and inclusive transition; material and process innovation; and transportation and alternative fuels.

The U-M Museum of Art’s recent interactive discussion, “Talking Trash,” shared insights and advice on combating the overwhelming effects of single-use plastic. The event was inspired by The Plastic Bag Store, an immersive public art installation created by Robin Frohardt that provides social commentary on our plastic consumption.

The U-M Ann Arbor campus achieved two of its 2025 sustainability goals in 2022, according to an annual Planet Blue fact sheet. It reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 25% from its 2006 benchmark — three years ahead of schedule — and exceeded its goal of applying 40% less chemicals to campus landscapes, compared with 2006, for the fourth consecutive year.

New information about an emerging technique that could track microplastics from space has been uncovered by U-M researchers. It turns out that satellites are best at spotting soapy or oily residue, and microplastics appear to tag along with that residue.

U-M researchers and their colleagues used a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in Nepal as a natural experiment to test the responses of two GPS-collared tigers to dramatic reductions in traffic volume along a national highway. They found that traffic reductions relaxed tiger avoidance of roads: The globally endangered carnivores were two to three times more likely to cross the highway during the lockdown than before it.

The report calls for “urgency” in cleaning up toxic sediment on the bottom of the Detroit River. Remediation is needed on the Detroit side, but not on the Canadian side, according to the report.

The CT-scanned skull of a 319-million-year-old fossilized fish, pulled from a coal mine in England more than a century ago, has revealed the oldest example of a well-preserved vertebrate brain.

Imagine overhearing the Powerball lottery winning numbers, but you didn’t know when those numbers would be called—just that at some point in the next 10 years or so, they would be. Despite the financial cost of playing those numbers daily for that period, the payoff is big enough to make it worthwhile. Animals that live in highly variable environments play a similar lottery when it comes to their Darwinian fitness, or how well they are able to pass on their genes.

In the effort to reduce plastic waste in the restaurant industry—single-use takeout containers, specifically—U-M researchers compared the lifetime environmental impacts of single-use and reusable food containers. Their findings support the idea that the number of times a reusable takeout container gets used is a key factor impacting its sustainability performance.

“I gained a lot of new practical field knowledge, too, like moving and setting up camp every day and using a field notebook for diagrams and taking detailed notes. It was my first time ever needing a field notebook because everything else I’ve done has been in class, and it was a useful skill I could take with me to Camp Davis.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light the problem of emerging pathogens and the unpredictable dangers they pose for human health, but what most people don’t realize, is that the same processes that promote the emergence of human diseases—international travel and commerce, wildlife poaching, deforestation and climate change—have caused similar outbreaks of devastating pathogens in wildlife populations.

Mass coral bleaching events are making it harder for some species of reef fish to identify competitors, new research reveals. Scientists studying reefs across five Indo-Pacific regions found that the ability of butterfly fish individuals to identify competitor species and respond appropriately was compromised after widespread loss of coral caused by bleaching.

Dolphins and other sea creatures are affected by human disturbances in their habitat, including climate change, overfishing, noise pollution from shipping, construction, oil exploration and navy sonar activity. These types of disturbances can interrupt important animal behavior like foraging for fish and socializing, but measuring disturbance is difficult because the animals live under water.

A new law that gives the state’s 32 ports tools to expand and grow the maritime economy started out as a community project for a handful of U-M students.

"There has been a lot of working trying to understand the role of urban gardens and farms in cities. And the general conclusion is that it can provide a lot of social, economic and environmental benefits. Urban agriculture is this sort of unique land use that is extremely customizable to the needs of the community. "

Efforts to promote the future health of both wild bees and managed honeybee colonies need to consider specific habitat needs, such as the density of wildflowers. At the same time, improving other habitat measures—such as the amount of natural habitat surrounding croplands—may increase bee diversity while having mixed effects on overall bee health.

Efforts to promote the future health of both wild bees and managed honeybee colonies need to consider specific habitat needs, such as the density of wildflowers. At the same time, improving other habitat measures—such as the amount of natural habitat surrounding croplands—may increase bee diversity while having mixed effects on overall bee health.

A new analysis of more than 20,000 trees on five continents shows that old-growth trees are more drought tolerant than younger trees in the forest canopy and may be better able to withstand future climate extremes.

PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, is one of the most produced plastics in the United States and the third highest by volume in the world. It also has a zero percent recycling rate in the United States.

Making vehicle structures out of a combination of metals and plastics could make them dramatically lighter, stronger, safer and more environmentally friendly than the all-steel or all-aluminum approaches that dominate today. But how to quickly and cheaply join all those materials together has been a sticky problem. A U-M lab is developing solutions.

This year’s Chesapeake Bay “dead zone” was the 10th-smallest observed since 1985, according to findings released today by the Chesapeake Bay Program and its partners, including U-M. The annual Chesapeake Bay dead zone is an area of low oxygen that forms in deep waters when excess nutrients, including both nitrogen and phosphorus, enter the water through polluted runoff and feed naturally occurring algae.

U-M Professor Ivette Perfecto recently highlighted the intersection of biodiversity conservation with agriculture on coffee farms. She stated that “about 40% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface is an agricultural system.” While many people may think that agriculture is always harmful to biodiversity, Perfecto says that many agricultural systems, such as the coffee agroforestry systems, can be diverse and “contribute significantly to the conservation of biodiversity.”

As climate change looms, policymakers must find ways to mitigate its effects. Many have turned to recycling in an effort to limit the amount of plastic in landfills, dumpsites, and the environment.

Spending time outside has been proven to promote overall well-being—and U-M medical and graduate student Kiley Adams, an avid lover of the outdoors, is helping ensure that everyone can enjoy the trails.

When autumn arrives in the eastern United States and Canada, millions of monarch butterflies take flight, starting a 3,000-kilometer journey toward their overwintering locations atop a few mountain ranges in Michoacán, Mexico. Unlike avian migrants that similarly escape North America’s cold winters by venturing south, the monarch butterflies’ migration is a generational one.

A $2.2 million, four-year grant from the CDC will fund a study examining the effects of illegal dumping interventions on the prevention of violent crime in Flint, Michigan. U-M School of Public Health researchers are partnering with Genesee County Land Bank and the Center for Community Progress to conduct the research on county-owned vacant lots to develop sustainable approaches to curb illegal dumping and community violence.

Fish excretions. Yes, that’s fish pee. Could it improve food security in the Caribbean? Allgeier thinks so, and it might even help slow global warming.

Communities that are engaged in cleaning, mowing and repurposing vacant spaces are likely to experience greater reductions in violence and crime than neighborhoods that do not participate in these activities, according to new research led by the University of Michigan.

The miles-wide asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago wiped out nearly all the dinosaurs and roughly three-quarters of the planet’s plant and animal species. It also triggered a monstrous tsunami with mile-high waves that scoured the ocean floor thousands of miles from the impact site on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, according to a new U-M led study.

How can we boost the resilience of the world’s coral reefs, which are imperiled by multiple stresses including mass bleaching events linked to climate warming? One strategy advocated by some researchers, resource managers and conservationists is to restore populations of algae-eating reef fish, such as parrotfish. But a new study that analyzed long-term data from 57 coral reefs around the French Polynesian island of Mo’orea challenges this canon of coral reef ecology.

Michigan Sea Grant and the state of Michigan have launched a project to support Michigan small harbors’ efforts to become economically, socially and environmentally sustainable, and to equip coastal community leaders with the tools to assess and strengthen their waterfront assets.

Ford School professor Barry Rabe has saluted the U.S. government’s “pivot from global climate laggard to leader” with the passage, by a 69-to-27 Senate supermajority to formally enter the binding global regime to achieve rapid phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). The chemicals are highly-intensive climate pollutants used widely in air conditioning and refrigeration systems as well as many aerosols and foams.

Termites are critical in natural ecosystems—especially in the tropics—because they help recycle dead wood from trees. Without such decayers, the world would be piled high with dead plants and animals. But these energetic wood-consuming insects could soon be moving toward the North Pole and South Pole as global temperatures warm from climate change, new research indicates.

If you’re out walking through the woods on a sunny, wet afternoon, you might notice some pretty leaves or clusters of wildflowers. But when Chad Machinski (BS ’14) strolls through Nichols Arboretum, he not only knows the name of all the plants, trees, and insects he sees, but he also understands the intricate ways they are connected.

Katrina Munsterman, PhD student at U-M, recently became the recipient of a joint Sea Grant-NOAA Fisheries fellowship to pursue her work in ecosystem dynamics. Katrina applied via Michigan Sea Grant to receive this annual national award, the 2022 National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)-Sea Grant Joint Fellowship.

The Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by President Biden this month contains $3 billion to help the U.S. Postal Service decarbonize its mail-delivery fleet and shift to electric vehicles. A new U-M study finds that making the switch to all-electric mail-delivery vehicles would lead to far greater reductions in greenhouse gas emissions than previously estimated by the USPS.

Even relatively modest climate warming and associated precipitation shifts may dramatically alter Earth’s northernmost forests, which constitute one of the planet’s largest nearly intact forested ecosystems and are home to a big chunk of the planet’s terrestrial carbon.

U-M and Ford Motor Co. researchers modeled emissions for a single 36-item grocery basket transported to the customer via dozens of traditional and e-commerce pathways. Of the various scenarios analyzed by the researchers, in-store shopping by a customer driving an internal-combustion-engine pickup truck produced the most emissions (expressed as kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents).

They are hunters, farmers, harvesters, gliders, herders, weavers and carpenters. They are ants, and they are a big part of our world, comprising more than 14,000 species and a large fraction of animal biomass in most terrestrial ecosystems.

An international team of researchers has developed a method for altering one class of antibiotics, using microscopic organisms that produce these compounds naturally. While chemists have developed methods for adding the fluorine synthetically, the process is arduous and requires the use of toxic chemical reagents. The new biosynthetic method developed by the researchers from Goethe University and U-M overcomes those challenges.

For decades, biologists saw the marsupial way of reproduction as the more “primitive” state and assumed that placentals had evolved their more “advanced” method after these two groups diverged from one another. But new research is testing that view.

From the Great Lakes to its inland rivers and streams, hiking trails to golf courses, and lakeside cottages to campgrounds, the State of Michigan has long offered a near-endless number of natural resources to enjoy each summer—and a thriving tourism industry to prove it. But like with the rest of the country, and planet, the effects of climate change not only loom in the distance, but are here and causing real challenges to our ecosystem, and the outdoor recreation it provides, right now.

U-M researchers and their partners are forecasting that western Lake Erie will experience a smaller than average harmful algal bloom this summer, which would make it less severe than 2021 and more akin to what was seen in the lake in 2020.

This summer’s Chesapeake Bay “dead zone” is expected to be smaller than the long-term average, according to a forecast released today by researchers from U-M, Chesapeake Bay Program, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and U.S. Geological Survey.

U-M has been awarded a five-year, $53 million renewal agreement from the federal government to continue and expand the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, with the goal of helping to conserve and manage the region’s natural resources.

The Detroit River Story Lab’s Skiff and Schooner Program is setting sail for its second summer, this time accommodating even more students in its quest to foster connection between the river and its communities. Students from 15 Detroit high schools, two colleges and six youth-serving organizations will board the schooner throughout the summer to learn about various topics focused on the environmental and cultural history of the Detroit River, ranging from marine biology and wildlife restoration to the Underground Railroad.

Around 13,200 years ago, a roving male mastodon died in a bloody mating-season battle with a rival in what today is northeast Indiana, nearly 100 miles from his home territory, according to the first study to document the annual migration of an individual animal from an extinct species.

A team of scientists including a University of Michigan aquatic ecologist is forecasting a summer “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico of 5,364 square miles, about average for the 35-year history of the measurements. The forecast is lower than last year’s measured size and slightly lower than the five-year average measured size of 5,380 square miles. The 2022 Gulf of Mexico hypoxia forecast was released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which funds the work.

Reducing levels of the nutrient phosphorus to control harmful algal blooms in places like Lake Erie is actually advantageous to toxic cyanobacteria strains, which can lead to an increase in toxins in the water, according to a new modeling study.

A wide-scale look at Detroit’s urban gardens finds that while they don’t seem to foreshadow gentrification in the city, there are some unsettling trends about where they’re located and the sociodemographics in those areas.

Researchers have identified many factors that influence the timing and distribution of Lake Erie’s harmful algal blooms. Intensity and timing of spring rainstorms is part of the puzzle, as is the amount of algae-feeding nitrogen and phosphorus traveling into the lake from nearby rivers.

The Peony Garden has delighted the local community for nearly a century, and visiting it has become an annual spring pilgrimage for visitors from Michigan and beyond. Each year, the garden presents a stunning display, with 350 historic herbaceous varieties from the 19th and 20th centuries opening in near unison. At peak bloom, visitors are treated to more than 10,000 blossoms in shades of pink, red and white.

Neil Carter, an assistant professor at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability, and his colleagues investigated how the rapid development of transport infrastructure, which is a major threat to endangered species worldwide, could affect future tiger populations. Roads and railways can increase animal mortality, disrupt habitats, and exacerbate other threats to biodiversity, according to the study.

Although many parasitic infections are not lethal, they can still impact health or animal behavior. For example, infected animals can eat less grass or other vegetation than they normally would. In an interesting twist, this means that a world with more sublethal parasitic infections is a greener world.

A new U-M study that used fossil oyster shells as paleothermometers found the shallow sea that covered much of western North America 95 million years ago was as warm as today’s tropics. The findings also hint at what may be in store for future generations unless emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are reined in.

Animals have three main strategies to survive the freezing temperatures of winter: migrating, remaining in place and resisting the cold, and reducing body temperature and metabolic rate in a state called torpor. These cold-survival strategies are often studied in isolation by biologists and treated as mutually exclusive alternatives: An animal species is described as either migrating or hibernating (torpor includes both dormancy and hibernation), for example. But in reality, many animals combine multiple strategies to beat the cold.

Carbon dioxide is known to have a fertilizing effect on plant growth, and the gas is often added to greenhouse crops to help improve yields. Climate scientists have suggested that this same CO2 fertilization effect could help offset global warming by promoting the growth of trees and shrubs that store carbon released by the burning of fossil fuels. But this highly influential concept of “tropical greening” due to anthropogenically elevated carbon dioxide levels is difficult to test, and the idea has been challenged recently.

Recycling remains popular with local government leaders in Michigan, which recently established a goal of tripling the state’s current per capita recycling rate. Still, those leaders often encounter difficulties in implementing their programs, tied to costs, improper recycling practices by users and a lack of end markets for their recycled materials, according to a new U-M report.

In support of ongoing sustainability efforts across U-M, this year the Excellence in Sustainability Honors Cord Program offers special graduation cords for those who have excelled in areas of sustainability. “Most of the fibers in the world have polyester or nylon in them which are fossil fuel-derived materials. We really wanted to steer clear of anything that had any sort of deep fossil fuel footprint or was manufactured overseas," said Stamps School of Art & Design professor Joseph Trumpey.

Earth Day comes twice a year for U-M chemist Anne McNeil and her lab—at least it has since last year. On Earth Day 2021, the McNeil lab organized the inaugural Huron River Watershed Cleanup. Graduate and undergraduate students in the Department of Chemistry picked up thousands of pieces of trash from about 20 metroparks along the Huron River in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.

Interdisciplinary teams of Sustainability Scholars—senior undergraduate students—recently presented the results of their engaged research projects. Projects pertained to farmland preservation, sustainable energy data, STEM kits and gardens, and water quality, respectively.

Each year, the Graham Sustainability Institute supports a limited number of paid summer internships for Graham Sustainability Scholars and actively seeks partners offering paid internships. This summer, supported by the City of Ann Arbor’s carbon neutrality efforts, additional Graham Scholars will receive hands-on experience assisting with carbon benchmarking.

The Great Lakes Impact Investment Platform announced the environmental performance of its participating projects across eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Collectively, the projects are reducing 3 million tons of carbon, protecting more than 30,000 acres of forest and farmland, saving 110 million kilowatts of energy, and saving 5.4 million gallons of water.

A new report from the U-M Center for Sustainable Systems serves as a guide for experts and non-experts to assess the sustainability performance of emerging products, technologies, and services that can reduce plastic waste.

U-M Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Nathan Sanders and his colleagues set out to test whether pollinators have a taste for salt in flower nectar.

U-M announced steps toward procuring 100% renewable purchased power, expanded plans for geothermal heating and cooling systems, and $10 million in funding for additional LED lighting in approximately 100 buildings across all three campuses. The announcements come as the university launches a progress-tracking dashboard — available online for interested members of the community — and $300 million in “green bonds” for projects that align with U-M carbon neutrality goals.

The majority of Michigan local leaders report recycling is somewhat or very important to their community members, with 65% of officials from the state’s largest jurisdictions saying recycling issues are very important in their communities, according to a U-M survey. The findings come as the state, once a national leader in recycling, has fallen behind the national average over time.

The Dow Innovation Teacher Fellowship was created for K-12 teachers of all disciplines interested in teaching sustainability issues. It trains and supports educators who teach primarily in Michigan’s Arenac, Bay, Gratiot, Isabella, Midland and Saginaw counties.

More than 30 types of laboratory analyses will be performed on water and ice as part of a larger effort—dubbed the Winter Grab—to better understand winter on the Great Lakes, a season long dismissed by many scientists as a time of dormancy when little of importance happens.

Researcgers found that for sedans, SUVs and pickup trucks, battery-electric vehicles have approximately 64% lower cradle-to-grave life cycle greenhouse gas emissions than internal-combustion-engine vehicles on average across the United States.

A new U-M study has found that higher levels of biodiversity—the enormous variety of life on Earth and the species, traits and evolutionary history they represent—appear to reduce extinction risk in birds. Prior research has established that biodiversity is associated with predictable outcomes in the short term: diverse systems are less prone to invasion, have more stable productivity, and can be more disease resistant.

A new database called AVONET contains measurements of more than 90,000 individual birds, allowing researchers to test theories and aid conservation.

In a new U-M study, researchers set out to understand the air pollutant emissions impacts of electrifying motorcycle taxis in Kampala, Uganda. Findings indicate that electrified motorcycles can reduce emissions of global and some local air pollutants, yielding global and potentially local sustainability benefits.

Marine biologist and climate policy expert Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson will deliver the Wege Lecture on Sustainability on February 23. Johnson is the co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for coastal cities, and co-creator (and former co-host) of the Spotify/Gimlet podcast “How to Save a Planet,” which discusses climate solutions.

The Great Lakes support more than 3,500 species of plants and animals, including more than 170 species of fish, and a population of 34 million people in the United States and Canada who rely on these waters for recreation, employment, drinking water supply, and more.

Teams will drill through ice to collect water samples, measure light levels at various depths and net tiny zooplankton as part of a broader effort to better understand the changing face of winter on the Great Lakes, where climate warming is increasing winter air temperatures, decreasing ice-cover extent and changing precipitation patterns.

A new study involving more than 100 scientists from across the globe and the largest forest database yet assembled estimates that there are about 73,000 tree species on Earth, including about 9,200 species yet to be discovered. The global estimate is about 14% higher than the current number of known tree species.

Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (MI-12) toured the U-M Matthaei Botanical Gardens to showcase the success of the Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Restoration Act and Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) funds over the years and how the additional $1 billion included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for the GLRI will help projects across the Great Lakes Basin for the long-term economic and environmental health of the region.

Jacob Allgeier, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, studies how nutrients and energy cycle through tropical ecosystems in order to better manage fisheries. The artificial reefs he’s building are an inexpensive, effective way to sustainably improve fisheries’ productivity.

When SEAS alumna Brittany Turner (MS ’15), a member of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe from Hollister, North Carolina, started Cheyanne Symone in 2018, she saw a need for “high-quality and sustainable Indigenous-style beaded earrings that were versatile enough to be worn every day in a professional work environment and yet bold enough to make a statement.”

Winter visits to the conservatory at Matthaei Botanical Gardens are a treat for the senses: warm temperatures, lush greenery, and plants in bloom or in fruit. A visitor favorite is one of the banana tree plants, which just finished a fruiting cycle. Despite its height, it’s not a true tree after all.

For Frank Turchan, executive chef at M Dining, using local produce is a way to support sustainability, but it’s also just good food. Turchan works with a number of farmers and producers both locally and from across the state. These include more than 20 companies that sell food products, such as Zingerman’s; Prairie Farms, a Midwest dairy cooperative; and Detroit’s Better Made Chips, McClure Pickle, Quality Meats & Culinary Specialties and LaGrasso Brothers, which grows lettuce and sources produce from other local farmers.

Following its commitment last year to achieve universitywide carbon neutrality, U-M is unveiling an initial $5 million investment in energy conservation measures that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Measures include substantial LED lighting projects, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning improvements that span U-M campuses and units.

Headlines decrying tiny particles in our drinking water and swirling masses like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have centered plastic waste as the modern scourge of marine ecosystems. But Michiganders may be surprised to learn that this threat hits particularly close to home: recent studies show that at times, the Great Lakes contain the highest concentration of plastics anywhere on the planet.

By pioneering new methods in life cycle analysis, design, and optimization, researchers have made real impacts on the future of alternative vehicle technology, renewable energy systems, buildings and infrastructure, information technology, food and agricultural systems, and packaging alternatives.

Sail outings, arranged as part of a new Skiff and Schooner program piloted by U-M’s Detroit River Story Lab, include learning stations devoted to the physics of ship construction and buoyancy, river ecology, the carbon cycle and the river’s role in the history of the Underground Railroad. The lab partnered with several community groups including Communities First in Flint and Healthy Kidz in Detroit for the trips.

Before sea lamprey control methods were instituted, it was estimated that sea lampreys killed more than 100 million pounds of Great Lakes fishes annually, five times the commercially harvested amount in the upper Great Lakes.

The Chesapeake Bay Program and its partners, including U-M, released information today on the state of the 2021 Chesapeake Bay “dead zone.” While last year’s dead zone was the second smallest observed since 1985, this year’s assessment paints a more complex picture of the bay’s health.

The Research Museums Center on Varsity Drive houses four large museum collections – anthropological archaeology, botany, paleontology, and zoology. For animal biologists, these collections help us learn more about animal health and ecological science. And maintaining the health of animal populations is vital to maintaining healthy ecosystems in every corner of the world.

A walk in the park could soon include getting real-time measurements of pollutants in the air and updated walking routes to avoid the most toxic ones, all while wearing a gadget the size of a smart watch.

Freshwater mussels are a paradoxical group: How can so many species persist side by side while feeding on the same foods—sediments, plankton and other particles in the water column? Elsewhere in nature, a few species would typically gain an advantage over the others and would eventually outcompete them.

The challenges facing oceans — from piracy and pollution to overfishing and shipping management — don’t exist in a vacuum.

At the Clinical Learning Center, students hone their skills in a simulated environment, designed to replicate real health care scenarios. And because it is a simulated space, as opposed to one for critical care, practitioners are successfully reusing materials to reduce waste, and hoping to elevate their approach as a best practice.

What actions are we taking to adapt to climate change around the world, and how successful are our efforts? A global network of 126 researchers sought to answer those questions, producing the most systematic and comprehensive assessment of implemented human adaptation to climate change to date.

Monique Weemstra: “It turns out that at Big Woods [a plot within the E.S. George Reserve in southeast Michigan], leaf and root traits together better explained the growth of trees than the traits of leaves and roots alone. Also, the role of leaf traits in tree growth depended on the roots of trees, and vice versa."

A new structure at the U-M Matthaei Botanical Gardens brings leading-edge fabrication research to the public space — “This outdoor structure offers new public gathering points while maintaining an open-air condition that respects the pandemic as well as people’s desire to feel part of the beautiful natural setting that surrounds them.”

As they figured out how to adapt the lab of their biodiversity course to a virtual setting when classes went remote because of Covid-19, instructors in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) wanted to create moments of discovery for their students to experience the awe and sense of surprise that comes when working with the natural world.

Modern snakes evolved from ancestors that lived side by side with the dinosaurs and that likely fed mainly on insects and lizards. Then a miles-wide asteroid wiped out nearly all the dinosaurs and roughly three-quarters of the planet’s plant and animal species 66 million years ago. A new U-M study shows that early snakes capitalized on an ecological opportunity.

“Obtawaing” is the Anishinaabemowin word for “at the halfway place.” Now, the word has been adapted to describe the Obtawaing Biosphere Region, a newly awarded and ambitious designation springing from the U-M Biological Station in Pellston.

Researchers at U-M and Michigan State University have been awarded $5.4 million from NOAA to continue their study of climate change and variability risks in the larger Great Lakes region for the next five years. The Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments—established in 2010 as a federally funded collaboration between U-M and MSU—will begin new partnerships with the College of the Menominee Nation and the University of Wisconsin.

The miles-wide asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago wiped out nearly all the dinosaurs and roughly three-quarters of the planet’s plant and animal species. But some creatures survived, including certain rat-sized mammals that would later diversify into the more than 6,000 mammal species that exist today, including humans.

In a study conducted in and around the Ethiopian city of Mekelle, home to 310,000 people and 120,000 livestock animals, a U-M conservation ecologist and two colleagues found that spotted hyenas annually remove 207 tons of animal carcass waste.

Carter, an assistant professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability, received a grant from the NASA Biodiversity and Ecological Forecasting program to research how changes in vegetation canopy and water stress in the western U.S. affect large mammal species.

Taking a walk in the park or just going outdoors could help youth feel better, and promoting public health policies that actively support time spent outside could help promote overall well-being among teens and young adults, according to a new U-M survey.

July 2021 was almost 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average — the warmest month in the entire record of global temperature stretching back over 140 years. The land area of the Northern Hemisphere set an even larger record in July, exceeding 2.7 degrees above average.

Communities across the western United States face an existential crisis. As forests become drier and thicker with vegetation, and development encroaches further into forested areas, wildfires grow larger, more frequent and more damaging. U-M experts are working with practitioners across the west to address this growing concern.

The new IPCC report, released Monday, says some devastating impacts of global warming are now unavoidable, but there is still a short window to stop things from getting even worse. It calls climate change a “code red for humanity.”

Alison Davis Rabosky, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and assistant curator of reptiles and amphibians at the U-M Museum of Zoology, won the 2021 Meritorious Teaching Award in Herpetology, presented by the Herpetology Education Committee.

Every year, 3.5 million metric tons of sodden diapers end up in landfills. The superabsorbent material inside these diapers is made up of a matrix of polymers that expand once dampness hits them. A U-M team has developed a technique to untangle these absorbent polymers and recycle them into materials similar to the gooey adhesives used in sticky notes and bandages.

One alleyway on Detroit’s northwest side is being staged to power lights through rainwater harvesting as part of a plan to make more of the city’s 9,000+ alleys functional and sustainable. The test installation project has brought together community leaders with U-M researchers and students to build on the city’s large-scale program to clear alleys of debris and overgrown vegetation.

Many of the benefits that humanity derives from the natural world, like the provisioning of oxygen, are priceless. Climate change can threaten these services through the loss of species or shifts in species’ size or abundance. For example, warming temperatures have reduced the size of many birds over the last four decades; this is emblematic of the scale of climate change impacts on the world’s biological diversity.

Many sustainability-minded consumers are moving away from single-use plastic products and turning to reusable alternatives. In the kitchen, trendy alternatives include bamboo drinking straws and beeswax sandwich wrap. Those consumers likely assume that reusables have fewer environmental impacts, but just how green are these products?

U-M researchers and their partners are forecasting that western Lake Erie will experience a smaller-than-average harmful algal bloom this summer. A relatively dry spring is expected to lead to a repeat of last year’s mild bloom, marking the first time in more than a dozen years that mild Lake Erie blooms have occurred in consecutive summers.

People’s personal experiences with nature may work better than dire warnings to motivate environmental action, a new U-M study found. Researchers wanted to know what motivates people to take action about preserving the environment, so they analyzed a conservation campaign focusing on monarch butterflies.

Researchers are forecasting a smaller than average Chesapeake Bay “dead zone” due to reduced river flows and less nutrient and sediment pollution. The bay’s hypoxic and anoxic regions, which are areas of low and no oxygen, respectively, are caused by excess nutrient pollution.

When a UM-led research team reported last year that North American migratory birds have been getting smaller over the past four decades and that their wings have gotten a bit longer, the scientists wondered if they were seeing the fingerprint of earlier spring migrations. Multiple studies have demonstrated that birds are migrating earlier in the spring as the world warms.

More than 50 species of tree snail in the South Pacific Society Islands were wiped out following the introduction of an alien predatory snail in the 1970s, but the white-shelled Partula hyalina survived. Now, thanks to a collaboration between U-M biologists and engineers with the world’s smallest computer, scientists understand why.

An estimated 8 million tons of plastic trash enters the ocean each year, and most of it is battered by sun and waves into microplastics—tiny flecks that can ride currents hundreds or thousands of miles from their point of entry. The debris can harm sea life and marine ecosystems, and it’s extremely difficult to track and clean up.

Phil D’Anieri, a lecturer in urban and regional planning, has published The Appalachian Trail: A Biography, Born in 1921, the trail, which stretches 2,192 miles from Georgia to Maine, is one of the world’s best-known treks. Millions of hikers set foot on it every year. D’Anieri’s book explores the backstory of the dreamers and builders who helped bring it to life over the past century.

Every night during the spring and fall migration seasons, thousands of birds are killed when they crash into illuminated windows, disoriented by the light. But a new study shows that darkening just half of a building’s windows can make a big difference for birds.

A team of scientists including a U-M aquatic ecologist is forecasting this summer’s Gulf of Mexico hypoxic area or “dead zone,” an area of low to no oxygen that can kill fish and other marine life, to be approximately 4,880 square miles, a bit smaller than the state of Connecticut. The 2021 forecasted area is smaller than, but close to, the five-year-average measured size of 5,400 square miles.

Isle Royale is unique because of its uninhabited status—the island is 99 percent wilderness—historic national protection, and its location at the boundary between boreal and temperate biomes. A student project team is collecting and analyzing transect data used to measure herbivory rates of the beaver and moose populations.

U-M entomologist Thomas Moore was walking in the yard of his Ann Arbor-area home on Monday afternoon when he heard the unmistakable droning buzz of a single periodical cicada in the distance. Moore, 91, has spent nearly seven decades studying periodical cicadas, which emerge every 13 or 17 years and are only found in the eastern half of North America.

U-M scientists say that crowdsourced wildlife identification is a reliable way to lighten a research team’s workload while increasing public participation in science.

There is much unknown about the impact of roads on pollinating insects such as bees and to what extent these structures disrupt insect pollination — essential to reproduction in many plant species.

Some climate activists advocate large-scale tree-planting campaigns in forests around the world to suck up heat-trapping carbon dioxide and help rein in climate change. But the idea of planting trees as a substitute for the direct reduction of greenhouse gas emissions could be a pipe dream.

“Over the last decade, there have been enormous efforts to sequence hundreds of genes from lineages across the tree of life,” said U-M ecology and evolutionary biology professor Stephen A. Smith. “What we have discovered after analyzing this genetic data is that the individual genes often disagree about the relationships in the tree of life.”

Noisy Brood X periodical cicadas will soon emerge in parts of southeastern Michigan and in a handful of other states in the eastern half of the country, after developing underground for 17 years. Cicadas do not bite and are harmless to humans. However, they can damage small trees and shrubs if too many of them feed from a plant or lay eggs in its twigs.

Thanks to focused conservation efforts, tiger numbers have rebounded in some parts of their range. In Nepal, for example, the wild tiger population has nearly doubled from 121 in 2009 to 235 in 2018. But a road-building boom in Asia could undo this progress.

Michigan Alumnus spoke with Shelie Miller, an associate professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability and director of the U-M Program in the Environment, about some common misperceptions regarding sustainability.

As we move toward a cleaner transportation sector, a new $2 million project at U-M aims to develop easier and more cost-effective ways to make recyclable lightweight automotive sheet metals.

How will fluctuating water levels across the Great Lakes impact the growth of cities, people moving to the region, changes in water supply and the overall economy? Professor Drew Gronewold is working with researchers across U-M to answer those critical questions.

The U-M School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) announced that it received a significant philanthropic gift to establish a program that will advance socially engaged, problem-oriented research on western forests, fires, and communities.

The President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality at the University of Michigan has submitted its final report, which contains recommendations to help the university achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. The report includes 50 recommendations that U-M could take to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions across the Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses.

U-M researchers will enlist the help of citizen scientists in a new project to digitize thousands of historical records—some dating back more than a century—about Michigan inland lake conditions and fish abundances. Scientists will feed the digitized data into computer models to study the impacts of climate change and other factors on the fish in Michigan’s inland lakes.

Robotic laboratories on the bottom of Lake Erie have revealed that the muddy sediments there release nearly as much of the nutrient phosphorus into the surrounding waters as enters the lake’s central basin each year from rivers and their tributaries.

Growing up, Sam Lima was broadly interested in biology, but it wasn’t until college when she started learning about the many ecological and climate crises facing the world that she decided to study ecology.

A new analysis of thousands of native and nonnative Michigan bees shows that the most diverse bee communities have the lowest levels of three common viral pathogens. U-M researchers netted and trapped more than 4,000 bees from 60 species. The bees were collected at winter squash farms across Michigan, where both managed honeybee colonies and wild native bees pollinate the squash flowers.

At the Edwin S. George Reserve, María Natalia Umaña studies how forests work, combining information on functional traits and forest dynamics — examining the differences between leaves, stems and features of trees that are relevant toward their survival.

The COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, has demonstrated that a previously unknown pathogen can emerge from wildlife species and threaten public health on a global scale within months. During spillover events, vouchered specimens in museum collections and biorepositories can help disease sleuths quickly track a pathogen to its source in the wild.

Two U-M experts are investigating “informal green spaces” across Detroit. Such spaces, sometimes referred to pejoratively as ‘vacant lots,’ have emerged across the city in part because of cuts to public services. These areas now serve as homes for spontaneous vegetation, better known as weeds, which tend to thrive in such urban, resource-depleted environments.

The President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality, charged with recommending scalable and transferable strategies for U-M to achieve net-zero emissions, has released its preliminary draft recommendations for public comment. The draft report includes a collection of steps that U-M could take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the Flint, Dearborn and Ann Arbor campuses, including Michigan Medicine.

Mountain hares in Scotland show increasing camouflage mismatch due to less snowy winters, a new study shows. Mountain hares are one of 21 species that molt from a dark coat in summer to a white coat in winter to maintain camouflage against snowy landscapes. But due to climate change, the duration of snow cover is decreasing—creating a “mismatch” in seasonal camouflage that exposes the hares to predators.

Diverting urine away from municipal wastewater treatment plants and recycling the nutrient-rich liquid to make crop fertilizer would result in multiple environmental benefits when used at city scale, according to a new UM-led study. Researchers found that urine diversion and recycling led to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, freshwater consumption and the potential to fuel algal blooms in lakes and other water bodies.

The sinking carcasses of fish from near-surface waters deliver toxic mercury pollution to the most remote and inaccessible parts of the world’s oceans. And most of that mercury began its long journey to the deep-sea trenches as atmospheric emissions from coal-fired power plants, mining operations, cement factories, incinerators and other human activities.

Stakeholders in western Lake Erie rely on U-M’s Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR) staff to provide critical information on harmful algal blooms (HABs), helping them to deliver high-quality drinking water to surrounding communities.

“Year to year changes in the dead zone are driven mostly by changes in weather. While that is likely the most important control on this year’s relatively small size, nutrient-reduction efforts are contributing to the slower downward trend,” said U-M aquatic ecologist Don Scavia, professor emeritus at the School for Environment and Sustainability and a member of the Chesapeake Bay forecast team.

A new study provides strong evidence that exposure to light pollution alters predator-prey dynamics between mule deer and cougars across the intermountain West, a rapidly growing region where nighttime skyglow is an increasing environmental disturbance.

Humans and wildlife often detrimentally affect each other in landscapes that they share together. Large predators can eat livestock, for example, or people can kill wild animals to reduce these risks. Coexistence between humans and wildlife is therefore more likely when humans adapt to these risks in ways that lead to benefits for both humans and wildlife, rather than benefiting one group only.

Forest restoration is a crucial element in strategies to mitigate climate change and conserve global biodiversity in the coming decades, and much of the focus is on formerly tree-covered lands in the tropics. A new study finds that nearly 300 million people in the tropics live on lands suitable for forest restoration, and about a billion people live within 5 miles of such lands.

Over the past several decades, it has appeared that cold-climate forests at high latitudes have become more effective carbon sinks as rising temperatures and higher CO2 levels have made them more productive. But a new UM-led study casts additional uncertainty on whether those ecosystems will continue to absorb carbon as they become hotter and drier.

The extent of Southeast Michigan’s tree canopy and its urban sprawl both increased between 1985 and 2015, according to a new U-M study that used aerial photos and satellite images to map individual buildings and small patches of street trees.

Nyeema Harris, U-M assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, joined colleagues across the country to call for recognition and to change the culture in ecology and evolution, in general, and for Black women, specifically.

Michigan coyotes in most of the Lower Peninsula are the “top dogs” in the local food chain and can dine on a wide variety. But in the Upper Peninsula, coyotes coexist with gray wolves and play a subordinate role in the food web. As a result, the diets of U.P. coyotes contain less meat than Lower Peninsula coyotes.

U-M researchers and their partners are forecasting that western Lake Erie will experience a moderate harmful algal bloom this summer. This year’s bloom is expected to measure 4.5 on the severity index—among the smaller blooms since 2011.

Asian carp and the trillions of quagga mussels that carpet the bottom of Lake Michigan would compete for the same food—algae and other types of plankton. Some Great Lakes researchers have suggested that the fingernail-size mollusks could help prevent the invasive fish from gaining a foothold.

Researchers are forecasting a slightly smaller-than-average Chesapeake Bay “dead zone” this year, due to reduced rainfall and less nutrient-rich runoff flowing into the bay from the watershed this spring.

Scientists estimate that 5-15 percent of the carbon stored in surface permafrost soils could be emitted as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by 2100, given the current trajectory of global warming. This emission, spurred by microbial action, could lead to 0.3 to 0.4 degrees Celsius of additional global warming.

U-M scientists and their colleagues are forecasting this summer’s Gulf of Mexico hypoxic area or “dead zone”—an area of low to no oxygen that can kill fish and other marine life—to be approximately 6,700 square miles, roughly the size of Connecticut and Delaware combined.

At a forum convened by the House Natural Resources Committee Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources on June 1, Daniel Raimi, Ford School lecturer, testified about the feasibility of capping some 56-thousand such oil and gas wells.

Organisms carry long-term “memories” of their ancestral homelands that help them adapt to environmental change, according to a new study that involved raising chickens on the Tibetan Plateau and an adjacent lowland site.

Replacing half of all animal-based foods in the U.S. diet with plant-based alternatives could reduce climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions 1.6 billion metric tons by 2030, according to a new study by researchers at U-M and Tulane University.

Nearly 15,000 miles of new Asian roads will be built in tiger habitat by mid-century, deepening the big cat’s extinction risk and highlighting the need for bold new conservation measures now, according to a new U-M study.

A new U-M-led survey of West African lions—believed to be the largest wildlife camera survey ever undertaken in West Africa and the first carried out within WAP Complex national parks and hunting concessions—found that lions show no statistically significant preference between parks and trophy-hunting areas.

A new paper including research from a U-M scientist provides a framework for understanding how light, noise and chemical pollution affects animals. The framework reveals the presence of “sensory danger zones,” defining where sensory pollutants overlap with animal activity.

Restoration often seeks to maneuver an ecosystem into a historical state, returning the vegetative community to what resided there previously. It often involves planting native species, including rare species, in locations where they would have existed historically according to landscape pattern. Yet what if the plants are more successful in different habitats because of changing climates?

A new U-M-led study of individually radio-tracked tropical fish in a Bahamian mangrove estuary highlights the importance of highly active individuals in maintaining ecosystem health. It found that the individual gray and cubera snappers that spent the most time swimming and foraging for food also spread the highest levels of the essential nutrient nitrogen throughout the estuary in their urine.

A new U-M study presents the first genetic evidence of resistance in some bats to white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease that has decimated some North American bat populations. Since the arrival of white-nose syndrome in 2006, some populations of the small, insect-eating little brown bat have experienced declines of more than 90%.

“Fish can act as a canary in the coal mine, and be indicators of environmental problems as they emerge,” said Karen Alofs, assistant professor of applied aquatic ecology at the U-M's School for Environment and Sustainability

Biosequestration relies on the natural ability of living organisms and biological processes to capture carbon. The biosequestration internal analysis team, part of the President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality, has been working for several months to evaluate the biosequestration of university-owned lands.

U-M researchers are exploring the possibility that B. similaris and other snails and slugs, which are part of a large class of animals called gastropods, could be used as a biological control to help rein in coffee leaf rust. But as ecologists, they are keenly aware of the many disastrous attempts at biological control of pests in the past.

North American migratory birds have been getting smaller over the past four decades, and their wings have gotten a bit longer. Both changes appear to be responses to a warming climate. Those are the main findings from a new U-M led analysis of a dataset of some 70,000 North American migratory birds from 52 species that died when they collided with buildings in Chicago.

In an effort to control the cyanobacteria blooms and dead zones that plague Lake Erie each summer, fueled by excess nutrients, the United States and Canada in 2016 called for a 40% reduction in the amount of phosphorus entering the lake’s western and central basins, including the Detroit River’s contribution.

U-M marine ecologist Jacob Allgeier uses artificial reefs, mathematical modeling and community-based conservation programs to understand how an unlikely but renewable source of fertilizer—fish excretion—can be used to stimulate fish production and improve food security in tropical ecosystems.

When U-M wildlife ecologist Nyeema Harris started her multiyear camera survey of West African wildlife, she sought to understand interactions between mammals and people in protected areas such as national parks. Livestock grazing and the gathering of forest products were among the most common human-related activities her cameras captured, while poaching was actually the rarest.

In what is believed to be the first comprehensive study of unofficial footpaths in a large urban area, U-M's Joshua Newell and colleague Alec Foster of Illinois State University mapped 5,680 unofficial footpaths in the city of Detroit—that's 157 linear miles of trails—visible from space.

Asian carp are capable of surviving and growing in much larger portions of Lake Michigan than scientists previously believed and present a high risk of becoming established.

A group of U-M researchers has been awarded a five-year, $20 million cooperative agreement to support NOAA in overseeing research at a nationwide network of 29 estuaries—which are among the most biologically productive natural habitats on Earth.

The fact that millions of North American monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles each fall and somehow manage to find the same overwintering sites in central Mexican forests and along the California coast, year after year, is pretty mind-blowing.

In an aspen-dominated hardwood forest at the northern tip of the state’s Lower Peninsula, U-M scientists are testing ways to make the region’s forests more resilient to climate change. About 12,000 mature trees—mostly aspen—are being cut on 77 acres at the U-M Biological Station, a 10,000-acre research and teaching facility just south of the Mackinac Bridge, near the town of Pellston.

Giving local communities in Nepal the opportunity to manage their forests has simultaneously reduced deforestation and poverty in the region, new research has shown. In the largest study of its kind, an international research team found that community-forest management led to a 37% relative reduction in deforestation and a 4.3% relative reduction in poverty.

U-M researchers report using a recently developed genetic technique to estimate the precise longitude and latitude of ice-age refugia for two broadly distributed hickory species, the bitternut and the shagbark.

Wild bees are indispensable pollinators, supporting both agricultural productivity and the diversity of flowering plants worldwide. But wild bees are experiencing widespread declines resulting from multiple interacting factors. A new U-M led study suggests that the effects of one of those factors—urbanization—may have been underestimated.

The toxins produced in cyanobacteria blooms, which plague western Lake Erie each summer, may have protective effects on sand-grain-sized lake animals that ingest them, much as the toxins in milkweed plants protect monarch butterflies from parasites.

Orangutans have long been viewed as an ecologically sensitive species that can thrive only in pristine forests. But a new synthesis of existing evidence has shown that orangutans can, and do, inhabit in areas impacted by humans, and that may mean only good things for the survival of the species.

A new video, produced by San Pedro River Videos, features turtle research at the Edwin S. George Reserve and gives a beautiful overview of the reserve. The video captures the beauty of the University of Michigan field station in early June including the diversity of habitats and wildlife.

Parasites have an admittedly bad reputation. The diverse group of organisms includes tapeworms, roundworms, ticks, lice, fleas and other pests—most of which are best known for causing disease in humans, livestock and other animals. But parasites play important roles in ecosystems. They help control wildlife populations and keep energy flowing through food chains.

A study of the St. Clair River by U-M scientists shows that despite river-current speeds of more than 3 feet per second, some recently hatched lake sturgeon manage to remain in the St. Clair’s North Channel, a surprising finding with implications for the siting of future spawning reefs.