The University of Michigan is developing new technologies, research, educational programs, and partnerships to better understand and effectively address the world’s most critical issues pertaining to water, from aquatic life to infrastructure and water quantity.
From protecting the Great Lakes to tackling global drought, U-M’s research environment fosters creativity, collaboration, and effective problem solving across a variety of disciplines. Some of our key partnerships include: the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, The Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments Program, Michigan Sea Grant, the U-M Water Center, and the Urban Collaboratory. Find U-M experts in sustainability and environmental science, across fields and academic units.
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.
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.
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.
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.
