Water@Wayne Winter 2022

The Winter 2022 schedule for Water@Wayne can be found below. This year, we will be hosting these virtually from 2:30-3:30 on the date listed. Registration is required. Please register here for the seminars.

For past Water@Wayne talks, please visit our Archive page: https://huw.wayne.edu/events-archivedwater

February 3, 2022

Microcystins in Lake Erie: Working towards developing a toxin concentration forecast

Dr. Justin Chaffin, Senior Researcher, Research Coordinator, Stone Laboratory

A recording of the seminar can be found here.

Cyanobacterial blooms in western Lake Erie are an annual summer occurrence, but their biomass and toxicity vary from year-to-year and even within a year. Seasonal bloom biomass forecasts are made possible with Maumee River phosphorus loading data, and short-term forecasts are made with near-daily remote sensing data and water current models. However, neither the seasonal nor short-term biomass forecast deals with the blooms' harmful toxins (microcystins). This presentation will discuss some environmental factors that trigger microcystin production and the current challenges and opportunities to incorporate microcystins into forecasts.

February 10, 2022

DNA barcoding and methods to uncover freshwater biodiversity: some examples from the neotropics

Dr. Manuel Elias-Gutierrez, Professor of Zoology, National Autonomous University of Mexico

A recording of the seminar can be found here.

Mexico is the fourth country with the most biodiversity in the world. Here, the two main biogeographical regions of the Americas meet (Nearctic and Neotropics). However, little was known about freshwater life until the end of the 20th century. From the 1990's, a new generation of limnologists started systematically documenting several systems, mainly located from the north to the country's central plateau. Among several exciting discoveries is the first and unique blind cladoceran from the continent, Spinalona anophtalma. After the proposal of DNA barcoding by Paul Hebert in 2003, we started in 2005 to work with Mexican freshwater fauna. The first steps were not easy; in most cases amplifying the standardized gene for animals was extremely difficult, with a failure of 60 to 70% of the material studied. Despite this problem, the first publication about freshwater zooplankton and DNA barcodes from Mexico appeared in 2008, including some material from Guatemala. The same year, the first cladoceran, Leberis chihuahuensis, and the first copepod, Leptodiaptomus garciai were described, based on integrative taxonomy. Since then, we have been documenting the striking diversity from this region, and we compared it with the rest of North America. From the main freshwater groups, we have the first place in the world for rotifers, with 606 specimens sequenced, 142 species, and 147 BINS. In the case of acarii, we have 1335 sequences of Trombidiformes. Nevertheless, most of them are unidentified and unique for Mexico, most probably new species for science. For Anomopoda, we have 3804 specimens sequenced, being the second most studied country globally, accounting for 95 species identified and 171 BINS; from these, we have described three new species, and only 21 are distributed in USA and Canada as well. Ctenopods are represented by 28 species and 31 BINS in North America; 11 species are found in Mexico. Only two species are shared with the USA and Canada. Moreover, Latonopsis australis s.l. seems to be represented by two different species in Mexico and one more in the United States. Cyclopoids are represented by 29 species and 83 BINS, with only nine shared with Canada and the USA. The exotic Mesocyclops pehpeiensis being one of them and Acanthocylops americanus the most widely distributed in the USA and Mexico. Finally, Calanoida has 26 species identified and 54 BINS. Only three species are shared with the USA. Currently, we know that the taxonomic impediment should not stop our knowledge on freshwater diversity, so we are currently working on baselines with DNA barcodes and a reference collection of the material sequenced. This work will allow the biomonitoring of our systems by using metabarcoding, allowing us to detect any change due to exotic species introduction or alteration of the ecosystem.

March 3, 2022

Great Lakes PFAS Action Network

Erica Bloom, Ecology Center and Salah Ali, Ford Motor Company

A recording of the seminar can be found here.

In 2020 PFAS-impacted community members co-founded the Great Lakes PFAS Action Network (GLPAN) alongside three statewide non-profit organizations. This presentation will focus on the ways community-driven coalitions can re-shape the PFAS narrative to prioritize PFAS-impacted community member needs. Salah Ali, a Dearborn activist fighting for better air quality and one of GLPAN's community leaders, will join Erica Bloom, Toxics Campaign Director for the Ecology Center, and facilitator of GLPAN, to talk about how PFAS are impacting Michigan communities, and specifically the situation in Southeast Michigan. Salah will share his perspective as a community activist partnering with statewide organizations. The presentation will also touch on GLPAN's accomplishments, and how community members and organizations can become members or partner with the GLPAN.

March 10, 2022

Monitoring the Great Lakes ecosystem "at scale" with marine autonomous vehicles

Peter Esselman, Research Fisheries Biologist, Great Lakes Science Center, United State Geological Survey

A recording of the seminar can be found here.

The US Geological Survey is heavily invested in monitoring and assessment of the Great Lakes ecosystem to support partner needs for timely and accurate information about fisheries, species, and habitats.  For more than 50 years, Great Lakes research has been accomplished using crewed research vessels, but the scale of the Great Lakes and the demand for increased accuracy and precision have forced USGS to adopt a suite of emerging technologies to complement their large vessel program.  The newly developed capabilities share one thing in common: they all involve sensors deployed from high-persistence autonomous vehicles targeting different habitats and organisms of high management concern.  This seminar will present applications of autonomous vehicles, eDNA, machine learning, and other techniques to pelagic prey fish assessment, benthic invasive species detection, and benthic habitat mapping. Progress to date points to a promising future where spatially extensive, high resolution underwater remote sensing solutions transform the way that USGS's partners conceive of and manage these vast inland seas.

March 31, 2022

Monitoring water resources using affordable IoT sensors: Examples in the Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie regions

Jeff Pu, Post-Dotoral Research Fellow, Cleveland Water Alliance

A recording of the seminar can be found here.

Traditional water monitoring equipment has been expensive and thus limiting the monitoring spatial coverage. However, critical Lake Erie water phenomena such as shoreline flooding/erosion and upwelling have been proven to be spatially variable. With the rapid development of microcomputers and the Internet of Things (IoT), environmental monitoring costs are becoming increasingly affordable yet robust, which provides the perfect opportunity to increase water resources monitoring coverage with affordable means. This presentation will showcase very recent examples of real-time low-cost water resource monitoring systems in the Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie regions to help educate and promote deployment of these sensors. Through these examples, Jeff will present the cost-saving and reliability of the low-cost sensors against traditional monitoring systems. In addition, Jeff will present how using low-cost sensors can fill in spatial data gaps and enable large-scale analysis of environmental changes through affordable means.