Great Lakes Article:

MTU to lead the way in Great Lakes research
Michigan Technological University - Lode
Dan Boyer
Oct 15, 2008

Last week the Lode announced a $25 million State of Michigan bill for a three-story Great Lakes Research Center on the Portage Canal kitty-corner to the Dow including classrooms, coastal hydrology, mass spectrometry and fisheries restoration and laboratories and a boathouse. According to Dr. W. Charles Kerfoot, Director of the Lake Superior Ecosystem Research Center, there are “glass-half-empty” and a “glass-half-full” perspectives: it costs between $40-60 million for a full-sized research facility; however, the state was reluctant to “raise the ceiling” on a capital outlay with its current economic difficulties. Drs. Kerfoot and C. Robert Baillod spent two years working on a prospectus for the University’s request for a $40 million total cost for the project (see http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2007-2008/billanalysis/Senate/pd...). Kerfoot said it was hard to have the legislature make a decision in a day and a half after the time he had spent working on the proposal, when large universities could come in with proposals at the last minute.

The “glass half full” is that, with the help of Provost and Dean of Research David Reed, Baillod and Kerfoot were able to “[provide] a low-cost option that was… really important, really attractive.” Tech’s location, north of food webs collapsing in the southern Great Lakes from global warming and invasions of waterfleas and quagga mussels, was nearly ideally suited to aquatic research. The University also had experience. In ten years it had seventy-five publications on Great Lakes research. The Keweenaw Interdisciplinary Transport
Experiment in Superior, a “large, $6.5 million project,” brought researchers from the Great Lakes Environment Research Laboratory (GLERL) in Ann Arbor and from Woods Hole. The legislature was concerned about global climate change, coastal restoration, current and former pollution (largely from mining), the impact of non-native invasive species, and the results of overfishing and piscine reproductive failure and a “great opportunity to do more than just talk, to show they’re doing action.” Michigan will pay $18.25 million (with a “university share” of $6.75 million -- http://legislature.mi.gov/documents/2007-2008/billenrolled/Senate/htm/20...), to Michigan Tech as part of grants to six small universities.

The idea began modestly: “Bob had an idea for a boathouse,” Kerfoot said. Students had also suggested docks so that they could take P.E. classes boating or canoeing. Inspired by a decade’s work at the now-closed Max Planck Institute of Limnology in Plön, in Schleswig-Holstein and past student projects “essentially for a lakefront laboratory,” Kerwood wondered why there couldn’t be a place like that at Tech. While the Keweenaw Research Center is interdisciplinary, the Great Lakes Research Center will be the first interdisciplinary building on the main campus.

“From the water side,” said Kerwood, “there’s no indication that Michigan Tech is here.” When the University’s current aquatic laboratory, a Power House annex, is demolished, that will change. The glass building, with many reflective surfaces, will be constructed among “rain gardens” using Lee’s criteria of minimum “ecological and ecosystem impact in terms of runoff,” with “low-use toilets,” and, according to the prospectus, “a green roof, permeable pavements… and a gray-water system.” Having seen active student programs on the waterfront at the Universities of Wisconsin and Washington, they thought they could be used as models for a “second face... a new face for the University.” Though the Center will be primarily a research facility, the prospectus also proposes construction of a separate shell house for the MTU crew with men’s and women’s locker rooms and bathrooms, and a Student Aquatic Activity Center.

Global climate change has been seen in glaciers calving icebergs, the erosion of Aleutian towns, and possibly increases in the frequency and severity of hurricanes. Though temperatures have varied year-to-year, over all the Great Lakes have warmed up significantly, 2-4 degrees in the last 15 years. Last year, said Kerwood, “Portage [Lake] didn’t freeze over until February.” However, the results of global climate change in inland waters are not fully understood. It is unknown, for instance, whether Lake Superior is a net “source of carbon or sink for carbon.” Associated declines in water levels have major repercussions for harbors and ship ballast.

GLERL in Ann Arbor has already been trying to research some of these issues, but has had a hard time covering the Great Lakes. At $8,000 per day, not including “weather days,” it costs $30-$40,000 for GLERL’s vessels, moored in Muskegon, just to come up to Portage Lake. The result has been GLERL’s only “occasional presence – most of [the] work tends to be done in Lake Michigan, Lake Erie…sometimes Lake Huron.” While Ranger 3 is already outfitted with equipment to monitor “not only temperature differences but carbon flux,” Kerfoot said, the building’s construction will allow much more effective deploying of buoys for NOAA’s Great Lakes Observation System (GLOS). It will allow for greater instrument arrays and the real-time collection of data from the buoys.

The boathouse Baillod originally envisioned will, according to the prospectus, “provide protected water level access” for University research vessels Agassiz and Polar, as well as a hoist for maintenance and winter storage, and a classroom for “post-cruise briefings or lectures.” It will also allow for the launching of satellite-tracked, unmanned submersible gliders that will periodically surface and transmit data to the NOAA lab in Duluth. Boat-towed monitors and Conductivity Temperature Dissolved Oxygen monitors dropped in cages into the lake will also be used. That the last have a “default value” of 25 measurements per second or 10,000 for a single cast or millions on one trip shows the incredible quantity of data generated and why the Center will contain a high-speed computer to process it. This computer will allow 3-D modeling of Lake Superior. Remote sensing and processing of remote sensing data on northern Lake Huron will also be done at the Center.

A long-term plan is to move Facilities Management up near the Student Development Complex to allow for expansion of waterfront facilities.

Alex Mayer, Director of the Center for Water & Society, and Director of Public Relations Jennifer Donovan referred questions to Dr. Kerfoot.