National Science Foundation

Learning from Adaptable Water Systems Michigan is a state where climate change is likely to increase the amount and variability of precipitation and water flows. A significant portion of these increased flows will pass through stormwater and wastewater infrastructures thus impacting ecosystem functions and potentially affecting public health. Increased flows are also likely to exacerbate water quality problems associated with flooding, point and non-point pollution, and the quality of ecosystems, drinking water sources and recreational water throughout the state.

ABSTRACT Proposal # 1039043 WSC CATEGORY 2: EXTREME EVENTS IMPACTS ON WATER QUALITY IN THE GREAT LAKES: PREDICTION AND MANAGEMENT OF NUTRIENT LOADING IN A CHANGING CLIMATE The Great Lakes (GL) are a vital freshwater resource with chronic water quality problems. Climate-change-induced extreme events are expected to affect the region's ecosystems and ecosystem services, with impacts on social and economic well-being.

Cyanobacterial mats were critical in the evolution of Earth?s chemistry and biology. They have long been recognized as drivers of the ?great oxidation event? (GOE), and may have also perpetuated a prolonged period of intermediate redox state in the early Earth's time period call the Proterozoic. However, the types of cyanobacteria that could have mediated such geochemical transitions are poorly understood because whereas Proterozoic oceans were characterized by low oxygen, stratified and/or fluctuating redox conditions, oxygen is required by most modern cyanobacteria studied to date.

Cyanobacterial mats were critical in the evolution of Earth?s chemistry and biology. They have long been recognized as drivers of the ?great oxidation event? (GOE), and may have also perpetuated a prolonged period of intermediate redox state in the early Earth's time period call the Proterozoic. However, the types of cyanobacteria that could have mediated such geochemical transitions are poorly understood because whereas Proterozoic oceans were characterized by low oxygen, stratified and/or fluctuating redox conditions, oxygen is required by most modern cyanobacteria studied to date.

The University of Toledo is awarded a grant to will implement an environmental sensor network system at the Lake Erie Center (LEC) to assess lake/bay/river changes and analyze key environmental influences. Lake Erie Center is an interdisciplinary research and education center dedicated to solving environmental problems at the land-water interface and bay-lake exchanges in the Great Lakes, the world's largest freshwater ecosystem.

1032547 Li The research objective of the NSF-BRIGE proposal is to investigate a novel one-dimensional axial PdFe core - Pt shell nanowires, which have advantageous crystallographic facets and tuned electronic properties, and can be used as efficient cathode catalysts for electrochemical energy conversion and storage devices. The overall goals are to acquire fundamental understanding of controlled wet-chemical synthesis of metallic nanocatalysts at the atomic and nano- scale, and gain knowledge of structure-catalytic functionality relationship of multi-metallic electrocatalytic systems.

Near-inertial internal waves are ubiquitous features in the ocean and large lakes. In the coastal ocean, near-inertial internal waves often exist as horizontally-propagating vertical modes, but their presence and importance is usually overshadowed by more energetic internal tides. However, in large lakes, the stratified coastal environment is dominated by modal near-inertial waves because energetic tides are absent.

In this project, researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee will continue their research into the fluxes, pathways and residence times of particles and their associated nutrients and energy in nearshore waters of Lake Michigan. Their overall objective is to further explore the use of dual fast process chronometers (90Y/90Sr) and 234Th/238U disequilibria) as tracers of rapid particle dynamics. In Lake Michigan, dreissenid mussels now dominate these nearshore dynamics and the project objectives, therefore, focus on this influence.