Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health
Overview
The Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health at the University of Michigan is building on five years of successful interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement to better understand the increasing risks that cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cHAB) pose to freshwater ecosystems and human health. Increased precipitation, more powerful storm events and warming waters all encourage the proliferation of cHABs, which now occur in all five Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Center, led by a multi-institutional team of biomedical scientists, limnologists and community engagement experts with an extensive history of working together, seeks to advance the work begun in Lake Erie, which has experienced the most severe cHAB events in the last decade–including a 2014 episode that led to a complete shutdown of the Toledo, OH, water supply.
Our Mission
The Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health is a collaborative, multi-disciplinary center of researchers with a common purpose:
- Studying how environmental factors promote or limit harmful cyanobacterial algal blooms
- Creating the data systems and tools needed to better predict and limit harmful cyanobacterial algal blooms
- Serving as a resource, sharing the impacts of algal blooms with communities and stakeholders of Lake Erie and its watersheds
- Training scientists and contributing to global efforts to understand and mitigate harmful algal blooms
About Us
Community Engagement Core
The Community Engagement Core seeks to train scientists and to work with stakeholders to ensure the research has maximum positive impact on vulnerable communities.
Facility Core
The Facility Core provides research platforms, as well as analytical tools on water chemistry and cyanotoxin detection, that support both research and stakeholder interests.
Administrative Core
The successful functioning of the Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health depends on the Administrative Core for effective budget and data management, coordination of field activities, coordination of services provided by the Facility Core, evaluating research progress, and facilitating linkages between the research projects and the Community Engagement Core for outreach, coordination with other OHH Centers and reporting progress to the NIEHS/NSF. The Administrative Core is also responsible for tracking research progress and using this information to identify new research opportunities both within the Center and with the other OHH Centers.
