URC institutions recognize the critical need for expertise in water issue – and the opportunity to position Michigan as a leader in such knowledge. To that end, the URC is hosting MIH2Objective: Research Shaping Michigan's Water Future, a water symposium, Sept. 29-30 at Wayne State University.

While the conference will highlight research done in Michigan, speakers and panelists reflect the national and international influence of the Great Lakes. Speakers include Alan Vicory, Water Technology Innovation Cluster Steering Committee Chair and Executive Director, Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission; Dr. Kelly R. Munkittrick, Scientific Director, Canadian Water Network; and Samuel B. Passmore, Program Director, C.S. Mott Foundation.

Panel discussions are organized around three themes: water and energy, water and health, and water and the landscape. They are designed to, in the words of conference organizer Erin Dreelin of Michigan State, "highlight challenges, opportunities, and making Michigan the 'go to' place for water science." 

The symposium is aimed at not just academics but other stakeholders with an interest in a healthy water system, such as large industrial concerns and governmental entities.

The genesis of the water symposium happened a few years ago when colleagues from the URC institutions started talking about their mutual interest in water issues and the need to highlight Michigan's expertise in the field. A URC grant to support collective research symposia allowed it to move forward. 

The water symposium is chaired by Dr. Joan Rose of MSU, Dr. Nancy Love of U-M, and Dr. Carol Miller of Wayne State.  "Several of us have worked together, and we thought, 'let's put our heads together and think about what we could do,' " Miller says. 

All three of the URC universities engage in major research on water issues, much of it interdisciplinary in nature. For example, the Great Lakes Observing System at U-M brings together people across disciplines to address what are called "wicked" problems, says Executive Director Jennifer Read — issues where the symptoms of a problem are obvious but the cause is not. Not only does it bring together researchers across academic disciplines, but also representatives from the groups most affected by the problem –  groups that don't always think they have much in common.

"It could be people who have been up to now at each other's throats, they have such different opinions of what the problem is," says Read. All these diverse entities come together to determine what the question will be for the researchers' integrated assessment, and continue to work together based on that assessment to come up with a set of policy recommendations and potential outcomes for each one. 

A similar interdisciplinary approach happens at MSU, where teams of researchers have recently received grants from the Environmental Protection Agency to tackle a wide range of issues facing the Great Lakes, everything from setting maximum limits for pathogenic bacteria in the lakes to the effects of contaminants on economically important fish such as perch. 

"It really reflects the fact that the Great Lakes watershed, with so much fresh water and so much importance to the freshwater system, needs to be clean and functioning the way it should," says Steven Pueppke, associate VP for research and graduate studies at MSU.

MSU has also done a great deal of work on reducing the invasive sea lamprey population in the lakes, knowledge that's now being used to potentially hold off the threat of Asian carp. "In both cases what we're dealing with are alien species introduced to an ecosystem where it doesn't belong," says Pueppke.  "As we learn to deal with it, and the way their life cycles work in these new environments, it is in a general sense transferable to what we know about another (species)."

Those invasive species often arrive here in the lakes via ballast water, and scientists at Wayne State are developing ways to treat ballast water before it releases problematic species into the lakes. Other teams are working on the development of energy optimization systems for water utilities. "Water utilities create a huge demand on the electrical system and in turn, electrical utilities have huge water needs," Miller says. "Wayne State has come up with some computer optimization tools that can be used to more efficiently deliver water in these large systems."

Organizers hope that the symposium will result in the three URC universities collaborating more on national and international water initiatives, with each bringing their particular niche to bear. 

"Collaboration is key among all the universities," Miller says. "That is something very unique to Michigan. The three universities have a very particular niche that the other universities cannot lay claim to … We believe we should be a leader in freshwater research."