Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes and exactly monthly podcast in which I, a Great Lakes novice get people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton and I work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. And I'm joined, as always by hope charters, our communication coordinator hope, how's it going? I'm great. How are you? I am also great, thanks for asking. So I'm really excited this month because one of my favorite things we do is these buoys that we have, we have two yellow buoys that are out on the Great Lakes, all the time collecting data, while fifth, figuratively all the time not really all the time, much of the time out there collecting data and sending it back. And it's one of the most fun and useful things we do. And I have like a Twitter account and everything. And so this month, we're bringing what is going to be a two part episode on the buoys. And I'm really excited about it. So I'm good, how about you?

Hope Charters 1:01
We get people emailing and calling about our movies all the time. So

Stuart Carlton 1:04
many ways. It's like the most popular and impactful thing we do. And so I'm super fired up about

Hope Charters 1:09
it. And technically, for movies, just you just

Stuart Carlton 1:13
need more booties, we have four of

Hope Charters 1:16
these that we partner with. Yep, yeah.

Stuart Carlton 1:18
So we got the two buoys and then we got the partner buoys. That's a total of four Billy's. But they're more buoys and just those four buoys, which brings us to today's guests, we're going to talk with Kelly Paige, who is the CEO of the Great Lakes Observing System org loss as we know it. And I'm really excited to talk to Kelly. So let's just go ahead and bring her on. Right after the interstitial music

this pandemic lasts much longer, we're gonna have a lot more songs recorded. Kelly Paige, welcome to teach me about the Great Lakes. How are you today?

Kelli Paige 2:00
I'm great. Thank you for having me

Stuart Carlton 2:02
really excited to hear about what you're doing with gloss and and what it is. But let's just start with that. What is gloss? I know after reading that it's the Great Lakes observing system. But what does that mean?

Kelli Paige 2:13
Yeah, so gloss, we're actually a 501 C three nonprofit organization. And our mission is to provide end to end data services that support science, policy management and industry in the Great Lakes. So we support a variety of different projects around the region, doing data collection, data management, and sharing that data and making it widely publicly available.

Stuart Carlton 2:41
Interesting. And so when you say data, like what kind of data are people collecting? Or what do you collect?

Kelli Paige 2:47
Well, it's a lot of different kinds of data. So mostly about the conditions of the lakes themselves, like the temperature waves, how fast the water is moving, what direction it's moving in temperature at different depths, and information about things living in the water, like algae or fish. So it's really a wide variety of information, anything that tells us about the conditions in the lakes. So what was that Sorry,

Hope Charters 3:19
sorry, who uses the data,

Kelli Paige 3:23
um, a lot of different people. So obviously, you can expect that researchers and scientists would be interested in the information to learn more about, you know, changes that are happening or lakes over time. But we have a lot of people like recreational boaters or drinking water utilities that get their water from the lakes that use the information, you know, to make decisions on a daily basis about whether or not it's safe to go out in the water, or whether it's safe to use the water and drink it.

Hope Charters 4:00
And so they're not like, right by the shores, right. So with swimmers be able to use this data to

Kelli Paige 4:07
absolutely, so we have, like beach managers who, for instance, might use the information to decide whether or not the conditions are so hazardous that they would have to shut down a beach. But you know, every day, you know, members of the public who are you know, just going out to enjoy the day at the beach can also look at the information and see, oh, you know, the waves are really high today. Doesn't it doesn't look like a safe day to be out swimming and that kind of thing. So yeah, people who serve people who swim kayakers, you know, really, any, any member of the general public can use this information.

Stuart Carlton 4:52
So what I hear is like you have all this cool data that you're collecting through buoys and other means and I want to talk about the means in a bit but I actually want to go a little farther back if we can So like, how did this start? Was this I don't know how long you've been with gloss. But but you know, there's all this info Did y'all just start to like, bring it all together? Was there a need or digital start collecting this data and then expand? How did how did that go? Exactly?

Kelli Paige 5:14
Sure. So actually, we're one of 11 regions of a federal program that's managed through NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And the federal program is called the IES program or the integrated ocean observing system. And essentially, around 2007, eight time period, the federal government was kind of taking stock of all the different federal agencies that were doing monitoring in the oceans coasts, in Great Lakes, there's a lot of federal agencies that have jurisdiction and responsibility for, you know, doing monitoring, NASA, you know, has satellite imagery that they're collecting USGS, tracks fisheries, and has string gauges, NOAA obviously does a lot of monitoring. In the oceans, EPA, obviously has a lot of water quality and regulatory needs, for their data collection. And the notion was, shouldn't all these federal agencies be coordinated and the different monitoring that they're doing, to make sure that, you know, they're sort of avoiding duplication, but also leveraging their activities, the best way possible, and sharing the data that they're collecting with one another. So that we can, you know, get the best use out of it. And so our role as a regional node of this federal program is to take all that partnership, and coordination that's happening at the federal level, and leverage all the activities that are happening in our region. So if you think about it, you know, we have a ton of universities in the Great Lakes region, state and local government agencies that are also doing their own monitoring all of our Canadian counterparts, you know, so provincial, government agencies, and Canadian universities as well, you know, there's so many different groups out there that are collecting data for, you know, any given purpose. And, you know, our role is to really help make sure that all of those efforts can be coordinated, and that it's easy for everybody to access and share that data.

Stuart Carlton 7:42
Oh, I see. So so all the data that you have are not necessarily things that you're collect, you don't own like 100 buoys, and have armies of technicians out there. So you're, you're more like a gathering role and sort of quality assurance, is that the kind of thing to,

Kelli Paige 7:57
yeah, we, so we're actually certified through the federal government to manage the data. So we have to adhere to certain quality control standards, and making sure that all the data is available through open source protocols, and that kind of thing. And essentially, the certification that we got as a data assembly center through the federal government. And so this makes it easy for other scientists or researchers, other government agencies to access the data, you know, use it for their, you know, research or modeling purposes. And it also makes it easier for, like technology companies to make the Stata into more user friendly applications. So things that you know, those of us who aren't signing tests can easily understand and interpret to help make decisions about whether or not we can use the lakes. Oh, I

Stuart Carlton 8:58
see. So like, yeah, so you kind of have different audiences, you're serving them right. Some are like the scientists are using it, but there is some public facing stuff as well. And that's kind of where you're saying that the voters may do it or something like that. Yeah. So So where do you get this so we know you got buoys? We know you have at least four buoys. But do you actually have many more than that, that you help to track? What other types of data collection sources are there out there? Is it is it mainly through buoys? Or is it you know, more people going out and doing it manually? What kind of what kind of stuff do y'all pull in?

Kelli Paige 9:28
Yeah, there's so a lot of the real time information does come from buoys, but there are a lot of other types of, you know, observing equipment that are out there. So, radars sonars, I mentioned satellite observations, there's underwater gliders and other autonomous vehicles. Yeah. We support projects for where there's fish tagging and tracking In tagged fish throughout the Great Lakes region, so there are a lot of different ways to collect data. And so, you know, part of our job is to help make sure that people who are collecting data can share it and easy way.

Stuart Carlton 10:16
Alright, I'm a person I'm interested in data, right? Both as a professional scientist, well, paper pushing scientist, and, but maybe also as, as someone who likes to think that they're the type of person that does outdoor recreation. What are some cool things that have been done with glass data, I think that, you know, might be fun to hear about.

Kelli Paige 10:35
One of the things I think is really interesting is how local communities are using data from gloss supported researchers and buoys. So they're cities like Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or Cleveland, Ohio, that are actively, you know, on a day to day basis using the data that's coming from these buoys to make decisions about how to treat water so that it can be used for drinking water purposes, or whether people can, you know, go out and recreate in the lake without concern. And, you know, when we think about the type of monitoring that's been done through the federal agencies, they're not always necessarily able to get, you know, great coverage for local communities. And so, where glass can kind of help bridge the gap is to provide that local community data for folks and support those efforts for the information that, you know, community's going to use directly to make decisions about how to support their constituents.

Hope Charters 11:39
So if people want to get a hold of the data on glass, how do they how they act?

Kelli Paige 11:46
Yeah, so the main way is just to go to our website. So you can go to glassdoor.org. And it will point you to a variety of different applications and websites. The primary website, though, I would suggest people go to is our data portal. So that's, it can be a bit of a fire hose of information, because all the data that we're able to aggregate and provide access to the website, there's portal.gloss.us. But this kind of that the portal gives you I think the best sense of all the different kinds of data that are out there models, satellite imagery, you know, real time stations along the shoreline or buoys that are out in the water.

Stuart Carlton 12:34
You can all this stuff, I'm there now.

Kelli Paige 12:38
Yeah. And so. So if you can see, like, all those little blue dots that are there are the shoreline stations. Right now, there aren't a lot of buoys in the water, because we have to take buoys out, you know, in anticipation of the winter and possible, you know, ice issues that will happen when the lakes freeze over. And so folks usually don't redeploy the boonies until the spring. So usually, April May time period is probably as early as most people will be getting the buoys out, I'm not sure actually this year, if folks are going to be able to get their buoys out that early, give them a lot of

Stuart Carlton 13:19
discussions about that now, and it's it's with the pandemic, I don't know, when we're, I don't know what the current plan is other than sometime.

Kelli Paige 13:27
But you can also you know, there's, if you're on the website, now, you'll probably see like a green bounding box. And that's an indication you can, if you're on the map view, I should say,

Stuart Carlton 13:40
they have a map view and a catalog view. And we'll put a link to this in the show notes, which are available at www dot teach me about the Great lakes.com. Or if you're listening to this on like your phone, just look down at your podcast player, and you can click on a link from there.

Kelli Paige 13:54
Yeah. And so you can if you're on the map view, you can kind of see a sense of what types of data are out there and then do a more in depth search, on the left side, in the legend area, for you know, other data that may be of interest to you. And so a lot of times people like to look at data in a particular geographic area where they're from, or maybe they have a particular type of data that they're interested in, like temperature waves. And those are good ways to search through the holdings of data that we have and find what you're looking for. Oh, yeah,

Stuart Carlton 14:33
for example, if you search for Illinois, you can then go straight to Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant buoy, one of the boots that we have out there. Oh, that's great. Well, I do encourage everybody to check this out. It seems like a really neat place to dig around and find some different stuff that is cool, but I'm going to close it now because otherwise I'll spend the rest of this interview.

Hope Charters 14:52
So earlier you were saying buoys provide things like wind and wave data and temperatures and stuff. Um, But if you look at the bigger picture, like what have we learned about the Great Lakes from actually being able to aggregate all this data and look it all together rather than individually?

Kelli Paige 15:09
Yeah, that's a great question. Um, you know, I actually think that I'm not sure that I have a good direct answer to that. But what's been really interesting to me to see over time since I've been at gloss is how greater access to all of these different diverse pieces of information have actually created a bigger demand from, you know, just a variety of different stakeholders, for being able to access this information easier, and even has, like, created more complex questions, I think that people are looking to answer. So it's almost more that this has revealed that there's so much more potential out there. And people are, I think, a little bit more interested in figuring out how to realize the full potential of that. So here's an example that I'll give. When I first started at gloss, which was around 2009, we were doing some focus groups, recreational boaters in upstate New York, and we were asking them, you know, how do you like to get information about whether or not you're going to take a trip boating that weekend? Where do you look for information, that kind of thing, like learning more about what their their information needs were. And at the time, you know, they indicated that they mainly visited, you know, websites, and looked up things like what the weather forecast is going to be in that kind of stuff from a desktop computer, they really like to have a forecast, you know, maybe three or four days out in advance. And ultimately, they would make a decision, maybe like on a Thursday or Friday about whether or not they were going to go out and take the boat out for the weekend, right. And it wasn't, but just like a few years later, that a lot of those assumptions about how people were going to consume and use data change. So you know, at the time, they didn't really feel like using or having a mobile friendly website, or mobile app was going to necessarily be super useful to them. Because cell service wasn't so great. These are people in upstate New York, so they were near the Canadian border, and there were issues with cell coverage, you know, near the border and that kind of thing. But then just a few years later, you know, everyone is on their phone. We did a survey recently, and found out that around 78% of our website, visitors self identify as recreational boaters, and they overwhelmingly access the data on our mobile friendly website, gl buoys.org. And they really prefer more real time information, not so much the forecasts that we had before. So I think that seeing how people's preferences for how they access information change over time has been like one of the most like revealing and inspiring things to me working at gloss because it really is imitates I think this shift like culturally that we have and one on demand information and making decisions like in a more on demand way.

Hope Charters 18:48
Yeah, I was gonna Majan voter like, trying to plan three days out now because the data is available that they would just get on their phone in the morning and be like, Oh, is this a good way to go out?

Stuart Carlton 19:02
Exactly. Doing that it never occurred to me that you're right, what we require now for these sorts of instantaneous decisions is just we need data, we need information. And so the critical role that you play is gathering and combining all that data into something actionable. And that's, that's really cool. And you're right, the way it mirrors that transition in society, to you know, you can even get dimestore sociological if you want it to which I do, and talk about, you know, kids these days or whatever. But that's, that's really interesting. So, so But staying on top of technology is really important, I think. So I know you have this called the smarter Great Lakes initiative. Can you tell us a little bit about that and like how you're adapting as more sensors become available, and you know, just as the world changes?

Kelli Paige 19:48
Yeah, so I'm kind of responding to that change and trends that we've seen over time, and how people like to consume information and also these You know, more wicked problems and wicked challenges where people are just demanding, like more better use of all that big data that's out there, you sort of said to ourselves as an organization like, geez, you know, shouldn't we be taking better advantage of all these technology advances that are out there to help, you know, improve the way that we learn about the lakes and make decisions about the lakes. And so that's kind of where the inspiration for the smart Great Lakes initiative came from. And so part of, you know, in addition to, you know, trying to kind of use all these information, technology advances, to our advantage and make better information products, we're also really interested in incentivizing people to use more innovative monitoring technologies. So if you think about, you know, the way that like temperature can be crowd sourced from people's, you know, home weather stations. one app that we that we use a lot as an example is ways, and how you can get, you know, shortcut travel directions based on kind of real time crowd sourced information about, you know, where their traffic jams and that kind of thing, you know, couldn't we be taking advantage of some of these other cheaper, easier to use, you know, more commercial off the shelf monitoring devices, and using that to like, really enrich the information that's available to us? Also, how do we generally transmit the data and make it available, you know, over a website, there's a lot of sort of manual, you know, just older processes for doing that, how can we maybe update some of these devices, so that they're transmitting the data directly to the cloud, or even maybe doing some of the data processing on the device itself, so that you don't have to, you know, download it have researcher, you know, go through all the information in post processor, and then make it available to the public, you know, where some of these advances in machine learning or artificial intelligence that we can take advantage of to get us that data faster, and we're on demand, you know, in the way that people are needing it to help make decisions. And so those are some of the things that we're hoping to, or some of the projects that we're hoping to fund in the future and ideas that we're hoping to incentivize moving forward to help, you know, kind of bring the whole region to this smarter. Smarter status.

Hope Charters 22:57
Yeah, really, especially because this month is citizen science month. Yeah. So what the idea of bringing people from the community together to give you more data, the other thing I would be worried about, is that, would you then have to worry about quality? Or would you have certain devices that you would have approved that people could use from their homes?

Kelli Paige 23:18
Yeah, I think, you know, there is in terms of, I guess, the QA side of things, the quality assurance side of things, making sure that people are using the devices properly, and you know, have, you know, maintain them or set them up in a way that's, you know, providing them with the best data. But we have, you know, again, like the more prolific the number of devices are like, the easier it is to sort of on the quality control side of things like weed out the data, that's maybe you know, not reporting the best quality information and that kind of thing. So again, there's sort of like, trade offs everywhere. But if we're, you know, making a best effort to use all the potential technology advances that are available to us, then you know, there are ways to overcome some of those obstacles. Yeah, that's awesome.

Stuart Carlton 24:05
And what's really exciting is what we don't even know I think, what kind of questions that's gonna enable people to ask right? And so that's exciting. Well, Kelly, we'd like to wrap up with a couple of questions that are the real reason that I brought you on here. All of this gloss is interesting. It is and I encourage people to go check it out. But here's the most important question of the day. If you could choose to have a great doughnut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, either those two but only one. Which would you choose?

Kelli Paige 24:31
Well, I absolutely love donuts but donuts do not love me. I'm not the type of person that can eat a lot of sweets. A great sandwich.

Stuart Carlton 24:42
And then the follow up. This is now we're getting we're honing in on what information I need. Yeah, we're in your hometown. Can I get a really great sandwich for lunch?

Kelli Paige 24:51
Oh, Zingerman's, Ann Arbor, Michigan Zingerman's is famous they use the fanciest ingredients which makes For the most delicious, if not kind of expensive.

Stuart Carlton 25:05
Well, I'm a fancy boy though so this is okay.

Hope Charters 25:09
But your pinky out since it's so fancy

Stuart Carlton 25:13
I do I do know I drink I drink with my pinky out not because I'm crazy, but because I need like the counterbalance. Cuz I guess I'm very weak. Zingerman's and in arbor. Alright, I will definitely check it out next time I'm there, I need to go visit my friends at Michigan secret anyway. And we'd like to wrap up with like a little bit of life advice. You know, it can be serious, it can be silly. It can be big, it can be small. But is there like one piece of life advice in your travels that you have that you'd like to share with our listeners?

Kelli Paige 25:41
Sure, yeah, I think my favorite scene comes from RuPaul, the drag performer. And that is we're all born naked. And the rest is drag. And the reason why I absolutely love that same. Because it kind of reminds us that fundamentally, we're all equal, we're all the same. We're all born naked, right. And some of these, you know, things like what we wear, what car we drive, even, to some extent, like what career path we choose, you know, are really just constructs of this identity that we're trying to form for ourselves. And if we get too focused on trying to, you know, curate or cultivate that identity, we start to lose, you know, our ability to connect with other people. And, and I guess, to try to tie it back to the Great Lakes, I sort of feel like the Great Lakes is a natural resource that we all share as humans, you know, we all have an interest in, you know, trying to remember that like common connection that we share, and trying to protect, and conserve the Great Lakes, in the interest of like having that shared human connection. So to me, it's all about, you know, maintaining authenticity, you know, remembering, like, at the end of the day, I was born naked. And they're all the rest of this drag, like, stay true to yourself. Stay true to your authentic instincts, and that helped will help carry you through the challenges that you face in life.

Hope Charters 27:28
We get a round of applause in here. Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 27:32
No, I'll have to install that later. I can get a car crash. That's what we got. However, that deserves much more than a car crash. No, that's really great. I can't think of any better. Any better way to put it than that. And I think that's a really inspiring when you phrase it like that and think.

Kelli Paige 27:53
Yeah, that's true report. All the credit goes through Paul, for that one.

Stuart Carlton 27:57
Well, most of the credit. So I'm going to encourage everybody to go to gloss dot U. S, to check out your website, and then also to the portal.class.us. Is there somewhere else that you want to point people to? Is there a social media thing? Or just go to the website and go from there? Yeah, just

Kelli Paige 28:15
keep following to yellow booze on Twitter. They're super entertaining. And I love them. And. And yeah, thanks for having me again.

Stuart Carlton 28:26
Yeah, Kelly Paige CEO of the Great Lakes observing system. Thank you so much for teaching us about the Great Lakes.

Man, I love talking about the buoys, hope and all the data and things like that. It's really exciting just to hear all the stuff that people are doing and can do with these really valuable resources.

Hope Charters 28:51
Yeah, and hearing what people are going to be able to do possibly,

Stuart Carlton 28:54
I know, I know, sometimes I get like, creeped out about all the sensors that are everywhere, because, you know, they're like, Yeah, but but it also is gonna I mean, it's just to see what its gonna look like in 20 years, you know, gloss 2000, or whatever they call it, probably

Hope Charters 29:10
hear her talk about the difference between just a few years and then technology shift and societal shift. Really, that was really cool. I think that was my favorite part of talking to

Stuart Carlton 29:18
them. I agree and how it's reflected in ways that I don't necessarily think about. But it's, yeah, that sort of connection between like, when new technology new data, new information becomes available, it becomes like this sort of feedback loop and changes the way we think about things and what we think about and how we think and that when new

Hope Charters 29:34
data is available, we feel like we should automatically have access to it, which is really nice that they're giving us that access to

Stuart Carlton 29:42
Yeah, I can't imagine I don't envy them having to take all this stuff and try to make sense of it make it available, but it's a really valuable resource. And so I do encourage everybody to check out all the info in the show notes. And I also encourage everybody to go and follow the two yellow buoys like Kelly said on Twitter at two yellow buoys you can follow the show at Little we teach Great Lakes, and where can they find out more about Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant,

Hope Charters 30:04
you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at i l i n Sea Grant. And we mentioned earlier that it's citizen science month. So if you want to go check out any projects that you can do in your neighborhood, just typing community science or citizen science in your favorite search, drive and strike, that's

Stuart Carlton 30:25
a great point. When this comes out, maybe what month exactly is citizen science month? Oh, girl, so

Hope Charters 30:32
we're getting this.

Stuart Carlton 30:36
If this happens to be me, when you're listening, I encourage you to still do some community science. It's still valuable and important work. And I encourage you also to check out our editorial calendar if you're a co host of the show. Anyway, with that, everybody, thanks for listening. We'll see you actually back either tomorrow or next week because this is a two part episode related to our buoys. So we encourage you to check Part Two when that is released, which will either be tomorrow or next week depending on things that I'm not going to decide until May because I can't make decisions during citizen science month. But with that, I encourage you to keep great nose lakes PD day DPDT Don't you remember with a computer voice