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. A twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice, ask 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 know a lot I think about maybe getting the settings on the soundboard, right, so that I don't sound like a hyper compressed stupid Fn, DJ, but I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes, and that's the point of this here show. And I'm joined today by the lake lover herself, Megan. Gunn, Megan,

Megan Gunn 0:32
it's going really well. I mean, the weather is weird. It's a brave new world. Yes, it is, sure is, and climate change is real. I don't understand. No,

Stuart Carlton 0:39
she's talking about this. I just got a paper accepted looking at risk perceptions related to genetically modified salmon. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. And I was trying to explain it to my family, and it's looking at, you know, some of the comparing people's attitudes towards genetic risk perceptions related to genetically modified foods to their risk perceptions related to climate change, because these are both things where there's a scientific consensus one way, but many people believe in other ways. Anyway, we'll talk about that in some other episode. We don't have time because today we have a very special guest, so we will, uh, just go straight to it. But good news, he's a researcher, so you know what that means. My

Megan Gunn 1:17
favorite feature there it is, oh,

Speaker 1 1:27
a researcher, a feature written with your research,

Unknown Speaker 1:32
you're gonna teach us

Stuart Carlton 1:35
about the great place. I'll let that fate. Our guest today is Dr. Drew Gronewold. He's an associate professor in the School for environmental, environment, excuse me, and sustainability the University of Michigan. Arbor. I call it seas. I call it seas. And he does all kind of stuff looking at, I think, runoff and water quality and water quality dynamics. And so we're going to talk about all of that and maybe get a little nerdy on Bayesian statistics, but maybe not, because I'm not actually smart enough for Bayesian statistics. So we'll see precisely how nerdy you know what you can do. I want you to, right now, create a prior distribution for how nerdy Do you think we're going to get, and you can update that by the end of this episode. So it'll be really good. Drew are things over in Ann Arbor.

Drew Gronewold 2:21
They're great. And you've livened up my day by providing a beautiful description of prior distributions and Bayesian statistics. It's a frequent subject of discussion in my household. So we're

Stuart Carlton 2:30
doing there we go. Thank you. Sounds great in your house. So you look at you look at runoff in un gaged basins, is what your little bio says. And of course, I've done a lot of research in that. What is it? First of all, what is it? What is an engaged basin? And let's even start with the basics of the basics. So what kind of systems do you work in? Yeah,

Drew Gronewold 2:49
so we do a lot of work. That snippet from my my website, is definitely one aspect of what we do and the research we have done. But if we want to talk specifically about gaged and UN gaged basins. It's probably first to start off by talking just what the heck do we mean by a gaged anything, whether it's gaged land surface or a gaged water level or a gage basin. So when we're talking about gaging, we're talking about measuring water flow. And I need to take a moment to just articulate how lucky we are, at least within the United States, to have agencies like the United States Geological Survey that is part of their foundational services to the country. They install and maintain these gages, whether they're measuring rainfall or temperature or in this case, what we're talking about, flow in rivers and streams. They do that as part of their service. Now, these gages can't be put everywhere across the entire country. They can't measure every stream, and they can't measure everywhere along every stream. So if you look across the entire country and entire continent, every river and stream has its own little watershed, and you put the watersheds together, and you can have a much larger basin. Basin is really for this conversation, like a large watershed. And so if you were to put a gage in the middle of a stream to measure flow, you would really only be measuring the flow coming from all of the land area that is upstream of that Gage. So if you put on a map all of the gages that we have across this country for measuring flow, they're going to be areas of the country that are quote, unquote, gaged, in other words, where we're measuring the flow from the watershed through the stream. And then, of course, there are going to be a lot of areas that are un gaged. And so one long standing area of water science research has been trying to estimate, without the use of a gage, how much water is flowing through a stream below or down. Stream of an area where the United States Geological Survey or someone else maintains one of these gages. So it's a really important area of research, and there's definitely something that we and hundreds of other hydrologists have been working on for decades.

Stuart Carlton 5:12
Got it no that makes sense. So yeah, let me first of all echo your appreciation for the USGS and the work they do. Honestly, if I had to pick a number one theme over the nearly five years we've been doing this show. It's the importance of these long standing government data sets, right? Because if they don't collect it, it probably not going to get collected. And so, but so then, but that doesn't mean that they collect everything. And so what you're doing then is they're using, like, some sort of modeling process, I guess, statistics or something. Do you gather some data and then try to model what else is there to fill in? So we have these, sort of, it's like Swiss cheese, right? Like Sam's memory in Quantum Leap, right? And so you try to fill in the holes in that Swiss cheese, I guess, using statistical and other techniques, is that a fair way to put it?

Drew Gronewold 5:53
Absolutely right, absolutely right. So there are a range of mathematical and modeling techniques that you could use to sort of, I would say, let's say, translate information about how water is flowing in one part of the basin where there is a gage into an area where there is not a gage. One of the easiest ways, in fact, one of the simplest ways, is to just simply calculate how much runoff you get or what the flow is at a gage for a certain watershed area. And you could start off with the assumption that, hey, maybe the area of a watershed that doesn't have a gage has the same characteristics, the same soil type, the same slope, the same rainfall distribution, where that flow per unit area might be actually pretty similar to the flow per unit area downstream of the gage. And if that is, assumption is correct, the only thing you need to know about the downstream area is its area, and then you can calculate the flow. But as you can imagine, if you look at watersheds, whether it's in the Great Lakes or elsewhere, as you go downstream through a watershed, a lot of things change. In some areas of the country, the upper portions of the watershed have mountains and a lot of snow, steep gradients and a different soil type. And as you get closer and closer to a large lake or the ocean, things tend to flatten out a little bit. Maybe the soils are more porous, maybe more saturated, and so there are areas where the relationship between runoff and area doesn't stay consistent throughout a watershed or a basin, and that's the case where we might use more sophisticated computer models that are representing things like the physical properties of the soil and the relationship between how water flows through that soil and across the different land surfaces. So a range of different techniques, and there are a lot of hydrologists and scientists who have quite literally made their careers out of studying these different techniques, and it's one element of what we're doing right now in our research on the Great Lakes.

Megan Gunn 8:01
I mean, it's a much fancier way than I used to use it. So I used the Indiana USGS Gage for many, many years when I was a researcher, prior to my environments education hat, I managed an aquatic ecology research lab, and we went up and down the Wabash River. And for safety purposes, we'll look at the USGS gage to make sure that we were going on the river and that flow was it was proper so that we didn't get drifted away by driftwood or any or knocked out by driftwood, or anything like that. But doing exactly what you talked about, where we were, we had to look at some of those gages that were much higher upstream than when we were, where we were going to because that information just didn't exist so sure, much less sophisticated than the research that you well, it was quite so very cool that was, yeah,

Stuart Carlton 8:48
all right, so then you kindly were going to move us into the Great Lakes. I actually was about to take us off on a place we don't even need to go. So we will instead follow your lead. Drew and say, so that's part of the research that you're doing in the Great Lakes. So explain to us how that fits into your larger Great Lakes research program and what we're learning about the Great Lakes as a result. Please, sure,

Drew Gronewold 9:07
sure. So one, we have a lot of projects going on right now. The research group that I with, I'm very fortunate to work with undergraduate students, graduate students, post Doctor fellows and colleagues. But the big thing we have going on right now is our Global Center for understanding climate change impacts on trans boundary waters. And it's kind of a long name there, but the key, the key points in there are climate change impacts and trans boundary waters. And one of our initial focal points for this Global Center is the Great Lakes. And one of the things that the members on the team in this global center have expertise on is understanding how to measure, monitor, predict and understand the history of water that flows through and across multiple sovereign nations. Not just the United States and Canada, but the lands of our tribes, the United States and First Nations across the Canadian land surface. So when we talk about things like using the USGS to understand flow in the United States, our Global Center is trying to understand, how do you put together different forms of knowledge, some of which have been written, some of which are spoken, some of which are based on infrastructure of the federal government. And put it all together to understand the quantity and quality of water. And this is not an easy thing to do. There are not many places in the world where you have massive, massive lakes, where different countries and different sovereign nations use that water, and have to come together and talk to develop an understanding of how that water is changing, especially as the climate is changing around it. So I'll finish off by saying, in the Global Center, we have several research themes. In fact, we have three primary research themes. One of those is what we call hydro climate. It's basically understanding the hydrology and the climate of the Great Lakes, both in the past and the projections for the future.

Megan Gunn 11:07
Can we take a step back? Thank you. This is fantastic information, but what? What is a trans boundary water? Because I'm sure I am not the only person that will be listening that's like, Hmm, got climate change and impacts, but the trans Boundary Waters is,

Drew Gronewold 11:24
yeah, we would define it as any water body, like a river or lake, or any water shed that crosses the boundaries of multiple nations, right? So the Great Lakes are actually a wonderful example. The the US Canada border runs right down the middle of Lake Superior, right through the middle of Lake Huron, right down the middle of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. So it is one of the best examples in the world of a massive trans boundary water system. But all the other watersheds along the US Canada border, all the way through the Columbia River up to the Yukon, they are all trans boundary or transnational watersheds, and as a result, they all require harmonization and communication from the multiple nations across which those waters intersect. So hopefully that helps Yes, more clarity on that, on that term, yes.

Megan Gunn 12:17
And so I guess my next question is with within these three dynamic research clusters that you have, which area does your research focus in? Or do you do you work across these different clusters? I

Drew Gronewold 12:29
work across these different clusters. So I'm very fortunate to I'm one of the lead PIs on the project, along with my colleague, Gail krantzberg from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. And the way the Global Center is set up, these three research cluster themes include the hydro climate cluster theme that I just talked about, and the two other clusters are ecosystem function and water quality, and that's something where I've also done quite a bit of work in as well. And then there's a third cluster that's called community resilience and trans boundary governance. And so the idea is that every single member, whether it's a student or a post doctorate fellow or even one of the lead principal investigators in the center, works on a project that in some cases falls squarely within one of those clusters. But really the idea is for us to do developing and pursuing projects that cut across these clusters and incorporate all the three themes. The final point I would make is one of the most important things that we're trying to do is develop hydro climate information that is useful for people or plants and animals that need that information, either from a water quality and ecosystem perspective, or to help communities be more resilient to changes in the climate and the Great Lakes.

Stuart Carlton 13:50
So then a key challenge for you thinking about this is I, I, my research tends to be small, and, you know, because I don't work well with others, but, but I was part of a large project back when I was a postdoc, actually a woman named Linda procopi, who was my mentor and friend, working on taking climate information and trying to make it usable by farmers across the Midwest. And there were many people, actually, several people University of Michigan, were involved in that too. And so a big challenge was finding the right level of information that people actually needed, because we had people who are doing climate modeling and who are generating computer decision support tool, computerized decision support tools and things like that, and like, they wanted to do stuff that was up here, and the farmers wanted to do stuff that was much more on the ground and localized, right? So What are y'all doing to turn Do you notice that that sort of discrepancy, or that challenge is that something y'all are coming across? How are y'all managing that 100%

Drew Gronewold 14:45
that is exact that you just articulated, I need to say no more, because you just articulated exactly the type of representative relationship that we're looking to find. But I'll broaden on a little bit, since we're doing a conversation here. What. We as a center are trying to do is understand, how do different communities across the Great Lakes with a broad definition of different types of communities, how are they accessing maybe they're not accessing it at all. How are they accessing climate data? Where are they getting it from? How are they using it, and to what extent does it actually change decisions they make about where they live, how they live, how they move around the Great Lakes basin. And so that area of research falls primarily within that community resilience and trans boundary governance cluster. So one of the lead researchers in that cluster is my colleague, Carolyn Johns from Toronto Metropolitan University, and also Richard Norton, or Dick Norton from here at the University of Michigan. They are experts in understanding how communities make decisions in light of climate information. We're trying to broaden that to understand where a community is actually looking for climate information. And actually, since we're talking a little about things like USGS and NOAA. I actually worked for NOAA for about 10 years, and NOAA and the Army Corps of Engineers, environment, climate change, Canada and the Canadian side do amazing job of generating models and data sets, but both the federal agencies and scientists like us at universities aren't entirely sure about just how effectively that information is making into the hands of different users, and so that's one of the things that we're trying to understand, so that the information can be generated and communicated in a way that's more effective, that is interesting.

Stuart Carlton 16:34
And now I'm going to go the other way, though, because, yeah, the one thing we learned with the useful, not the one thing, one of the things we learned, hopefully, for whatever $5 million you're learning, maybe three things, but the one thing we learned was, one of the things we learned is, is the the gap between, you know, what's cutting edge in terms of science and what the end users need, but then, and so a lesson I took from that was, you know, let's not get too fancy and overthink it. But I think on the flip side, though, by enabling that research that's more cutting edge, and having the people who are doing it at least start to think about end users, what you're doing is setting up four moves down the line right where, in some number of years, the stuff that is currently cutting edge will be really useful, even if it's not currently useful to decision makers because it's too far out there, It'll very well you're creating the next generation of useful information, I think, as part of what you're doing, I hope so, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so I don't you have to run that, you know? So you want to be practical, but you also want to be a future proven yourself, I guess. So. Yeah, it's a lot of management. And if you're directing this, I your job has changed right, from researcher to people manager, I think, for better or worse, and so, all right, so we have that, and it's doing really important work across boundaries. And I want to point out that you mentioned that, you know, we have tribal boundaries as well in there that haven't been traditionally recognized, and I think that's really important to engage in those communities. And you, I think, alluded to multiple ways of knowing, which probably includes in traditional ecological indigenous knowledge in there too, which is so important. And so thinking about all the different groups you have working, is there any sort of lesson that you have about, you know, what have you learned, I guess, from bringing all these groups together so far? It can be like process oriented, or it can be about the Great Lakes specifically, you know, just one kind of interim lesson, I guess. Yeah,

Drew Gronewold 18:23
what a great question. And I do want to mention, even though I initially launched into this, you know, this is about the Great Lakes, I do want to mention, they're doing work elsewhere in the continent, around the world, one of our other really important projects that's being led by some of our colleagues in Canada, and also one of our PhD students, Vienna reeda, is on the US Mexico treaty and management of the Rio Grande. So we're doing work all across the continent. And so some of the lessons learned that I'm talking about reflect not just to work on the Great Lakes, but across the country and elsewhere around the world. And really, one of the take home messages is the importance of thinking really hard about when you put the initial team together and who you'd like to work with. If you looked at the website for the Global Center, you'd see a cast of characters, some of whom have made their entire career is about working in trans boundary governance with Great Lakes and elsewhere. But every single one of those individuals brings something amazing to the Global Center, and they also, I think for the most part, enjoy working together and come up with amazing ideas. And so the take home message here is that the initial team building is critical. And I also want to touch on your point about, you know, distinguishing the term between engagement and initial team development every single member of the team right now, whether it's from six nations of the Grand River or the Red Lake Nation, Band of Chippewa. Or the college of Menominee Nation, or either our colleagues at Cornell or Wisconsin Madison or Brock University, they were all part of the initial proposal to the primary funding agencies. In other words, it wasn't about getting an award and then reaching out for engagement, which is kind of common. Everyone was from the get go, before we even got funded, and that has had, I think, a really positive impact on our moving together as a team. One other point I've

Stuart Carlton 20:29
spent, actually, I've been only half listening, is I spent the last 45 minutes trying to remember the name of a book that I'm writing. So see, because I'm a member, not only am I a researcher, but I'm a member of the media now. And so people send me stuff, and so somebody sent me your book. Your book that I'm reading called the lives of Lake Ontario and and one of the things that I guy named Daniel McFarlane, who is a associate professor at the at Western Michigan University, he wrote this book. It's pretty interesting. It's a It's but something just blew my mind on the very first page, second page, whatever. And this is idea that, like, really what lakes are. This isn't exactly a phrase, but this I thought of my mind, is what lakes are are essentially the ramifications of, like an indentation in the ground, right? Lakes, in some ways, are defined by what is underneath them, and it's a collection of especially in the Great Lakes, where the turnover is so low, right? And that got me thinking about all these different definitions of what lakes are. And in some ways, you're doing the scientific equivalent of that, right? It's like everybody's got these different perspectives and different definitions of what even is, is there, and bringing all of them together, I think to have these conversations and doing it from the the get go is a very powerful way to do work and stuff. That's great. Yeah,

Drew Gronewold 21:39
Dan's and Dan is great. I know Dan Well, I've been to W and met with him, and have many of his books, the lives of Lake Ontario, came out relatively recently. Yes, is that just

Stuart Carlton 21:49
last couple months? I got, I mean, I got it before it was released, but I think the public can buy it now.

Drew Gronewold 21:54
Yeah. Well, wonderful. I'll put a shout out for Daniel. Some of the books that he has written, about the ijc, about the International Joint Commission, and really the history of some of the trans boundary work in the Great Lakes is really fantastic. So great, great job

Stuart Carlton 22:08
to get them on at some point.

Megan Gunn 22:10
Um, Drew, could you tell us about a few key partners at the center that might not be as well known as the big universities,

Drew Gronewold 22:17
I guess a couple. I mean, if we're talking about the Great Lakes, and we're talking about work that's done to help, you know, scientific research that's done to help understand the Great Lakes, both in the past and the future. Part of what I want to do is make sure I talk about the Global Center and the partners that we have, one of the partners that I need to acknowledge that is so critical to all of this, in addition to national machine and Atmospheric Administration and the Army Corps of Engineers. I guess there's two things I'm going to mention. And one of the groups that's critical to this, and I'm sure Stuart, you know this group, and Megan, maybe you do too, is the cooperative Institute for Great Lakes research. Are you guys familiar with Sigler? It used to be called Sigler, but it's important for the public to understand just how important that is to have this institute that works jointly between the federal government that is amazing at doing things like data and models and big computers, but doesn't always have the opportunity to hire students and work nimbly In academic environment, then you have the academic environment where people are constantly grappling for grants every two to three years, and have to shift from project one to another. The fact that we have this cooperative institute that sits in the middle of those two worlds and is able to both tap into these foundational data sets and models for the Great Lakes, while at the same time nimbly hiring students and scientists to keep papers going and research generated for the public is really an amazing thing. And so the fact that we have a partnership, both through seas and through the Global Center with Sigler is just it's game changing, and it's a wonderful aspect of working here at the University of Michigan. In that same breath, Can I mention one other thing that's happening right now that I think the leaders. But

Stuart Carlton 24:03
before you, before you do, we should send our listeners to teach me about the Great lakes.com/ 91 because, as Megan surely remembers, we had a nice conversation with Mike schreiberg, Associate Director and Director of engagement. It's actually

Drew Gronewold 24:16
a really cool thing going on right now in Ann Arbor, but it doesn't always happen in Ann Arbor. And so if, when we talk about data sets that people rely on to make decisions that are generated by the federal government across the entire Great Lakes Basin, believe it or not, there is a group. And get ready for a long name. Here it is called the Coordinating Committee on Great Lakes, basic hydraulic and hydrologic data. The acronym is terrible. The name is long acronym. But here's the deal. This group started getting together in the early 1950s and. Between people from Canada and the United States on an ad hoc basis every six months to sit down and coordinate all of the data about the hydraulics and the hydrology of the Great Lakes system. They come together and they spend two days they used to do just the water level data to make sure the United States and the Canadian water level data matched up. But now they go through evaporation, precipitation, runoff, they generate models and compare them. They look at the flow in the channels between the Great Lakes, and they're actively doing that right now at the NOAA Great Lakes Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor. Six months from now, they'll do it again, and a year from now, they'll do it again every six months, this group gets together totally under the radar to make sure that the data about the Great Lakes that we all use is accurate. And I just think that's amazing. That's something that public should be more aware of. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 25:55
that is awesome. The cuckoo world that's good. That is wonderful. Well, Drew it's been really interesting to hear about, and we could just go for hours and hours, but we're trying to keep our episodes shorter because they were going too long, and so we're trying to keep them shorter but, but we'll have to get back in touch in a year or two to get an update from you. But in the interim, that's actually not why we invited you here about the Great Lakes this week. The reason, as everybody knows that we invited you and teaching about the Great Lakes is it's two questions. The first one is this, you can have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch? Which one would you have? Well,

Drew Gronewold 26:30
I don't know if that's like either or just a donut or a sandwich. I would go with the donut. And in fact, there is a place in downtown Saline, Michigan, called Benny's, and they make awesome donuts, B, E, N, N, y, s, right in downtown saline, and their peanut donut is off the charts. So peanut donut, Celine Bennies. There it is. Look at

Stuart Carlton 26:55
that. There it is. No, I'm fired up. And we managed to get through an Ann Arbor guest without them saying zingerman, so that's good.

Unknown Speaker 27:03
I thought about it. But to cliche, we're going Bennies. Yeah, no, we're

Stuart Carlton 27:05
good. Zingerman's is represented, um, zingerman says represented. Well, thank you. I'm going. Where is Celine, Michigan, let's pretend that I don't know where that

Drew Gronewold 27:13
is, southwest of Ann Arbor, just down, just down the road,

Stuart Carlton 27:17
not far away. So in between Detroit and Ann Arbor, somewhere, alright, southwest of Ann Arbor head and heading out. I don't know Michigan geography. You gotta hold that hand. It's all fun. Southwest

Unknown Speaker 27:27
is in Michigan geography overall.

Megan Gunn 27:32
What I would like to know is, is there a special place in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share with our audience, and what makes it special?

Drew Gronewold 27:41
Yeah, what a great question. I mean, I think all of us know that there are a lot of great places in the Great Lakes, and they all meet different things to different people, from urban environments to rural environments to remote places. I think the one that really stands out to me is, you know, I've spent a lot of time in the Upper Peninsula. I've been to Illinois, but when you stand on the shoreline of Lake Superior, especially along like Lake Superior State Park on the southern shoreline, it's a little bit daunting. So this is that's one of my favorite places, and the reason why is when you dip your toe into that water, you're dipping your toe into a body of water that is the largest freshwater surface on the planet, period, like nothing else even comes close. So you're like, when you're dipping your toe into that water, that water goes forever. And I'm sometimes even curious about how many people even know that. And then I even think even further, like hundreds of years ago, people probably didn't know that. I'm curious to what extent they sort of felt the gravity or the magnitude of the lake, whether they know that or not. So anyway, Southern shoreline of Lake Superior looking out over the lake, just an amazing experience. I

Stuart Carlton 28:50
can't think of a better place to leave it than that. Doctor drew Grunwald, the Associate Professor in seas at the University of Michigan, which, as we all know, is to be west of Detroit. Yes, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes. Thank

Unknown Speaker 29:04
you, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Megan Gunn 29:11
Teaching about the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people Illinois, Indiana. Sea Grant, we encourage you to check out all the cool stuff we do. At i i Sea grant.org, and at i L, I n, C, Grant on Facebook, Instagram

Stuart Carlton 29:26
and social media, all of them well, except some. We'll be on blue skies, but

if you're on it, might as well check out the cool work that we do. Our senior producer is Carolyn Foley. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Is produced by Megan Gunn and miles. Ethan Chitty is our associate producer. Our super fun podcast I worked by Joel Davenport. Most of the music appears by me. Sorry about that. The show is edited by the patient, increasingly less Sandra. Professional.

Megan Gunn 30:03
If you have any questions or comments about the show, please email it to teach me about the Great lakes@gmail.com or leave a message on our hotline at 765, 496, or 474, and we will keep asking you all to call us and email us until you do. Thanks for listening and keep creating those links you.

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