Archived Water@Wayne
Water@Wayne Fall 2021
October 28, 2021
Environmental Research and Contaminant Analyses at the Lumigen Instrument Center
Dr. Judy Westrick, Director, Lumigen Instrument Center, Wayne State University
A recording of this seminar can be found here.
The Lumigen Instrument Center (LIC) is a Wayne State University, Major Instrument Facility Core with expertise in the areas of freshwater Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs), per- and polyfluoroalky substances (PFAS), volatile organic contaminants (VOCs), agriculture contaminants, endocrine disrupting chemical (EDCs), pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), trace metals and elemental contaminants, and micro plastics. Dr. Westrick and the LIC staff have designed, performed, and assisted collaborators with monitoring, mitigation, technology advancement and evaluation, and human, animal, and cell toxicological studies. The goal of this seminar is to showcase the LIC's environmental research and analyses. Dr. Westrick will present three studies: 1) Western Basin of Lake Erie HAB GRAB (monitoring and mitigation, NOAA MERHAB GRANT); 2) Synthesis and testing of VOC absorbents (technology advancement and evaluation, CLEAR Funding); and 3) A historical perspective on PFAS contamination using sediment cores from two Michigan Lakes, (historical monitoring, Health Urban Waters). Finally, Dr. Westrick will highlight several other environmental analyses that are currently being offered and review the processes to become an LIC user.
November 11, 2021
Flooding in Detroit: the whats, wheres and whos and how water threatens public health in the D
Dr. Peter Larson, Postdoctoral Researcher, Social Environment and Health Program, Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan
A recording of this seminar can be found here.
Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of rainfall around the world. Urban flooding is becoming an ever common and severe threat to cities like Detroit, which suffers from a perfect storm of low elevation, insufficient water infrastructure, aging housing and policy indifference due to decades of racial exclusion and economic declines. But not flooding in Detroit happens during extreme weather events, and not all Detroiters live at the same level of risk for water in the home. In this talk, we will discuss the current situation of home flooding in Detroit, where it happens and who is happens to. We will also discuss how flooding in Detroit severely threatens the health and well being of Detroiters in the form of childhood and adult asthma and how flood risk in Detroit might impact mortality from other types of disease threats.
Water@Wayne Winter 2021
February 11, 2021
Wastewater Epidemiology and Disinfection of SARS-CoV-2
Dr. Charles Gerba, Professor, Environmental Science, University of Arizona
A recording of the event can be found here. Dr. Gerba's slides can be found here.
All disease-causing microorganisms in humans can be detected in wastewater. Monitoring wastewater has been a tool for documenting the occurrence of poliovirus infections in communities and successes of vaccination programs for more than 40 years. Recently this approach has been used to monitor the incidence of Co-Vid-19 in regions and facilities. Using this approach, we have been able to identify infected individuals in dormitories at the University of Arizona and reduce the spread of Co-Vid-19 on the campus. In addition, we have been evaluating novel technologies for the disinfection of surfaces and air against the SARS-CoV-2 virus for the travel industry and public workplaces.
March 18, 2021
Integrative Ecology of Green Architecture and Blue-Green Infrastructure for the Recovery of Ecosystem Services in Urban Environments
Dr. Victor Carmona-Galindo, Director of Sustainability and Associate Professor, Biology, University of Detroit-Mercy
A recording of the event can be found here.
Ecosystem services are an integral part of the functional diversity of an ecosystem and by definition improve human health as well as represent a benefit extending from the biodiversity in natural systems. While ecosystem functions serve to cycle biomass and transfer energy in natural systems, urban environments are anthropogenic constructs that inherently contribute to the human footprint and gardenification of nature, ultimately ignoring the sustainability of ecosystem processes and services in favor of the aesthetics of urban greening. The result is a management-intensive model for urban sustainability that is economically limited in its capacity to substitute anthropogenically-interrupted ecosystem functions like biomass and nutrient cycles (e.g. manual removal of invasive species, E. coli blooms, etc.) as well as energy transfers (e.g. mechanically replenishing dunes, daylighting urban rivers, etc.). This presentation will outline methodologies, findings, and recommendations stemming from environmental sustainability initiatives that use integrative ecology to identify ecosystem services that improve plant water-stress in urban gardens, dynamics of fecal indicator bacteria in stormwater-raingardens, pollinator-deserts in urban landscapes, mosquito control in urban aquatic habitats, as well as the survivorship, succession, and nutrient cycling in urban forest habitats.
April 1, 2021
How Environmental Engineers have Helped Address COVID-19
Dr. Krista Wigginton, Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan
A recording of the event can be found here.
As long as our disciplines have existed, environmental engineers and scientists have played pivotal roles in protecting the public from viral illnesses, and continue to do so today. During COVID-19, members of our field have helped in understanding COVID-19 transmission routes, have tested and designed valuable engineering solutions to mitigate virus spread, and have implemented wide-scale environmental surveillance approaches to inform our public health partners on the presence and infection dynamics of COVID-19 in communities. In this presentation, I will review how a mechanistic understanding of virus fate in the environment (e.g., how they partition, lose infectivity, etc.) helped inform our response to COVID-19. Furthermore, I will discuss how current and future research conducted in this area can help prepare and prevent future pandemics.
April 8, 2021
Understanding Great Lakes water level variability
Dr. Andrew Gronewold, Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan
A recording of the event can be found here.
Across the Great Lakes region, the past decade has been characterized by water abundance. Extremely high water levels on the Great Lakes, coupled with inland and coastal flooding, have raised important questions about drivers behind historical changes in the regional water balance and how they might change in the future. Here, we explore and contrast the evolution of the Great Lakes hydrologic cycle over the past century with projections for future water supplies in light of both climate change and potential changes in human behavior.
May 6, 2021
Water in Art at the DIA
Dr. Freda Giblin, Docent, Detroit Institute of Arts
A recording of the event can be found here.
An ancient marble column (repurposed), a Noh Theater robe, and an amber jewelry box that may have belonged to King Christian V of Denmark. What do these works of art have to do with water? Find out the answers, as well as explore the various meaning of water in some of the paintings at the Detroit Institute of Arts, as we discuss approximately a dozen works of art.
Water@Wayne Fall 2020
October 29, 2020
The Great Lakes Water Quality Centennial Study: What's changed in 100 years?
Jennifer Boehme, Science Adviser, Internation Joint Commission, and Ryan C. Graydon, ORISE Research Fellow, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Recorded webinar link: https://vimeo.com/475597356
The importance of clean Great Lakes water to human well-being has been a historic focus of the International Joint Commission under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909. In 1913, the IJC conducted a comprehensive, detailed monitoring study of the fecal-related pollution of the boundary waters of the Great Lakes, and the potential link between disease and sewage pollution. The 1913 study remains the largest fecal microbial water quality study in North America, and highlighted the public health risk of untreated sanitary sewer discharges to the Great Lakes, which were also used as drinking water sources..
Recent work by the IJC's Health Professional Advisory Board analyzed water quality changes from fecal bacteria after 100 years, compared to the 1913 IJC study, as part of a Great Lakes Water Quality Centennial Study. Findings indicate that modern sanitary sewage collection and treatment systems have greatly reduced the amount of raw sewage discharged into the lakes. Now the predominant exposure to illness-causing levels of fecal pollution is through recreation, though drinking water-related problems do occur. Many of the beaches in the Great Lakes today still experience high E. coli levels and no-swim advisories from time to time, and additional work is needed to improve public health from fecal-related exposures from combined sewer overflows (CSOs), and a variety of non-point sources.
The Centennial Study report considers the potential for binational investment in a basin-wide fecal bacterial/microbial water quality reassessment using microbial source tracking (MST) methods in a sampling effort on the scale of the 1913 study. This reassessment would develop a binational understanding on reducing fecal pollution (bacteria, protozoa, viruses, etc.), improving water quality, and more effectively address sources of fecal pollution like sewage, manure, and waterfowl droppings to the Great Lakes, especially in fecal pollution "hot spots" that receive a high degree of public recreation.
Today's seminar will provide an overview of the IJC's responsibilities under the Boundary Waters Treaty and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and examine how strategies of the 1913 IJC study could provide a framework for future binational action under a modern Centennial Study.
November 5, 2020
A systems perspective on the role of green infrastructure in urban watershed hydrology and biogeochemistry
Dr. Anthony Parolari, Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, Marquette University
Recorded webinar link: https://vimeo.com/user126431735
Urbanization degrades water quality by changing watershed hydrology and biogeochemistry. To mitigate negative water quality impacts of urbanization, cities have turned to green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) and low impact development (LID) practices to promote ecosystem services provided by natural hydrology and biogeochemistry regimes. For example, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) has pledged to spend $1.3B on GSI toward their Vision 2035. Understanding and control of hydro-biogeochemical dynamics is therefore a critical foundation toward building sustainable urban systems. In this talk, I will discuss several research efforts in the Milwaukee region focused on monitoring, modeling, and real-time control of GSI for runoff and water quality management. During 2018 and 2019, we monitored soil hydrology and biogeochemistry across several urban green spaces, including a green roof, constructed wetland, detention pond, and urban farm. These measurements demonstrate strong coupling of hydrology and biogeochemistry in GSI at sub-daily to seasonal timescales, indicating that their water quality performance may be highly sensitive to variability in temperature and rainfall timing and intensity. Subsequently, we integrated these field experiments with process-based models to develop a systems-based reliability engineering framework for GSI analysis and design. The framework links hydro-climatic variability with GSI biogeochemistry to forecast a probabilistic characterization of water storage and effluent water quality. The models have been used to develop and evaluate novel design, management, and real-time control strategies to maintain the reliability of GSI stormwater and pollutant retention in variable environments. Together, this work demonstrates the complexity of GSI performance and points toward opportunities for urban water infrastructure adaptation to climate change.