Life After Delisting: Sustaining Environmental Stewardship in Michigan Areas of Concern

Michigan’s Area of Concern (AOC) program has made great strides in recent years with the influx of Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) funding. As delisting increasingly becomes a reality for more AOCs it is imperative to identify from a programmatic perspective how to best prepare communities for long-term success beyond delisting. In recent years, the AOC program has encountered challenges with the speed of change, the program’s narrow scope, a lack of long-term planning, and uncertainty about the roles of both the Public Advisory Councils (PACs) and the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes (OGL) moving forward. To address these challenges, this research provides recommendations for how the OGL can support PACs in creating mechanisms to continue the momentum of environmental stewardship up to and beyond delisting. The findings of this research and subsequent recommendations are a result of semi-structured interviews with PAC members from Michigan’s 12 current and two delisted AOCs. This report, which is both informed directly by the voices of PAC members and considers the AOC program landscape across the entire state of Michigan, provides a comprehensive set of program-wide recommendations to the OGL. Recommendations to the OGL include: (1) Facilitate dedicated “life after delisting” meetings with PACs, (2) Develop long-term delisting frameworks, (3) Create communication strategies intended to change negative public perceptions of the water bodies, (4) Increase OGL staff presence at PAC meetings, (5) Support PACs in building fundraising capacity, (6) Support local champions within PACs, (7) Assist PACs in developing a network of partners, (8) Institute a phased approach to delisting, and (9) Prioritize projects with potential for broader economic and social impact. Through the implementation of these recommendations, the PACs will be better positioned to sustain environmental stewardship and related community revitalization. This set of recommendations is applicable to other government programs wishing to integrate community perspectives and increase the durability of programmatic outcomes.Master of ScienceSchool for Environment and SustainabilityUniversity of Michiganhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148804/4/Knauss_Lisuk_Pollins_Practicum.pd

How much can sustainable intensification increase yields across South Asia? a systematic review of the evidence

Food security will become increasingly challenged over the coming decades, and sustainable intensification is often touted as an ideal way to increase yields while limiting negative environmental impacts. Yet, the extent to which sustainable intensification can increase yields remains unclear. We systematically reviewed the literature to assess the extent to which sustainable intensification can increase yields across South Asia, a region that is expected to face some of the greatest food security challenges over the coming decades. We found that yield gains from sustainable intensification interventions were heterogeneous, and that the average yield gain across all studi es was 21%. Residue retention and the use of organic fertilizers were, in particular, associated with significant and positive yield gains, though the use of organic fertilizers was not always profitable, likely due to large subsidies provided for mineral fertilizers across South Asia. Our work also revealed biases in the current sustainable intensification literature, with research clustered in highly productive, irrigated, and commodity cropping systems, which do not represent large portions of agricultural systems across South Asia. Our results highlight that sustainable intensification interventions should play an important role in increasing food production across South Asia, but yield gains from these interventions are modest compared to estimated yield gaps across the region

An ecosystem health assessment of the Detroit River and western Lake Erie

The Canada-U.S. State of the Strait Conference is a biennial forum with a 22-year history of assessing ecosystem status and providing advice to improve research, monitoring, and management of the Detroit River and western Lake Erie. The 2019 conference focused on assessing ecosystem health based on 61 indicators. Although there has been considerable improvement in the Detroit River since the 1960s, much additional cleanup is needed to restore ecosystem health. Western Lake Erie is now at risk of crossing several potential tipping points caused by the interactions of a variety of drivers and their stresses. This assessment identified eight environmental and natural resource challenges: climate change; population growth/transportation expansion/land use changes; chemicals of concern; human health/environmental justice; aquatic invasive species; habitat loss/degradation; nonpoint source pollution; and eutrophication/harmful algal blooms. Specific recommendations for addressing each challenge were also made. Climate change is the most pressing environmental challenge of our time and considered a “threat multiplier” whereby warmer, wetter, and more extreme climatic conditions amplify other threats such as poor air quality effects on vulnerable residents, species changes, and nonpoint source runoff and combined sewer overflow events that contribute to eutrophication and can manifest as harmful algal blooms. Our assessment found that investments in monitoring and evaluation are insufficient and that the region\u27s intellectual and environmental capital is not being leveraged sufficiently to address current challenges. Continued investment in this transnational network is essential to support ecosystembased management. (C) 2021 International Association for Great Lakes Research. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved