Image from: http://www4.uwm.edu/cie/currentstudents/2046/
Milwaukee has the geographic
fortune of being next to the excellent resource that is a Great Lake. Lake Michigan provides countless
opportunities for jobs, research, and recreation for not only our city, but for
other cities and towns located upon it. Unfortunately,
due to its constant use by humans, the beaches can sometimes end up not in less
than pristine condition. Thankfully,
there are organizations that use volunteers to not only help take care of some
of the clutter on the beaches, but who also use those individuals to do some
scientific monitoring. One of those
organizations is the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
The
Alliance for the Great Lakes started off 43 years ago in 1970 as the Lake
Michigan Federation, founded by well-known environmentalist Lee Botts (Alliance’s Lady of the Lake Looks Back on
Forty Years, 2010). From its inception and onward the
organization made it its mission to help clean up the Great Lakes. It was with the help of the Alliance for the
Great Lakes that the Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of
polychlorinated biphenyls, efforts have been made to reduce run off into the
lakes, and that phosphates have been banned from detergents (Great Gains for Great Lakes, 2013).
They continue to strive for the health of lakes be taking up monitoring
of the invasive Asian carp, by educating the public, and by recruiting
volunteers for their Adopt-a-Beach program (Recent
Successes, 2013).
The
Alliance for the Great Lakes is a nonprofit organization, that receives a majority
of its funding from grants, donations, and fundraisers (Alliance for the Great Lakes Financial Statement, 2012). Both full time and part time members staff
the Alliance, and they have backgrounds in different fields such as policy,
ecology, biology, chemistry, and business (Alliance
Staff, 2013). The organization also utilizes volunteers who
have a passion for the Great Lakes.
Image from: http://www.greatlakes.org/adoptabeach/openevents
One of the ways that the Alliance for the
Great Lakes utilizes volunteers is through their Adopt-a-Beach program, which I
will personally be participating in for my Service Learning Project. Adopt-a-Beach is a program that began in 2003
and allows for the clean up and monitoring of the Great Lakes (Adopt-a-BeachTM, 2013).
In charge of
Milwaukee outreach is Todd Brennan, who was responsible for the training and
orientation for our Service Learning project.
During the training he demonstrated the actions we will be taking for
proper beach monitoring, and the equipment that would be used.
For
the Service Learning Project we were broken into smaller groups and were
assigned local beaches along Lake Michigan to be responsible for
monitoring. The beach assigned to my
partner and I was Bay View Beach, located slightly south of downtown Milwaukee.
Image from: http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/county-considers-moving-south-shore-beach-ja505iu-147414785.html
Starting
on April 11, we will visit the beach once a week for approximately two
hours. During those two hours, we will
have certain tasks that were assigned to us via the Adopt-a-Beach program. Our responsibilities will include taking
water samples, making note of and then disposing of trash, looking for
wildlife, monitoring the temperature, and looking at the aesthetics of the
area. We have two separate forms to fill
out, one for the Alliance for the Great Lakes that takes in consideration most
of the scientific data, and then a form for the local Milwaukee chapter that
takes in consideration the aesthetics. After
filling out the forms at the beach, it will be our responsibility to log in
online and enter the data onto the Adopt-a-Beach website.
The
part of the project that I am looking most forward to is the water testing, as
it is very hands on and a great experience in scientific procedure. It will be our responsibility to go out into
the lake, take a water sample, and then place that water sample onto a
Petrifilm, which is basically a travel Petri dish. The media used on the Petrifilm will change
colors depending on whatever bacteria is present, and then this data needs to
be given to Adopt-a-Beach. It’s exciting
to see water quality control in action.
The
Adopt-a-Beach program seems to be incredibly helpful, as not only are we
looking at the bacteria present, the pleasantness of the beach, and doing water
testing, but we are also cleaning up the beach.
Todd Brennan stated at our orientation that Milwaukee has a horrible
problem with the amount of cigarette butts present on our beaches, and it will
be nice to hopefully make a dent in the contamination present.
Works Cited
Alliance for the
Great Lakes. 2013. Adopt-a-BeachTM.
Retrieved from
http://www.greatlakes.org/adoptabeach
Alliance for the
Great Lakes. August 13, 2012. Alliance
for the Great Lakes Financial
Statement. Retrieved from https://www.greatlakes.org/document.doc?id=1313
Alliance for the
Great Lakes. March 2, 2010. Alliance’s Lady of the Lake Looks Back on
Forty Years. Retrieved from http://www.greatlakes.org/page.aspx?pid=1043
Alliance for the
Great Lakes. 2013. Alliance Staff. Retrieved
from http://greatlakes.org/staff
Alliance for the
Great Lakes. 2013. Great Gains for Great Lakes.
Retrieved from
http://greatlakes.org/history
Alliance for the
Great Lakes. 2013. Recent Successes. Retrieved
from
http://greatlakes.org/recentsuccesses
No comments:
Post a Comment