The University of Toledo began its annual speaker series inside its Lake Erie Center in Oregon with a soil scientist who said he loves having a career that allows him to get his hands dirty.
Well, actually, Michael Weintraub, UT soil ecology professor, had a lot more to say than that.
The focus of his talk was the status of a multimillion-dollar research project that is comparing climate change impacts in two of North America’s most important aquatic ecosystems, the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay regions.
It’s not your typical climate change research, either.
This one, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, is focused on the nexus between land and water — that is the coastal shorelines and how they are responding, for example, to fluctuations in water level.
Or, as Mr. Weintraub calls it, the “terrestrial interface,” where trees, plants, and wildlife have dynamic conditions from coastal wetlands to uplands, all within a short distance of the shoreline.
The goal is to identify commonalities in both ecosystems that scientists can use to better predict biological changes in store for many of the nation’s shorelines as Earth’s climate continues to change, he said.
“The interfaces between land and water have not been well-captured,” Mr. Weintraub said.
The study’s name is a mouthful, culminating in an acronym that spells out the word for a device people use to tell them which direction they’re going.
The study is called COMPASS, which stands for Coastal Observations, Mechanisms, and Predictions Across Systems and Scales.
Mr. Weintraub is the Great Lakes region’s lead researcher for its half of the project, which is now in its fourth year of what is anticipated to be at least 10 years of coastal shoreline investigation.
Unlike the Chesapeake Bay, where water levels are rising and becoming more brackish because of saltwater intrusion, Great Lakes shorelines cope with rising and falling water levels, both seasonally and in long-term trends.
“Our water levels are much more dynamic,” Mr. Weintraub said. “The Great Lakes are a place where we can look at falling levels, too. This dynamic level means we need to see what happens at different water levels.”
Flooding is a big topic for both ecosystems.
In the coming months, Mr. Weintraub’s team will work with Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge officials on a field experiment that calls for two isolated parts of that refuge to be flooded for intervals of three days or more. The two sites are in diked areas, to prevent flooding from spreading to other areas. Large pumps will be brought in to flood the study acreage, Mr. Weintraub said.
That Ottawa County site is one of several along Ohio’s Lake Erie shoreline and across the Great Lakes region where research is being done. Others in northern Ohio include Crane Creek State Park in Ottawa County, the Portage River, and Old Woman Creek east of Huron, Ohio, he said.
One of unexpected findings so far is the amount of methane, the most potent climate-altering greenhouse gas, that has been found locked inside shoreline trees.
Although the greenhouse gas is believed to be mostly sequestered by those trees, there is evidence of some of it slowly leaking out through bark — a small amount in comparison to many other sources, but still intriguing, Mr. Weintraub said.
“It turns out these places where land and water meet can be hotspots,” he said.
Wetland plants have long been known to sequester algae-forming phosphorus they absorb. Mr. Weintraub said research from his team’s wetland research will dovetail into that by Lauren Kinsman-Costello.
Ms. Kinsman-Costello is a Kent State University associate professor hired by the state of Ohio to determine how effective wetlands funded by Gov. Mike DeWine’s H2Ohio program are at holding nutrients long term. As plants die off and decompose, they can release what they’re holding back into the environment.
The COMPASS project also includes a look at dead stands of shoreline trees known as “ghost forests.”
Some have been killed by invasive pests such as the emerald ash borer, but many are believed to die from stress of fluctuating water levels, Mr. Weintraub said.
A composite of 12 different predictive climate models concludes the Great Lakes region is going to have more frequent, high-intensity storms as Earth’s climate continues to change. That’s already being seen in annual Maumee River flow rates getting higher as average temperatures increase, he said.
“We’re supposed to see more increases in really intense storms,” Mr. Weintraub said.
Other parts of the world, especially ones that have been traditionally dry, are expected to face more drought.
Frank Calzonetti, UT vice president for innovation and economic development, said the COMPASS project “really relates well to our region.”
“This is really important research at the national and international level, but it really is important for our region,” he said. “What we like to do is make sure people in our community are aware of the good work we’re doing and how it connects.”
UT’s Lake Erie Center, which sits along the Lake Erie shoreline at 6200 Bay Shore Rd., is “a good asset” for a lake-based speaker series, Mr. Calzonetti said.
“We have a lot of other projects that have good vision and relevance,” he said.
Next up in the UT Lake Erie Center’s speaker series is a March 27 presentation by Dr. David Kennedy, an associate professor of medicine for UT’s college of medicine and life sciences. He will speak on the emerging science of airborne algal toxins, said Tom Bridgeman, UT Lake Erie Center director.
First Published February 21, 2025, 7:32 p.m.
