Good morning!
Reinvigorated from a masterpiece of a field season, I bring you an update brimming with research, discovery and fun. Yes, our students and researchers at the University of Michigan Biological Station truly enjoyed their adventures doing high-quality science this summer at our rustic campus in the Northwoods. These are serious investigations — including the ice storm’s impact on forests — made stronger by our curious, energetic community committed to finding solutions in our changing world.
Even guest speakers who visited the campus along Douglas Lake to give seminar talks in our Summer Lecture Series left with the desire to return and conduct their own research at this special place with a rich history and state-of-the-art equipment and facilities.
One of those is Dr. Silvia Newell, the director of Michigan Sea Grant and a professor at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), who gave the final talk of the 2025 season on July 30 about nitrogen as a driver of harmful algal blooms in the Great Lakes. I look forward to working with her in the future.
Dr. Jay Mager, a loon biologist from Ohio Northern University, made his first visit to UMBS to deliver the Hann Lecture in Ornithology on July 2. He left inspired to return and study loon behavior on Douglas Lake. (Mager’s loon talk packed Gates Lecture Hall, enticing legions of loon lovers to UMBS including a group affectionately known as the Loon Rangers. Read the story about his fascinating waterbird talk that showcased the northern diver known for alluring, distinctive calls.)
The dynamic, enlightening conversations that happen at UMBS are drawing attention from reporters and being amplified to the general public. For example, MLive climate reporter Sheri McWhirter visited UMBS to attend the Summer Lecture on June 25 titled “Climate Change and Human Health” featuring Dr. Larry Junck, MD, a University of Michigan neurologist studying how brain health is compromised by climate change. McWhirter used insight from Junck’s talk to build her feature story: Wildfire Smoke and Heat Waves Force Vulnerable Michigan Residents Indoors.
Dr. Christine Sprunger, a soil health scientist from Michigan State University, not only gave a Summer Lecture in June, she brought her research team and a massive piece of equipment called a Geoprobe that weighs more than a giraffe. Learn the reason behind the deep soil core samples they collected at UMBS as part of a large, statewide research project.
Sprunger’s rig is one of many science “toys” brought in this year to supplement UMBS research infrastructure and dig even deeper and span larger scales. Another one was a plane outfitted with high-tech equipment (including an $800,000 hyperspectral imager that — from 1,000 meters off the ground — can gather all sorts of information about how healthy the plants are, what types of species it’s looking at, and how photosynthetically active they are.). Our feature story this month shows how a collaborative research team from the University of Connecticut and Virginia Commonwealth University gathered comprehensive data in the air and on the ground to tell the ecological fallout story of this year’s historic ice storm that devastated northern Michigan. Read their story assessing the state of UMBS forests.
UMBS doubled its AmeriFlux footprint this year, helping connect the Great Lakes for the first time to the environmental observation network that spans North, South and Central America. UMBS Senior Research Specialist John Lenters made equipment installations and sensor upgrades to two research towers on Lake Superior to make the critical connection happen. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources provided boat support for us to access these locations over the last few years, and that contribution is invaluable. The Great Lakes Observing System (GLOS) funded the project and invited John to speak about its success at the GLOS 20th anniversary meeting in July. Read the story about what this means for monitoring things like lake evaporation, which has implications for ice cover, water temperature and lake levels.
Thanks to our generous donors, we were able to significantly expand undergraduate student research this year. Meet our 10 Biological Station Undergraduate Research Fellows and hear directly from the students about their field projects immersed in nature and guided by science mentors that span everything from disease ecology to tree hydrology. Pictured on the right is U-M junior Madeleine Schouman releasing a mouse from a live trap in a UMBS forest. Schouman worked with Dr. Amanda Koltz from the University of Texas at Austin to study parasites in white-footed deer mice and how parasites affect their host body condition, diet, microbiome, stress physiology, and behavior.
I’m only scratching the surface of all of the incredible work happening at UMBS.
As the busy field season winds down, we are on our way to becoming the leading field research station in the world. In the first year of our five-year strategic plan, we’ve made significant progress on our goal to increase the number of scientific researchers by 30%.
So far in 2025 we have hosted 179 researchers — including undergraduate student researchers, senior researchers, post-docs, graduate students and field techs. That’s up from 160 in 2024 — an 11.9% increase in just one year.
Together, we are challenging what we know and igniting new ways of seeing the world. It’s meaningful, fulfilling work. Thank you to the donors who play a key role in making it all possible.
We need the continued support of our loyal networks to accelerate our efforts. This month please make a donation to the Biological Station Discretionary Fund and target your generosity at our aim of launching fall and winter semesters Up North. We need to expand our programming into the cold-weather seasons to be able to provide more students with the chance to engage in hands-on research.
Read the full August 2025 newsletter.
Sincerely,
Dr. Aimee Classen
UMBS Director
