Greetings from Douglas Lake!
Snow has arrived in northern Michigan, bringing fresh life to a critical area of research at the University of Michigan Biological Station: Changing Winters. One device that my lab uses to monitor conditions on a live, hourly basis is a snowpack sensor. You can access the Snowpack Dashboard from anywhere in the world through the UMBS Community Resources website any time you’re curious how deep it is in Pellston.
We are grateful for so much this year, especially the talented, dedicated staff at UMBS.
Adding a powerful tool to our research arsenal, the team successfully installed new antennas earlier this month that connect us to a statewide and international network that tracks migratory species that soar.
Dr. Ben Winger, a professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and curator of birds in the Museum of Zoology, shares my excitement about unlocking a new chapter in the study of birds at UMBS: “A Motus tower literally puts UMBS 'on the map' for migration research, as researchers tracking migratory birds will now know every time a tagged bird migrates near the station. Additionally, the tower will enable exciting research on UMBS grounds, allowing researchers to study dispersal patterns and arrival and departure patterns of animals using UMBS.”
Joining these sorts of international research communities to collect long-term data is at the heart of our mission and fundamental in the conservation of biodiversity. Read the story about our proud partnership with Mackinac Straits Raptor Watch, the fascinating radius of our antennas’ detection, and the importance of connecting local conservation with global science.
There’s someone on our staff you should know. Serving as data manager for 12 years now, Jason Tallant is making great progress on a major goal in our Strategic Plan: preserving and digitizing UMBS’s historical archives and making them accessible for generations of future researchers. We’re talking about rescuing from obscurity 117 years of invaluable place-based field studies that have been living in filing cabinets. (A more than 100-year-old map made by a class in 1922 that Jason discovered this spring even led to an immediate follow-up investigation by students in the 2025 Field Botany course, showing stunning ecosystem changes that have taken place over a century at what’s known as Sedge Point in Douglas Lake’s North Fishtail Bay!)
Read our profile of Jason as we celebrate his work to shine a light on dark data. It’s strengthening our ability to help researchers and students identify long-term patterns and compare our understanding of what’s happening here with remote field stations elsewhere.
Someone you also should know is Resident Biologist Adam Schubel. He wrote a piece for you this month about his epic effort to peacefully co-exist with beavers. Tactfully negotiating with some of nature’s hardest working and most industrious animals, Adam explores the delicate dance to keep a popular trail boardwalk along the Carp Creek Gorge open while managing flooding caused by an impressive beaver dam.
If you’re interested in learning more about beaver ecosystem engineering and will be in northern Michigan next summer, please join us on the Pellston campus for the Pettingill Lecture in Natural History at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 29, 2026. Our endowed speaker in the UMBS Summer Lecture Series will be Dr. Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist from the University of Minnesota who specializes in beavers. Some of her research shows how dams created by these master architects filter pollution that enters waterways and contribute to staving off wildfire-related contamination.
As we near the end of the year, I want to highlight one example of what a donation to UMBS could support. For 18 years, Ann Arbor Farm and Garden has annually awarded scholarships to help graduate students study botanical or horticulturally related work at UMBS. The 2025 recipient was Sarah Rose, an artist-geographer pursuing a Ph.D. in art practice with a specialization in interdisciplinary environmental research at the University of California, San Diego. Read the UMBS news story to be inspired by Ann Arbor Farm and Garden’s long-term generosity and Sarah’s creations at UMBS this year.
If you want to set up an annual, monthly or one-time donation to support the students, researchers and science at UMBS, the Michigan Giving website is the place to go. From $200 to $2 million, we need all levels of help to ensure this historic place of long-term field research and transformative education drives discoveries and solutions to benefit Michigan and beyond for generations to come.
Read the full November newsletter, including trail cam video of a busy beaver building a dam at UMBS.
Sincerely,
Dr. Aimee Classen
UMBS Director
