PELLSTON, Mich. — The boundaries between classrooms, laboratories and ecosystems disappear at the University of Michigan Biological Station.

In July 2026, the midsummer peak of field season, more than 230 students, researchers, teaching faculty, staff and their families called Michigan’s Northwoods campus home.

Comprised of more than 10,000 forested acres surrounded by rivers, lakes and wetlands, UMBS is one of the nation’s largest and longest continuously operating field research stations, making it one of the most-studied places on the planet with year-round infrastructure and more than a century of continuous, irreplaceable scientific records showing change over time.

The living laboratory nestled along Douglas Lake is science and discovery in motion, but the immersive, transformative experience at UMBS is as much about the community as it is about the work. It lives in shared meals in the dining hall, spontaneous debates during hikes through the woods, sunset swims after long fieldwork hours, and evening lectures from distinguished guests that bring everyone together.

This photo gallery captures those July moments — curiosity, camaraderie and the quiet wonder of learning directly from the natural world.

“This has to be the best month of my life,” said UMBS student Hassan Mustapha, a senior who is pre-med at U-M, after he wore waders in a river with the Field Studies of Freshwater Fishes class and learned a variety of techniques to gather fish samples and analyze how the fish population has changed over the years. “We’re doing the science, not just learning the science. This is more than school. This is a life-changing experience.”

The summer 2026 term included the debut of two new field-based courses: Michigan: People and Place in a Changing Climate and Great Lakes Policy and Management: Assessing the Future of the World’s Largest Freshwater Ecosystem.

Faced with several days of wildfire smoke, the UMBS community rose to the challenge to navigate safely through resilience, teamwork and flexibility.

"The skills, experiences and friendships I made at UMBS will be with me for a very long time," said UMBS student Ella Johnson, a senior at Grand Rapids Community College studying interdisciplinary astronomy. "It's hard to put into words how meaningful it was, from the community response during the wildfire smoke, to exploring Northern Michigan through its nature and its politics, to the arts experiences I gained from working with our Resident Artist Eric [Jackson], it was all really wonderful."

“I wasn’t sure what everyone was talking about when mentioning the UMBS ‘campus,’ but now I get it,” said Kaelan Mulye, a senior studying English and PitE at U-M, as he loaded luggage into his car on July 30 after spending four weeks living and learning at Michigan’s research and teaching campus along Douglas Lake. “UMBS is a campus in all the right ways. If people are doing cool work, you can sit with them at lunch, if students are going on a fun trip, you can join them. It's the accessibility that makes this place so special. If you want to do something, it's always right there.”

Scroll down to see more than 165 photos and read captions encompassing everything from Fourth of July celebrations to monarch butterfly research and finding a baby snapping turtle.

 

The University of Michigan Biological Station serves as a gathering place to learn from the natural world, advance research and education, and inspire action. We leverage over a century of research and transformative experiences to drive discoveries and solutions to benefit Michigan and beyond.

Our vast campus engages all of the senses. Its remote, natural setting nurtures deep thought and scientific discovery.

Founded in 1909, UMBS supports long-term research and education through immersive, field-based courses and features state-of-the-art equipment and facilities for data collection and analysis to help any field researcher be productive. It is where students and scientists from across the globe live and work as a community to learn from the place.

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UMBS students beat the heat by jumping in Douglas Lake. Pictured on Wednesday, July 1.
Chemical ecologist Dr. Jared Ali, on the left, a UMBS researcher from Penn State University, and Nate McCartney, a lab manager and research technician, collected toxin and odor samples from milkweed in a field at UMBS. Ali studies how soil dynamics impact plants. He also conducts conservation-focused research to understand how milkweed chemistry affects monarch butterflies. In the future, Ali wants to teach a course at UMBS to show how chemical signals play a major role in how animals and plants and organisms behave and interact with each other. Ali and McCartney use equipment in the field and in the lab that allows them to smell how a plant changes its odor based off of stress. “That's their way of communicating,” Ali said. “When plants are damaged by things like caterpillars, they can release odors into the air that are different than when the lawnmower cuts grass.”
During Wildlife Week in the Nature Day Camp for children at UMBS, the campers examined insects with Kenya Hall, the community garden steward. The UMBS Nature Day Camp is available for children of researchers, teaching faculty, staff and students living, working or taking classes on campus.
Vianey Cardiel, on the left, the teaching assistant (TA) for the UMBS Field Mammalogy class and a master’s student in public health at U-M, and Brady Forton, a junior studying ecology and evolutionary biology at U-M and the 2026 Bach-Hazlett Fellow at UMBS, look at bat specimens in the UMBS collection. While not using invasive sampling techniques, the specimens are used by researchers and the Field Mammalogy class to better understand bats. The bat specimens provide insights for the researchers and the class into morphological traits of different bat species found across northern Michigan.
Brady Forton sat with Dr. Jessica Light, a UMBS researcher from Texas A&M University and the instructor of the UMBS Field Mammalogy course, to show her acoustic surveys he captured of bats at UMBS. The bat acoustics help to identify what bats are in the area, as well as abundance of bat species around campus. As the 2026 Bach-Hazlett Fellow at UMBS, Forton’s research project focused on updating bat surveys on UMBS campus that were last done in 2018. Since those surveys were done, bat populations across the country have been decimated by white-nose syndrome and habitat loss.
“Believe the hype — it’s a magical place,” said Dr. Bala Chaudhary, an associate professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College, after her first visit to the Pellston campus in northern Michigan to give the Bennett Lecture in Mycology and Plant Biology on Wednesday, July 1, as part of the 2026 UMBS Summer Lecture Series. “I think people come here because of the community. It’s a very special place," she said. "Team science is critical in innovating in science and mentoring the next generation in science.” The soil ecologist’s endowed talk, titled “Using Traits to Unlock the Dispersal Ecology of Mycorrhizal Fungi,” focused on what are called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), which exist entirely underground, and her lab’s work showing how their spores get in the air and move around by wind, spreading AMF through space and time even though they’re more restricted in their dispersal capabilities compared to fungi with mushrooms aboveground.
Early in her career at Loyola University Chicago, Chaudhary said, “People argued with me saying they can’t be dispersed by wind. I said, ‘OK, we’ll see.’” She studied green roofs in the city and went on to find that aerial dispersal is a lot more common in the underground fungi than previously thought. She also identified species-specific seasonal patterns. Beyond that, she measured traits found in aerial samples. The five main traits of AM fungal spores are their volume or size, shape, color, wall thickness and surface ornamentation. “We showed, yes, AM fungi can get into the air and there are species-specific temporal patterns,” Chaudhary said. For example, in this group of AM fungi, the diameter of spores found in aerial samples was on average much lower compared to the diameter of all species — meaning little spores get into the air easier than larger spores.
Chaudhary next expanded her research beyond downtown Chicago to cross continents in order to identify patterns and make inferences about the ecology and evolution of fungi. Over the last six years, Chaudhary’s team at Dartmouth has been gathering data from passive dust collectors set up at 20 research sites. Looking at 2,055 samples, they found that fungi is in the air everywhere, and most sites had AM fungi in the air (at 16 of 20). “We see more biodiversity, or species richness, in soil compared to the air, but there’s still a lot in the air,” Chaudhary said.
The team is just starting to do statistics to understand the factors that are primarily contributing to structuring fungal communities. “We’ve been looking at distance, temperature, precipitation and wind speed,” Chaudhary said. “Temperatures and precipitation are following similar patterns. Wind speed is helping us understand fungi, but not AM fungi.” When analyzing the spores collected from dust samples, preliminary data show there’s difference in viability across sites. “It’s preliminary because I can’t get anyone to sit by a microscope and count spores for viability,” Chaudhary said. That’s why her lab has incorporated new technology and computing into their research. Her team developed SpoVis, which uses an automatic slide scanner to feed images into the system and use AI to extract data. The rates of detection are similar between machine-detected spores and human-detected spores. Chaudhary’s team also published a spore trait database. “All AM fungi are present in the database,” she said. “You can look at trait variation across the entire group of fungi and use it to answer trait-based predictive questions.” What’s the range of a certain species? Where is it found and not found? Chaudhary showed spore traits at a global scale are linked to climate variables. For example, spores with thicker walls were able to more strongly persist — “that variable was a strong predictor of range size.”
Chaudhary told the crowd in Gates Lecture Hall that her lab has expanded its study into the mechanisms of dispersal to include the scat of small mammals as well as the fur shed by bison. “Bison wallow, they get on the grass and rub their backs, coating themselves in soil microbes,” Chaudhary said. “Also while roaming the prairie, they pick up seeds.” A researcher in her lab followed herds and picked up fur the bison shed. He then planted the fur in sterile soil, and “up popped prairie seedlings and up popped AM fungi.”
What’s next in her science field of fungal dispersal? Chaudhary told the UMBS community there is potentially a mix with movement ecology to examine the capacity that organisms have to figure out where to move, how to move and why to move. “That makes sense in an animal setting but can also make sense in a fungi setting,” Chaudhary said. “We think of mushrooms being like plants, but fungi are a huge diverse group of organisms.”
Chaudhary, pictured here on the right at an ice cream social after the lecture, ended her talk with a direct call to action to all students, scientists, teaching faculty, and staff at UMBS: “There has never been a better time to bring your whole self to science in the history of our field. It takes courage to bring ourselves to science and to speak up when you have the privilege to do so.”
The community gathered outside at the Chatterbox after Dr. Bala Chaudhary’s talk on July 1. After each event in the Summer Lecture Series, UMBS offers ice cream and a space to meet new people, talk science or just hang out with friends.
Swept up into the excitement of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a group of students took down the volleyball net and split up into teams to play soccer on volleyball court.
UMBS researcher Dr. Chris Gough from Virginia Commonwealth University, standing in front of the projection screen, introduced guest speaker and UMBS alumnus Dr. Sam Reed, standing on the left, on Thursday, July 2, under a tent on the Douglas Lake campus. Reed started his research career as an undergraduate student at UMBS and has spent the last decade working to better understand and protect Northwoods ecosystems.
Reed is the climate and conservation manager for Friends of the Boundary Waters, where he is synthesizing the climate-impact research in the Greater Quetico-Superior Ecosystem and establishing a synthesis research program for the region.
Reed’s talk featured both his scientific research career and his work with Friends of the Boundary Waters informing policy and climate change management. Sam traced his path from early research experiences at UMBS to his current work for the Boundary Waters — sharing insights on how scientists at any career stage can do research that informs conservation practice and get a foothold in non-academic fields.
After the talk, UMBS students had the opportunity to talk to Reed about his career, ongoing research and his transition from research positions to to science communications.
From tug-of-war to water balloon toss, the University of Michigan Biological Station community celebrated the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding with a picnic and parade along Douglas Lake on Saturday, July 4. Pictured, the Field Mammalogy class competed in a game of tug-of-war.

Fourth of July Picnic

Fourth of July Parade

Fourth of July Water Balloon Toss

Winners of 2026 Water Balloon Toss

Fourth of July Tug-of-War

Students in the Field Studies of Freshwater Fishes class snorkeled at Hook Point in Douglas Lake’s North Fishtail Bay on Monday, July 7, to observe fish in their natural habitat and study animal behavior.
Dr. Hernán López-Fernández, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at U-M and curator of fishes, taught his Field Studies of Freshwater Fishes class how to assemble minnow traps while on a UMBS boat on Tuesday, July 7. Over the course of the semester, the students formed hypotheses and investigated questions on possible factors impacting fish populations and fish diversity. The class is co-taught by Dr. Karen Alofs, an associate professor in the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), not pictured.
Students in the fishes class assembled minnow traps.
Dr. Hernán López-Fernández, left, and Dr. Karen Alofs, far right, demonstrate how researchers use a fyke net for catching fish. They didn't deploy it, though, because it would have been too close to a loon nesting platform.
A common blue damselfly hung out on a plant on the shore of Douglas Lake.
After a successful mating season, many of the tadpoles began their metamorphosis, leading to these tiny froglets across the shoreline of Douglas Lake.
Carson LaVanway, a sophomore majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB) at U-M, gathered and marked snails from Douglas Lake with nail polish as part of an assignment to estimate the population size of snails on Wednesday, July 8, with the General Ecology Lab class at UMBS.
Chloe Dykhouse, a resident advisor (RA) at UMBS and a sophomore at U-M expected to major in bio, health and society, held a minnow during snail sampling with the General Ecology Lab class on July 8.
The General Ecology Lab class also found a baby snapping turtle while sampling for snails on July 8.
Amelia Lewis, a junior studying ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB) at the University of Michigan, found a baby snapping turtle on July 8 while gathering snails from Douglas Lake with the General Ecology Lab class at UMBS.
Members of the UMBS community worked together to make banners during a workshop on Sunday, July 5, in Nichols Lab led by 2026 UMBS Artist in Residence Eric Jackson, not pictured. The teams used hot wax at the center of the table to apply wax to their banners.
Avril Wiers, on the left, who leads the children's nature day camp, and her daughter Hazel created a banner at the artist-in-residence workshop on July 5.
Eric Jackson, the 2026 Artist in Residence, demonstrated an end result of the wax-resist process. After being submerged in dye, the banners are left out to dry so that students can add more colored layers on top of their work.
One group of students held their finished wax-resist banner before dunking it in a bucket of cold-fuse dye, which will differentially change the cotton based on their wax design.
After applying the wax resist and dye, the banners are hung out to dry. From here, participants will come back to their banners, adding new colored layers to their banner over the multi-week projects.
As part of the 2026 UMBS Summer Lecture Series, Dr. André Green, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan, gave two free, public talks in Pellston and Charlevoix in July about monarch butterfly migration and their resiliency in the face of global change. Pictured on Tuesday, July 7, at Charlevoix Public Library.
In front of a crowd of about 80 people at Charlevoix Public Library on Tuesday, July 7, Green said that while there has been about an 80% decrease in the number of migratory monarchs seen at overwintering sites in Mexico, “they are doing diverse things that are helping keep them robust.”
The next day, Green spoke to a crowd of 155 people at UMBS in Pellston including students, researchers, staff, families and neighbors. These seminars marked the first time that Green publicly unveiled research from his lab showing how monarchs possess interesting cognitive functions that may set them apart and enable their iconic trip each fall to Mexico without ever having been there before. Green’s research team integrates development, genomics, behavior and physiology in both laboratory and natural settings.
On Wednesday, July 8, Green discussed what he found while tracking migratory monarchs using tiny sensors on their journey south to their overwintering site in central Mexico: “Monarchs are responding to a changing world.” Green started teaching at the U-M Biological Station four years ago. In his class, titled “Eco-Evo-Devo: How Genome and Environment Affect Organismal Development,” undergraduate students use cutting-edge molecular genetics techniques — including CRISPR — to explore ecological evolutionary developmental biology.
What is the lifespan of a monarch? Green said in spring and summer when monarchs are not migrating, they only living between two and six weeks. Fall migratory monarchs who fly to Mexico and spend winter there can live much longer: eight or nine months. “They only go once, so they can’t be doing it from memory,” Green said. “It must be programmed, which is where genetics comes in.”
What can people do to help migratory monarchs? Green suggested planting collections of native nectar plants and milkweed in backyards. “They come in collections of diversities you can plant all together,” Green said. “Monarchs are mostly attracted to options. And other insects being there are an indirect indication for the monarchs to utilize those sources.”
After Green's lecture, students had the opportunity to talk directly with him during an ice cream social outside along Douglas Lake.
Students asked Green about his career path to research and his work in evolution during the ice cream social on July 8.
Children in the Nature Day Camp used hand lenses to examine flowers they gathered in the UMBS forest on Friday, July 10, and set them to press over the weekend to prepare for Botany Week next week. Pictured on the left is eight-year-old Charlie and five-year-old Abe on the right. Charlie’s mom is Chrissy Billau, a UMBS staff member who leads marketing and communications. Abe's mom is Dr. Marjorie Weber, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan. Weber teaches the Insights From Trees course at UMBS and also conducts research here.
Dr. Rosario Ceballo, right, dean of the U-M College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA), visited the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS) for the first time on Friday, July 10. Dr. Aimée Classen, on the left, the director of UMBS, took the dean on a tour of the science and educational programming on the Pellston campus. The two also discussed getting the “Semester Up North” program going — the plan to expand student programming into the fall and winter semesters as year-round facilities come online.
Dr. Vincent Denef, the instructor for the UMBS Microbiology course and an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at U-M, taught his class on the boat Thursday, July 9, and demonstrated how to use a device to take water samples from the bottom of Douglas Lake.
Hassan Mustapha, left, a senior studying biology, health and society at U-M, and Micah Joyce, a sophomore studying biology at U-M, prepared to submerge a YSI multiparameter into Douglas Lake to gather data on dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, depth, temperature and conductivity at their sample site on Thursday, July 9, as part of the Microbiology class.
From the far left, HC Hsu, a sophomore studying biology at U-M, and Karla Bonilla, a junior in Program in the Environment (PitE) at U-M, recovered water samples from the bottom of Douglas Lake with Yu-Cheng Lin, on the far right, a teaching assistant (TA) for the UMBS Microbiology class, on July 9. The microbial contents will be compared to samples from other parts of the lake to inform what science can learn from microbial communities.
Chloe Dykhouse, a sophomore studying biology, health and society at U-M, looked at gram-stained bacteria under a microscope on July 9 as part of lab work for the Microbiology class. The coloration tests if the bacteria is gram positive or gram negative, a fundamental microbiology technique.
Dykhouse also took observational notes on the plates of bacteria and fungi she previously plated.
This photo features a gram-stained sample of water that had hay in it. Gram staining is used to determine if bacteria samples are gram positive or gram negative, foundational knowledge for microbiologists to be able to classify and study bacteria.
Andy Carriero, on the right, a TA for the Microbiology class, posed with a dyed shirt and UMBS Academic Program Manager Candice Everett on Thursday, July 9, during the tie-dye event hosted by the summer term’s resident advisors (RAs).
Tie dyers wet their tie-dye and put bands on their clothing to create patterns on their final product July 9.
Julianna Izzard, a junior in PitE at U-M, held up her final tie-dye before letting the dye absorb into the fabric.
A thick haze of wildfire smoke permeated campus on July 15 and lasted for several days. UMBS pivoted class plans, adjusted sleep logistics, and installed additional air filtration equipment — among other safety measures — to protect community health until the smoke abated. As a precaution, UMBS canceled two summer favorites: the line dance and open house.
Chicory was in bloom across campus. We spotted this one outside the dining hall Friday, July 17.
A raccoon was caught stealing chipmunk food set out by the Field Mammalogy class at the top of D Street on Thursday, July 16. The students are using these feeding platforms to observe chipmunk behavior. Bait generally goes out two times a day to entice the chipmunks to come to these feeding stations. Photo by Dr. Gideon Bradburd, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at U-M and director of the Frontiers masters program.
“Coevolution is a reciprocal process. If you only look at one side of interaction, you’re missing half of the story,” Dr. Jay Goldberg from Arizona State University (ASU) told the crowd in Gates Lecture Hall on Wednesday, July 15, during the Bennett Lecture in Mycology and Plant Biology. “This is why I sequence a whole bunch of species.” Goldberg’s talk, titled “Unravelling the Relationships of the Natural World with Biodiversity Genomics,” focused on how genomics allows science to see co-evolution in real time. By analyzing genomic data over time, science can depict how traits develop across species.
Goldberg’s lab uses cutting-edge genetic tools to study interactions between chemically defended plants and their specialist herbivores in the Sonoran Desert to help paint a picture of a reciprocal relationship between species' evolution. The Indigenous (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians) evolutionary biologist is now starting an independent lab as a presidential scholar at ASU to uncover the (co)evolutionary processes that shape plant-insect interactions in the American southwest, focusing primarily on the sacred Datura plant (Datura wrightii) and its community of highly specialized insect herbivores that can tolerate the myriad chemical defenses produced by this iconic native plant.
Goldberg told the audience at UMBS that his work is an intersection between evolutionary genetics observations in the lab and field ecology in nature. The blend of these two fields informs each other. In the lab, step one is to reference genome assembly through sequencing technology. Step two is to identify the interaction genes. Step three is to uncover the evolutionary history of significant differentially expressed genes (DEGs).
One focus of Goldberg’s lab is the bidirectional selection supporting “velvety” (non-glandular) or “sticky” (glandular) trichomes on Datura species. A trichome is a tiny, hair-like outgrowth or appendage that extends from the outer layer of a plant. This distinction changes predator species as well as defense mechanisms in Datura plants.
In Goldberg’s lab, the focus is on the sacred Datura plant and different phenotypic morphs across the American Southwest. A morph is a distinct, genetically determined variation in the appearance, color or behavior of an organism within a single species.
Goldberg’s work stems from an observation that there is a negative frequency dependent selection among Datura wrightii morphs. Negative frequency dependent selection means the rarer trait becomes variable, which is balancing due to population dynamics among species. What specifically caused this negative frequency dependent selection was an original guiding question of Goldberg’s work.
Goldberg said he noticed changes in herbivory patterns based on Datura wrightii’s morphs — this is one of the many puzzle pieces he determined influenced the observed negative frequency dependent selection.
UMBS Associate Director Karie Slavik was the featured speaker on Thursday, July 16, at Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey during its “Coffee at Ten” program, which is held every Thursday morning in the gallery.
Slavik gave a presentation about the UMBS Artist in Residence program, which has hosted 11 artists in residence since 2018.
“UMBS is one of the most well-studied places on the planet,” Slavik told the crowd of 35 people in the Petoskey art gallery. “The artist residency program creates space for art in a science community and vice versa.”
Slavik took the group through work by artists at UMBS over the last eight years inspired by their time embedded at the research and teaching campus in Pellston, everything from podcasts and poetry to painting, music and photography.
The night before her art gallery presentation, UMBS Associate Director Karie Slavik served as a panelist at the University of Michigan’s annual Michigan Up North event in Bay Harbor for U-M alumni, friends and university leaders.
On Wednesday, July 15, Slavik took the stage at Bay Harbor Yacht Club for a conversation on how severe weather is reshaping northern Michigan’s water systems and how U-M is advancing solutions to protect the environment and strengthen communities. She spoke on behalf of the researchers at UMBS as well as her position as secretary of Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council, an environmental nonprofit. Slavik is second from the left in the photo.
Dr. Jonathan Peck, on the far right, served as the moderator. Peck is dean of the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS). Other panelists included Dr. Sara Soderstrom, on the far left. Soderstrom is the director of Program in the Environment (PitE), associate professor of organizational studies and PitE, and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor. The third panelist was Dr. Drew Gronewold, lead investigator for the U.S. in the Global Center for Transboundary Waters and associate professor of sustainable systems. Gronewold is second from the right.
A trio of 2026 Biological Station Undergraduate Research Fellows caught pollinators at Green Star Meadow. Leah Stickley, middle, a junior at Auburn University, and Violet Schroeder, on the far right, a junior at Michigan Tech University, helped Chanceine Saechao, on the far left, a senior at the University of Texas, Austin, do fieldwork for a project investigating change over time in plant biodiversity and pollinator interactions in an open meadow ecosystem.
The 2026 cohort of Biological Station Undergraduate Research Fellows from universities across the United States took a group photo along Douglas Lake in July.
Anna Kessler, a senior at University of California, Los Angeles, got samples of milkweed rhizomes in July as part of a two-month undergraduate research fellowship. Her project examined milkweed’s vast below-ground fungal networks.
Dr. Sara Hermann, left, and U-M junior Arivan Mudaliyar examine milkweed at UMBS in July. Hermann, a UMBS researcher from Penn State University, served as a science mentor for Mudaliyar during his two-month undergraduate research fellowship at the Pellston campus. His project looked at how larval monarch coloration impacts predation rate.
Ben Goldberg, a senior at Harvey Mudd College, looked at both the species and the fungi growing within pine cones. During his undergraduate research fellowship, Goldberg studied ant-fungi mutualism between ants in the Temnothorax genus and fungi inside pine cones in northern Michigan. Currently, there isn’t a lot of literature done on the Temnothorox genus and their mutualistic relationship with fungi.
Etienne Nunez, right, with one of her science mentors Karin Rand, on the left, in a field at UMBS. Rand is a UMBS researcher and manager of the Classen Lab in U-M’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Etienne is one of the 2026 Biological Station Undergraduate Research Fellows. She is a sophomore at the College of Southern Nevada. Etienne's project looked at how soil disturbance and fertilizer use impacts plant communities, specifically invasive opportunists.
Students from the Field Mammalogy class at UMBS met with an employee from Oswald’s Bear Ranch on Thursday, July 23, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, just north of Newberry. He spoke about the history of the rescue refuge, how the ranch got so many bears, and the bears’ care. Students would later discuss the implications and conservation ethics of places like this, in context to what the class has learned about mammal conservation.
Bears at Oswald’s Bear Ranch frequently waited at the fence for visitors to throw apples that could be bought at the front desk. How the bears were fed and their overall diet was a large part of the Field Mammalogy class discussion.
Three butterflies landed on milkweed outside of Oswald’s Bear Ranch. The Field Mammalogy class went to the location as a case study on conservation and ethical conservation ideologies.
Annie Cress, a UMBS graduate student researcher and a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas, Austin, showed students in the Field Mammalogy class how researchers put ear tags on mice to keep track of wild small mammal populations. The class and researchers went through required training that allows them to handle the animals and do this fieldwork studying disease ecology.
Amelia Kashian, left, a junior double majoring in biology and journalism at Northern Michigan University, and Sydni Smith, a senior studying ecology and evolutionary biology at U-M, checked a live trap their Field Mammalogy class set the night before. The class set more than 50 live traps near the UMBS burn plots, allowing students to have field experience in small mammal studies.
After going through training, the Field Mammalogy class caught mice in live traps, allowing students to have hands-on experience in handling small mammals in the field.
Catherine Griffard, a UMBS student who studies ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan, waded in Carp Lake River to conduct environmental sampling on Wednesday, July 22, with the Field Studies of Freshwater Fishes class at a lamprey dam near the mouth of the river at Lake Michigan’s Cecil Bay. Calculations included discharge rate — how much water goes through the river.
“This has to be the best month of my life,” said Hassan Mustapha, a senior who is pre-med at U-M, wearing a green backpack in the photo. “We’re doing the science, not just learning the science. This is more than school. This is a life-changing experience.” The backpack and the attached yellow “anode” that Mustapha is holding is a tool called an electric shocker. The Field Studies of Freshwater Fishes class learned the fishing technique to gather fish samples and analyze how the fish population has changed over the years: “You press a switch that runs an electric current and stuns the fish — putting them to sleep for a bit. They float up. You scoop them with a net and then decide whether to keep them or return them to the water.” The instructors obtained permits for the fish sampling and trained the class in advance of the fieldwork.
Using a net, the Field Studies of Freshwater Fishes class also used another technique called seining to gather fish samples on July 22.
The fieldwork on July 22 marked the last outing in a series of fish sampling excursions on the Carp Lake River for the UMBS class as the students slowly moved their way closer to Lake Michigan. The spot by the lamprey dam is the location on the river with the highest diversity of fishes. The students collected about 20 species — including invasive species like round goby — compared to four or five native species the previous day when they were farther upstream. “It’s a good way to show the students how the nature and the ecology of the river changes as you go downstream towards its mouth,” said Dr. Hernán López-Fernández, co-instructor of the Field Studies of Freshwater Fishes class at UMBS and a professor and curator of fishes at U-M. “It exposes the students to this idea of what is called a river continuum, which suggests that the physical structure, the environmental structure and the fish communities and the invertebrate communities change from the headwaters of a river towards its mouth.” In the group photo, Hernán López-Fernández is in the back row, second from the right.
“Water is plentiful across the Great Lakes region, but water quality is decreasing,” said Dr. Aleksandra Szczuka, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Michigan, during a lecture on Wednesday, July 22. Her talk was titled “Safeguarding Drinking Water Quality in the Face of Climate Change: Nucleic Acid Disinfection.” The water chemistry and disinfection researcher said the amount of chemical or biological contaminants in drinking water sources is increasing as we see more wildfires and periodic droughts as well as extreme precipitation, nutrient and pesticide runoff, and algal blooms.
“Your drinking water is safe,” Szczuka said as she began her talk. Chlorination is a key process for controlling acute health risks. “Chlorination is used by more than 70% of US utilities,” she said. “It removes pathogens that cause diarrheal disease, but it comes with negative consequences.” Disinfection byproducts (DBPs), which pose chronic health risks such as bladder cancer, form as an unintended consequence of chlorination. “We’re at the stage where 700 disinfection byproducts have been discovered,” Szczuka said. “The problem is that a lot of them, what toxicologists are finding, are more toxic than the ones being regulated.” She said researchers and drinking water utilities are operating in a balance between pathogen control and DBP control. Research by Szczuka’s team aims to understand nucleic acid chlorination mechanisms and the impact of chlorine chemistry on reactivity.
Szczuka told the UMBS crowd that regulators call Ann Arbor Water the “torture chamber of water,” describing the intense process used to get water clean in southeast Michigan at the Ann Arbor Drinking Water Treatment Plant. Szczuka is working with utilities in Michigan as they meet both biological and chemical contaminant treatment objectives in a changing climate. “Pilot-scale work allows us to bridge the gap between laboratory research and practical implementation,” Szczuka said. Her research team spends half their time at Ann Arbor Water and half their time in her U-M lab. “Consider water utilities as a potential career option,” Szczuka told UMBS students in the crowd. “They deal with a lot of stuff. The choice you make as a utility operator affects the entire community every single day.”
Szczuka, middle, talked with UMBS students outside Gates Lecture Hall after her seminar on July 22 during an ice cream social.
Szczuka, on the right, answered questions from the UMBS community related to her water chemistry research and collaboration with water treatment utilities.
Ryan Jan, a junior double majoring in environmental studies and sociology at Oberlin College, presented a poem he wrote about his tree — an apple tree — on Saturday, July 25. Students in the Insights From Trees course picked a tree at the beginning of the summer term to study during their time at UMBS, serving as a grounding point for students during the busy four weeks.
In the Insights From Trees course, students presented their final creation around their grounding trees on July 25. The project was multimodal — some students made videos, others like Ryan Jan (pictured in a chair on the left) wrote poems, and one student performed an original clarinet piece inspired by their tree.
Skye Umney, a senior studying ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB) at U-M, shared a journal page. During the Insights From Trees course, students were asked to keep observations, notes and drawings in a journal that grew with them during the summer term.
Rune Cuthrell, a junior studying EEB at U-M, shared one of their detailed drawings from their Insights From Trees journal.
Ryder Lee, a senior studying liberal arts at U-M, showed off drawings from his Insights From Trees journal he developed during the summer at UMBS.
Dr. Silvia Newell, a UMBS researcher and the director of Michigan Sea Grant, gave a presentation at the annual meeting of the Douglas Lake Improvement Association (DLIA) at Pellston High School on Saturday, July 25. “Your lake quality is excellent right now,” Newell told the Douglas Lake homeowners. “I don’t want you to worry. I want to give you the information to continue to protect it going forward.”
Newell, who also is a professor in the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), is leading a team of three SEAS masters students as they install sensors and data loggers and gather field data to create a nutrient and water budget for Douglas Lake. Since the spring, the graduate student researchers have been based at the UMBS campus nestled along Douglas Lake’s South Fishtail Bay.
Newell’s Douglas Lake project — funded by DLIA and UMBS —aims to update a study conducted 20 years ago that created a Douglas Lake water budget. This new study analyzes precipitation and evaporation over a year and the inflows and outflows from creeks and rivers as well as groundwater. The study also will include a nutrient analysis so the community knows how much nitrogen and phosphorus are coming into Douglas Lake and going out. Those nutrients can feed harmful algal blooms. “The biggest problem is leaking, failing septic tanks,” Newell told the members of the DLIA. “Michigan is the only state in the entire nation that doesn’t have septic regulations.”
“Algal blooms are moving farther north,” Newell said. “That is hopefully not going to be an issue here, but if it does happen, it would be nice if we had a baseline — where water and nutrient levels worked and we’d like to get back to.” Newell encouraged the residents to get their septic tanks inspected, cleaned and pumped out. She also issued a call for volunteers to serve as citizen scientists and help conduct bi-weekly sampling while the researchers are in Ann Arbor in the fall.
We love our neighbors! Scott Davis, in the middle, and Mary Ellen Sheridan, not pictured, on Douglas Lake generously shared their care for the University of Michigan Biological Station in July. Scott let a UMBS research team install a groundwater monitor on his property for a water/nutrient budget project. He told a U-M video crew from Ann Arbor on July 27, “Douglas Lake is heaven on earth, and the Biological Station is the capital.”
Mary Ellen Sheridan, a proud U-M alum, told the same video team on July 27: “It's invaluable. It would be a different lake without the Biological Station."
Mary Ellen Sheridan also took the podium at the University of Michigan’s annual Michigan Up North event earlier in the month and shared her enthusiastic support of undergraduate student research at UMBS.
Matthew Saval, a junior studying biology at Schoolcraft College, performed Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love" at the UMBS Talent Show on Monday, July 27. Saval took two courses during the summer term at UMBS: "Michigan: People and Place in a Changing Climate" and "Learning from the Landscape."
The 2026 Biological Station Undergraduate Research Fellows put on a murder mystery puppet show for their act in the UMBS Talent Show on July 27. The puppets were made to mimic the fellows as the puppets tried to solve a mystery during the play.
One group of students performed an Arabic wedding dance during the UMBS Talent Show, led by Hassan Mustapha, a senior studying biology, health and society at U-M. “It's something I do at every wedding," Mustapha said. "I love bringing it to different people so they can learn something that is so important to me, all while having fun doing it.”
Five-year-old Abe solved a Rubik's cube on stage during the 2026 UMBS Talent Show. Abe's mom is Dr. Marjorie Weber, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan. Weber teaches the Insights From Trees course at UMBS and also conducts research here.
Five-year-old Abe, on the left, and eight-year-old Charlie show off their Rubik's cubes that they solved on stage in front of the UMBS community during the 2026 Talent Show on July 27. Abe solved a three-by-three cube and Charlie a two-by-two cube. Charlie’s mom is Chrissy Billau, a UMBS staff member who leads marketing and communications.
On July 28, the UMBS Great Lakes Policy and Management class visited Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena, Michigan. The day started with a lecture from Superintendent Jeff Gray. The talk centered around the history of the sanctuary, impacts of the museum on the local community and the importance of preserving the history of the Great Lakes.
An education specialist at Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary took the UMBS students on a tour of its shipwreck museum.
After learning about the history of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, the UMBS students went into the workshop where engineers and scientists create, fix and research the robotics equipment used to explore shipwrecks autonomously.
Bailey McClive, on the left, a junior studying chemical engineering at U-M, talked to one of the engineers at the marine sanctuary. The engineers on-staff at Thunder Bay help maintain, create and put out remote vehicles to explore shipwrecks as well as conduct research on change in shipwrecks over time.
UMBS students toured the remote vehicle testing ground at Thunder Bay. The area is used to test remotely operated vehicles (ROV), as well as host international high school aquatic ROV competitions.
UMBS student Jon Duplessis, a junior studying environmental science at Schoolcraft College, pretended to steer the to-scale shipwreck inside the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
Julia Kudwa, on the left, a senior in the Program in the Environment (PitE) at U-M, Jon Duplessis, in the middle, a junior studying environmental science at Schoolcraft College, and Ryder Lee, on the right, a senior studying liberal arts at Schoolcraft College, aboard a shipwreck touring boat on Lake Huron. Boats like these allow museum visitors to travel Thunder Bay while learning about centuries of shipwrecks in “Shipwreck Alley,” a part of Thunder Bay notoriously responsible for centuries of capsized ships.
UMBS students and 2026 UMBS Artist-in-Residence Eric Jackson looked overboard to see shipwrecks. In Thunder Bay’s National Marine Sanctuary, the clear water creates conditions to see shipwrecks without a glass-bottom boat.
UMBS students and Josie McCarthy, on the right, a teaching assistant (TA) for the Great Lakes Policy and Management class, looked down while the boat tour floated over a shipwreck. The glass-bottomed section of the boat allowed students to see the sunken boats in Thunder Bay’s “Shipwreck Alley.”
Photo of what the students saw while looking through the glass in the looking section of the boat. This is a centuries-old stern, buried forever in Thunder Bay’s National Marine Sanctuary.
Students in the UMBS Great Lakes Policy and Management class had the opportunity to see Thunder Bay’s “Shipwreck Alley.” This section of the museum's boat had a viewing point with a glass bottom, allowing students to view centuries of Great Lakes shipwreck history at the bottom of Lake Huron.
Dr. Emily Fairfax, an associate professor of geography at the University of Minnesota, visited UMBS in late July to deliver the Pettingill Lecture in Natural History, titled “Beavers: Architects of Climate Resilience.” While at the Pellston campus, she visited beaver dams at UMBS and met with researchers, staff and students. Fairfax studies beavers using remote sensing, modeling and field research, focusing on how their ecosystem engineering can create patches of landscape that are more resistant to drought and wildfire. Read the full story: https://myumi.ch/QMMr3
More than 170 people gathered to hear Dr. Emily Fairfax, a beaver expert and an associate professor of geography at the University of Minnesota, give the Pettingill Lecture in Natural History at the U-M Biological Station about nature's engineers on Wednesday, July 29. “You don’t need that many beavers to control a watershed,” Fairfax said. “I put them along with glaciers and plate tectonics when I think about things that control where our water goes.” Read the full story: https://myumi.ch/QMMr3
Fairfax’s research team studied wildfire areas in California, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Oregon, using satellite data to map beaver dams and compare vegetation before and after fires. They found that where beavers had created complexes of ponds and wetlands, vegetation showed substantially less change from the fire. Across the fires Fairfax studied, beaver complexes experienced about three times less burning than surrounding areas. “Every single stream. Every single fire. Consistently. Repeatedly. Reliably,” Fairfax said. In another case involving megafires in the Rocky Mountains in 2020, beaver wetlands remained intact even as enormous fires crossed the Continental Divide. Along one river with beaver dams, Fairfax said, 89% of the area was identified as “fire refugia.” The wetlands created by beavers can serve as natural refuges not only for plants, but for the many animals that depend on them. “Looks like Smokey Bear got a helping hand from Smokey the Beaver,” she said. Read the full story: https://myumi.ch/QMMr3
Fairfax served as a science consultant on “Hoppers,” a Disney/Pixar movie about beavers released this summer. She brought the film’s artists into the field, giving them all waders to wear in the wetlands. Her advice was straightforward: Make the beavers look like beavers. “Make the beavers fatter,” she recalled telling the filmmakers. “Do not hide all of their strength and beauty. Do not make them eat fish.” Read the full story: https://myumi.ch/QMMr3
Dr. Emily Fairfax answered questions at UMBS during an ice cream social after her endowed lecture on Wednesday, July 29.
Attendees enjoyed an ice cream social at UMBS along Douglas Lake after Dr. Emily Fairfax's lecture on July 29.
2026 UMBS Artist in Residence Eric Jackson hangs some of his artwork to dry. Jackson, an artist from Maryland who combines wildlife illustration with large-scale fiber arts, drew inspiration from migratory birds in the Great Lakes region during his residency. Through Aug. 7, Jackson worked on the creation of his “Field Guide to a Flyway,” a body of work focused on migratory species in the region, alongside brief field notes. Each of the illustrations were done in his characteristic wax-resist illustration medium.
A collage of a small number of the pieces made by Eric Jackson at UMBS during his artist residency that have been cleaned and are ready to be stretched.
Several children in the UMBS Nature Day Camp make wax-resist art under the guidance of 2026 UMBS Artist in Residence Eric Jackson, not pictured.
A variety of art made by the UMBS community during an art workshop in late July.
Eric Jackson worked with individual UMBS classes in the summer 2026 term to help them create their class t-shirts.
Community art banners hang out to dry at UMBS.
The banners made by members of the UMBS community during workshops led by 2026 Artist in Residence Eric Jackson hang in the dining hall on Thursday, July 30.
Dr. Sara Hermann, a UMBS researcher and an associate professor in the Department of Entomology at Penn State University, helped students in the Nature Day Camp release all of the monarch butterflies from her lab on Thursday, July 30.
Children and leaders of the 2026 UMBS Nature Day Camp posed for a group photo on Tuesday, July 28.
View of campus on the Douglas Lake shoreline and the UMBS buoy in South Fishtail Bay on Wednesday, July 29. The public can access live data 24/7 in the spring, summer and fall from the floating laboratory on Douglas Lake that scientists use to monitor water quality and help us understand and protect our freshwater resources. The smart buoy is deployed each year in a glacial kettle hole about 22 meters deep, or 72 feet, in South Fishtail Bay to capture a full water column spectrum of data, from top to bottom, including how much blue-green algae are present, water temperature, clarity, oxygen levels, turbidity and pH.
UMBS students took a sunset swim in Douglas Lake on July 29.
During the end-of-term celebratory showcase of learning called Ecopalooza on Thursday, July 30, students in the Insights from Trees course wrote and performed a song titled “Tree Fallin’” to the tune of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’.”
The UMBS community explored a table set up by students in the Learning from the Landscape course to show what they learned during the summer 2026 term.
Students in the Field Mammalogy course brought out specimens from the UMBS collection during the end-of-term celebratory showcase of learning called Ecopalooza on Thursday, July 30. In this photo the students are answering questions from children in the UMBS Nature Day Camp.
“The memories and the people make the difficulty of this session’s hot summer days, flash flooding and smog worth it,” said Cat Griffard, a senior studying ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB) at U-M. She wrote on her cabin wall on Thursday, July 30, leaving a lasting impact on her cabin after finishing up her second session this year at UMBS.
Ethan Wilgocki, a senior studying EEB at U-M, took his bedding to his car as he moved out of his cabin at the end of the 2026 summer term.
“I wasn’t sure what everyone was talking about when mentioning the UMBS ‘campus,’ but now I get it,” said Kaelan Mulye, a senior studying English and PitE at U-M, as he loaded luggage into his car after four weeks living and learning at Michigan’s research and teaching campus along Douglas Lake. “UMBS is a campus in all the right ways. If people are doing cool work, you can sit with them at lunch, if students are going on a fun trip, you can join them. It's the accessibility that makes this place so special. If you want to do something, it's always right there.”
“I feel genuinely changed,” said Kaylee McMillan, a senior in Program in the Environment (PitE) at U-M, as she loaded her guitar into a van on move-out day July 30. “I didn’t realize how special this space was until I got here.”
Bree Small, a senior studying EEB at U-M, cleaned out her cabin as she moved out of UMBS on July 30.
Thank you to the students, researchers, teaching faculty, staff and families who made the Summer 2026 term a success at the University of Michigan Biological Station. Pictured here is the community photo taken on Wednesday, July 22.
Clear skies and strong solar activity aligned for an unforgettable aurora over Douglas Lake on Sunday, Aug. 2.