Photo Fridays have been hijacked by the leafers!  During the fall, we’ll be posting reader submitted pictures of brilliant autumn colors throughout the Great Lakes region.
 

An Illinois campus is confronting modern electricity needs by getting on their own grid and offering an innovative solution to the nation’s emerging energy problems.

Michigan officials listened to the sweet songs of Kirtland’s warblers throughout the state in June – and the chorus was a positive one.
The population of the endangered birds remains steady, according to the annual survey by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Environment.
Officials surveyed in mid-June when the birds defend their nesting territories.  Birds are detected by listening for their songs – as their singing can be heard for up to a quarter mile.  Since only males are belting out songs, populations are estimated by doubling the number …

It’s a horror story: fish and birds wash up dead on the beach, invaders change the environment, poison lurks in the sand.

But it’s no story. It’s avian botulism, a toxin that has shown up on Great Lakes shorelines repeatedly over the past 13 years.

If a rooster perched atop a weathervane is your idea of wind technology, you’ve got some catching up to do.
Laser wind sensing is the latest technology in the push to assess Lake Michigan’s wind resources. It will be used for the first time on a floating platform later this month when the Lake Michigan Offshore Wind Assessment Project launches the AXYS WindSentinel buoy.
The buoy will gauge the lake’s potential for wind farming while tracking its physical, biological and environmental conditions. Because it’s so mobile, the WindSentinel buoy will provide information …

An 11-year-old petition to protect the habitat of wintering populations of endangered Great Lakes’ piping plovers was rejected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this month.

The big Great Lakes Week 2011 just got a little bigger as the International Joint Commission has confirmed former vice president Al Gore as the keynote speaker.
Gore will speak at the commission’s biennial meeting in Detroit Oct. 12-14.  His address is slated for  1:15 p.m. on Oct. 13.
The meeting is part of Great Lakes Week: Detroit 2011, which brings together U.S. and Canadian government officials with public and private groups to explore the  lakes’ most pressing problems, potential solutions and on-going restoration.
Gore served in both the House and Senate prior …

Wetland specialists in Michigan are getting schooled in an obscure and unlikely area – gold prospecting.

With prices reaching all time highs – approaching $1,900 this summer – Michigan has seen a boost in ambitious hobbyists searching for gold.

Wearing catchy t-shirts is one way to show off your school or favorite indie band, but have you thought about giving your regional lakescape some love?
Great Lakes Proud and Great Lakes Shirts can help. Both companies are selling products with an outline of the Great Lakes, emphasizing pride for the whole region instead of an individual state like many other companies do.
There are no logos, no advertisements, no political boundaries. Just water.
“I’ve never experienced any place like it,” said Austin Holsinger, creator of Great Lakes Proud. “The beauty, the sunrises, …

Another piece of artillery is available to fight invasive mussels.
In the arsenal with Biobullets is a biopesticide created by Marrone Bio Innovations Inc.called Zequanox.
The biopesticide has just gotten approval for testing at the Davis Dam in Nevada on the Colorado River where quagga mussels are getting in the way of providing electricity.
Zequanox is made of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens. Marrone researchers found it to be more than 90 percent lethal to adult mussels and 100 percent lethal to mussel larvae. And it doesn’t kill other organisms like water fleas, freshwater shrimp …