Posted on June 22, 2026
MOUNT PLEASANT, MI — Great Lakes scientists are heading back to coastal wetlands this summer for a new round of monitoring that helps guide restoration work across Michigan and the rest of the basin.
The Great Lakes Coastal Wetland Monitoring Program at Central Michigan University is beginning its fourth basinwide monitoring round this year under a new six-year, $12 million cooperative agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA awarded the funding last fall, extending a long-running science program that began in 2010 and has become a source of baseline data for agencies, tribes, researchers and conservation groups working on coastal wetland restoration and management.
“We’re sampling everything from water quality, plants, invertebrates, fish, amphibians, birds, and also quantifying land use, land cover around the ecosystems,” said Don Uzarski, a CMU limnologist who leads the coastal wetland program.
Crews selected 165 wetland sites for sampling this year. Field work follows the seasons across the basin. Frog and bird sampling starting earlier in the year. Vegetation, fish, macroinvertebrate and water quality sampling begin in June.
“We have hundreds and hundreds of users that are making decisions based on these data,” said Uzarski.
Other recent data requests support restoration planning, Area of Concern assessments, fish habitat work and wetland classification.
Before the monitoring program began, states, provinces and agencies were collecting wetland data differently, making basin-wide comparisons difficult, Uzarski said.
The program’s public mapping tool also allows users to view wetland sampling information and condition scores for monitored sites around the basin.
The current award is not lump-sum payment. The EPA cooperative agreement has a $12 million project budget over six years and is being funded incrementally. The money flows through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI).
Uzarski said rising costs forced the program to consider reducing some bird and amphibian sampling, but a Canadian foundation contribution through Birds Canada helped restore that work.
Coastal wetlands are among the Great Lakes most productive habitats, providing spawning and nursery areas for fish, feeding and nesting areas for birds, shoreline protection and natural water filtration.
They are also among the most altered Great Lakes habitats after generations of shoreline development, dredging, agriculture, invasive species, pollution and fluctuating lake levels.
