Higgins Lake is at the headwaters of a system of rivers and lakes in the heart of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Residents and users of the Higgins Lake and Cut River system are keenly aware of the value of their resources, and are concerned about protecting the water quality, ecological integrity, and recreational use of the Higgins Lake and Cut River. Researchers at MSU and UM are investigating the sensitivity of the lake to future change, in an attempt to limit future negative impacts to homeowners and others who rely on the lake for its recreational opportunities and natural beauty.

We would like to thank the Michigan State Department of Natural Resources and the Higgins Lake Foundation for their support of our work in the Higgins Lake and Cut River system.

The Au Sable and Manistee River Watersheds span the breadth of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Both watersheds contain areas that are vital to the agricultural and economic productivity of Michigan, as well as some of the best recreational opportunities that the Lower Peninsula has to offer. MSU has created a monitoring program in this area in order to better understand the complex feedbacks that occur in such a system, and to provide a baseline that can be used to understand the impact of future changes to the land and water resources in the watersheds.

This site includes a series of geophysical arrays situated on 10 experimental field plots. Through a collaboration with MSU’s US Department of Energy funded GLBRC located at Kellogg Biological Station, we have been able to monitor how the resistivity signature in the near-surface changes over time. Data derived from these surveys gives us the ability to model the impact that large scale land-use change in the Great Lakes Basin will have on the hydrologic cycle.

Projects:

Multi-scale Monitoring and Modeling of Land Use and Climate Change Impacts on the Terrestrial Hydrologic Cycle: Implications for the Great Lakes Basin

Located on Kellogg Biological Station property, our aptly named “transition” site spans an ecotone that progresses from mature forest to young forest, shrub, and grass over a distance of 200m. It has been permanently instrumented with an array of electrodes for electrical resistivity (ER) surveys, as well as temperature and soil moisture probes. This site was created as part of an effort to understand how land use change impacts soil moisture distribution in the near surface. It is closely related to two of our other active study sites, Sandhill and GLBRC.

We would like to to thank the National Science Foundation for funding this research.

Projects:

Multi-scale Monitoring and Modeling of Land Use and Climate Change Impacts on the Terrestrial Hydrologic Cycle: Implications for the Great Lakes Basin