Love staring at a map and discovering something interesting? Then “Mapping the Great Lakes” is for you. It’s a monthly Great Lakes Now feature created by Alex B. Hill, a self-described “data nerd and anthropologist” who combines cartography, data, and analytics with storytelling and human experience.

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Look for coverage of Great Lakes recreation and adventure in this new monthly feature. The author, Ian Solomon, founded Amplify Outside, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing access and representation by Black people in the outdoors, starting in the Great Lakes region. Find more about him HERE.

Things are finally heating up here in the Great Lakes Basin, so I’m taking the opportunity to brag a little about summertime in my home state of Michigan.

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By John Flesher, Associated Press

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Even for the Thunder Bay area, a perilous swath of northern Lake Huron off the Michigan coast that has devoured many a ship, the Ironton’s fate seems particularly cruel.

The 191-foot (58-meter) cargo vessel collided with a grain hauler on a blustery night in September 1894, sinking both.

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In the spirit of rehabbing my relationship with Midwest winters, it was high time I found recreation to keep me outside and moving.

After a summer of hiking, off-roading and even eFoiling I was in dire need of some fresh air adventure, but didn’t know where to start.

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Great Lakes Moment is a monthly column written by Great Lakes Now Contributor John Hartig. Publishing the author’s views and assertions does not represent endorsement by Great Lakes Now or Detroit Public Television.

A good example of community science in metropolitan Detroit is the Rockwood Christmas Bird Count, which is part of the longest-running community science survey in the world.

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Editor’s Note: Look for coverage of Great Lakes recreation and adventure in this new monthly feature. The author, Ian Solomon, founded Amplify Outside, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing access and representation by Black people in the outdoors, starting in the Great Lakes region. Find more about him HERE.

As the age old saying goes, “you never know what you have until it’s gone.” And while winter is technically here, the season we knew as children seems long gone.

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My survey was admittedly small.

I polled one 10-year-old and 30 adults ranging in age from their early 20s to mid-50s. I had a fairly even representation of genders and races. About half were on a college campus, the other half I approached on a public boardwalk.

I limited my poll to one person per social cluster to prevent parroting of the same responses.

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By Nina Ignaczak, Planet Detroit

This story is part of a collaborative series from the Institute for Nonprofit News, Planet Detroit, Tostada Magazine, Energy News Network, The Land, and Borderless Magazine examining climate resilience across the Great Lakes.

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For more than a century, a dam divided the upstream Sandusky River from Lake Erie. People got power, but fish were prevented from reaching native spawning grounds.

Then, four years ago, the dam came down, like hundreds around the Great Lakes region. It had been replaced as a power source years earlier, and environmentalists argued to restore the river’s natural course.

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I Speak for the Fish is a monthly column written by Great Lakes Now Contributor Kathy Johnson, coming out the third Monday of each month. Publishing the author’s views and assertions does not represent endorsement by Great Lakes Now or Detroit Public Television. 

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