The Center for Global Change & E


Establishing a High Resolution Monitoring Protocol for the Lake Michigan Shore Principal Investigators: Jiaguo Qi This project is to establish a high-resolution monitoring protocol for the shorezone along Lake Michigan. As residents of Michigan are acutely aware, the shoreline of Lake Michigan is a very active environment, where intensive changes in bluff position and dune morphology can occur quickly--frequently at great cost to individual landowners and to the State. Given the basic understandings about coastal evolution, and a variety of monitoring strategies, the process/response models that exist for the landscape are vague and problems persist with respect to high-resolution monitoring at rapid intervals. With the recent developments in digital technology, it is now possible to monitor the landscape via satellite at very high resolutions and to field map shorezone features quickly and accurately with the GPS system. These two methods can then be blended and manipulated within GIS data layers to produce highly detailed maps of coastal change. Such data will allow for a better understanding of how the coast responds to specific events (e.g., lake-level fluctuations, storms) and can be rapidly disseminated via the internet to users such as MDEQ and other authorities so that planning can be conducted more efficiently. Given the intensive utilization of the shorezone environment and the sensitivity of this landscape, this new technology provides an exciting opportunity for more effective coastal management. This study provides the foundation for this program and can easily be applied to the other shorelines within the state.

The Center for Global Change & Earth Observations, Michigan State University
218 Manly Miles Building, 1405 S. Harrison Road, East Lansing, Michigan 48823, Phone: (517) 432-7774