The economic growth of Minnesota depends on sustained yield and protection of its natural resources. The Center for Water and the Environment is committed to understanding problems and developing tools for solving problems that impede the environmentally sound development of the economy.
Image 1 (far left): NRRI scientists and assistants worked with Duluth Utilities, Minnesota Sea Grant, and the Minnesota Conservation Corps to plant and fence about 250 shrubs and trees in Duluth’s Lakeside neighborhood as part of a project to reduce stormwater runoff from a this residential area. The project is collaboration with Duluth Utilities to address stormwater runoff, which is particularly troublesome with Duluth’s clay soil. The deeper roots of the trees and shrubs help water soak into the soil better than the shorter roots of lawn grass. Excess stormwater runoff is one of the primary challenges facing Duluth’s streams.
This program focuses on understand the interactions among the forest ecosystems of the northern lake states, and the shifting mosaics of human land use and natural disturbance that drive the ecological and economic health of the region.
Program goals are to understand the ecological structure and function of Minnesota's surface waters to predict, minimize, and mitigate the effects of human impacts on biological communities, water quality, public health, and other beneficial uses of these resources.
The way we live on the land affects the quality of our water. This program area focuses on understanding the relationship between these two ecosystems. Research projects range from GIS tools to public outreach.
These are exciting times in terms of managing chemical information. With some 80,000 industrial chemicals loose in our environment, understanding their potential toxicity is critical. The Chemical Abstract Services Registry master list had more than 29 million entries in 2001 and of those chemicals, approximately 1,000 annually end up in actual use. Methods of testing current carcinogens include laboratory animals (in vivo) at a cost of approximately $5 million over 5 years; or cell cultures (in vitro) at a cost of $20,000 to $ to $50,000 over a period of weeks; or computer modeling (in silico) at a cost of less than one cent in less than one second.
This program has evolved over the past 12 years in close collaboration with Minnesota Sea Grant, UMD’s education department, and a host of local agency partners. It targets the general public, and formal (grades 6-12 and college) and informal (museums and nature centers) educators. A unifying theme has been to use regional stream and lake water quality data, especially intensive real-time data to illustrate how these water bodies function and how they respond to poor land use practices. The overall goal is to educate the general public and policy makers to improve environmental decision making.