Establishment of the Center

The Michigan based Great Lakes Center for Environmental and Molecular Sciences (GLEAMS) was established in FY02. The Center, a collaborative venture between Western Michigan University's Environmental Institute (EI) and the Altarum Institute, builds upon an EPA funding base initiated for FY00 and FY01 for the WMU Environmental Institute. Funding for GLEAMS includes the EI's FY01 funding plus FY02 funding allocated for GLEAMS specifically. FY03 funding for GLEAMS has been allocated by Congress and is in the process of being awarded to the Center by the EPA after peer review.

The Center strives to address the effects of urban, industrial, agriculture and other non-point pollution on the Great Lakes through investigations conducted on multiple spatial and temporal scales. A primary goal of this Center is to develop watershed-scale methods to assess and protect human and ecological health by restoring and maintaining stable, diverse, and self- sustaining populations of fish and other aquatic organisms, wildlife, and plants. To this end, ongoing work by the Center uses advanced analytical and environmental chemistry coupled with dynamic Geographic Information Systems (GIS) electronic mapping to describe spatial patterns of reported and previously unreported contaminants in Great Lakes watersheds and their movements through the system.

In conjunction with new dynamic GIS based contaminant mapping, analysis tools and decision support systems, the Center has the unique status of being the primary developer of new genomics based tools for assessing exposure and health impacts in Great Lakes ecosystem organisms. The Center's approach has been heralded worldwide (e.g., Wall St. Journal, BBC, Chronicle of Higher Education, Ecological Society of America, Associated Press) with the goal of providing precise data to be used in environmental decision-making regarding the need to clean up contaminated watershed sites as well as documentation of the success of those efforts where applied.

Work To Be Completed With Current Funds

Work to be completed using current EPA funds includes the following project categories relevant to environmental health risk assessment and environmental management:
· Fate and transport studies including baseline hydrologic modeling that define the movements and bioavailability of both organic and metals contaminants in the Kalamazoo River watershed
· Genomics based ecotoxicology studies in both laboratory and field caught frogs and fish that define neurological, endocrine, and other physiologic health effects at the molecular level
· Genomics based mammalian health studies that define contaminant induced changes in behavior, brain and liver function, and neuroimmune system activation
· Construction of a GIS based decision support system that incorporates fate and transport data and genomics based risk data with other available data for use in environmental management
· Incorporation of the decision support system on the Center's dynamic Web portal
· Provide shared ownership of the Center's web portal with watershed councils, agencies, and other environmental stakeholder groups

· Partner with EPA Region 5 in sponsoring a Watershed Academy Program to educate stakeholders, scientists, and environmental managers on how to utilize new information technology tools such as our decision support system and Web portal for more effective watershed management

Future Work
The logical extension of this work (to be supported by FY03 funding and a current funding request for FY 04) is to couple ongoing GIS mapping, Great Lakes watershed contaminant fate and transport modeling, and genomics based risk assessment tools to understand contaminant effects on the health of game fish in the Great Lakes and the effects of contaminated fish consumption on human populations. This approach will result in the development of a completely integrated dynamic decision support system and lead to improved policy recommendations that will help restore economically important breeding game fish populations once again to Lake Michigan, and will provide the first genomics based diagnostic data regarding exposure and possible health effects in humans. Since genomics based data are unequivocal compared to older, less precise bioassays, these studies should help settle contentious scientific debate regarding the need to clean up specific contaminated watershed sites to protect ecosystem and human health. (Funding for pilot work on human exposure and health effects has been provided by a private source). It is important to note that these tools and systems are completely scalable and transportable and can be applied in any watershed nation wide.