By Rayna Sherbinow and Dwight Brady
The pristine yet rugged shoreline of Lake Superior may seem invincible, but climate change and over-development could radically alter its present state. Preparing for these forces of nature and human activity is the main thrust of a project headed up by three NMU professors.
Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, Jes Thompson (College of Business), Scott Jordan (Outdoor Recreation) and Sarah Mittlefehldt (EEGS) have launched a program to help members of the coastal community offer input and plan for equity and adaptability while maintaining a sustainable and resilient shoreline along Lake Superior.
Part of this project involved three workshops about past sustainability issues, current concerns and ideas for the future. Seventy stakeholders from the community participated in the workshops and represented various interests and concerns about lakeshore sustainability. “We had a lot of diverse perspectives,” Thompson said. “We had people who were really conservative and we had people who were really liberal, and it really didn’t matter because we all know that we have to work together to live alongside this common resource.”
Ultimately, Thompson hopes these forums will lead coastal communities in the U.P. to define their own identity and develop planning codes that will ensure sustainability and resiliency in the face of climate change and migration to the north.
The workshops took an interdisciplinary approach to lakeshore sustainability. Specifically, they explored the connection among the ecosystem’s health and the community’s well being in terms of commerce and development. At the end of the workshop series, the team put together a digital magazine that documented the results of the session and highlighted the interdisciplinary research from each professor. Thompson focused on business development. Mittlefehldt focused on environmental sustainability, and Jordan’s primary concern was tourism.
Mittlefehldt contributed historical research to the project. She looked at local responses to sustainability issues over the years. “I spent some time in some of the regional archives looking at different planning efforts in the past to see how people have been planning for coastal development before people started talking about climate change,” Mittlefehldt said.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Upper Peninsula saw a movement toward industrialization. People made use of resources in and around Lake Superior and its shoreline as they traveled, transported goods and built towns and cities. The local industrialization efforts were a form of coastal development, and undoubtedly required communication and planning from everyone involved.
“Although many of our goals and concerns may have changed over the years, communication, planning and building a healthy local economy are still important parts of the sustainability conversation,” said Dr. Mittlefehldt.
After establishing what can be learned from the past, CoPe (Coastlines and People) shifted its focus to the present. Jordan was interested in the current relationship among the lakeshore, tourism and outdoor recreation. “The lakeshore is creating outdoor recreation,” Jordan said. “Climate change is kind of part of that.”
Jordan explained that as the northern climate warms, people are less inclined to move south for outdoor activities. Instead, there is increasing use of Lake Superior’s shoreline for recreation. “That creates some sense of place issues,” Jordan said. “It creates some economic issues, good and bad.”
An example of tourism’s impact can be seen from the 1.2 million people who visited Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore during a global pandemic in 2020. This shattered the previous record of 858,000 set in 2019. Workshop participants from Munising and Grand Marais felt tourism could overwhelm their current infrastructure.
When talking about the present, the CoPe team learned which sustainability issues concerned stakeholders most. “We would get that information and then find experts associated with those topics and try to address those questions,” Dr. Jordan said.
Many stakeholders expressed concern over increased erosion and flooding, but they also wanted the shoreline to remain accessible to the public. After this discussion, the workshops considered how to protect the environment while also allowing future generations to enjoy it.
Several local organizations contributed to the project, including the architecture firm Studio RAD. “They were critical because they brought a skillset that we don’t have, which is designing and creating pictures to help people visualize different futures for the shore,” Thompson said.
The workshops discussed multiple potential solutions, each accompanied by an illustration from Studio RAD. Participants discussed the pros and cons of every option. Some of their quotes were printed in the magazine alongside Studio RAD’s images and written descriptions of each idea.
In addition to teaching and interacting with community members, the professors found the workshops to be educational experiences for themselves. “The effects of climate change on Lake Superior and the south shore were much greater than I had known,” Jordan said.
According to the Environmental Law and Policy Center, daily temperatures in the Great Leakes Region increased 1.4 degrees between 1985 and 2016. The report also projects an increase of 5.7 – 9.8 degrees by the end of the 21st Century.
Mittlefehldt enjoyed working with a variety of people to address widespread sustainability issues. She says people often become isolated within their fields of expertise, so the workshops provided a valuable opportunity to break those barriers.
“Probably the best thing that came out of this was the collaboration between all the different entities, different levels of government, private sector, public sector,” Mittlefehldt said. “It was just a really great mix of people that kind of was what made the project successful.”
Thompson agrees. In retrospect, she sees more value in the experience. Due to the pandemic, she fears this opportunity may not arise again for quite some time.
“Having a workshop with 70 people with different perspectives, representing different stakeholders, that was such a gift,” Thompson said. “That was such a treat, and I now know we can’t do that on Zoom.”
Thompson says strong communities are those that can come together despite their differences to work towards a common goal. The importance of working together can be seen throughout the CoPe project. Jordan emphasizes this point as well.
“Involving local people in local decision making is important, and that takes this community ownership,” Jordan said. “So it’s not fair when just a few people from a community make decisions about their shoreline.”
The professors all hope that these workshops helped encourage discussions about sustainability. Mittlefehldt would like to establish a sustainability hub at NMU which would facilitate similar interdisciplinary work among faculty, staff, and community members.
“I always enjoy working with people outside of my own disciplinary expertise, because I think that’s where we find real solutions to environmental challenges that we’re facing,” Mittlefehldt said.
Thompson wants to see the conversation about sustainability continue to grow and expand beyond the academic world. Ideally, she would like to see planning codes line up with the identity of these coastal communities.
She says the key to avoiding this is to be pracademic. The word is a portmanteau of ‘practitioner’ and ‘academic.’ It implies academic expertise and active participation in a field. In the case of sustainability, a pracademic would not only discuss problems and potential solutions, but also implement those solutions.
“I think sometimes people assume research can’t be local, can’t be real,” Thompson said. Thompson hopes that CoPe will help prove those doubters wrong.
To view more images and read more information about the workshops and those involved, click here. A digital publication of the project’s findings can be found here. To learn more about the National Science Foundation, visit their website.