Great Lakes Circle Tour - Coastal Access Guide

The Great Lakes Circle Tour leads you around the largest freshwater system on the planet – but the main route often takes you far from the water's edge. This site shows you where to pull off the highway for a quiet beach, a hidden lighthouse, or a secluded park.

Great Lakes Coastal Community Planning Resource

The Great Lakes Coastal Community Planning Resource provides a toolkit to support comprehensive planning and sustainable development along the Lake Michigan and Lake Superior coasts of Wisconsin.

Stormwater Management GIS Tools

Many computer models have been developed to better understand the relationship between land use and water quality.  It can be difficult to determine which model to use in specific situations and, for GIS-based tools, it can be difficult to find and format the necessary data to use the tools within Wisconsin watersheds.

As part of the EPA/Sea Grant smart growth partnership, Jennifer Koehler, a Master’s candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, tested three nonpoint source pollution tools in the Baird Creek watershed near Green Bay (see Lake Michigan Watershed Stewardship project) and developed tutorials to make their use easier and more effective.  The tools include the Impervious Surface Analysis Tool (ISAT), the Nonpoint-Source Pollution Erosion Comparison Tool (N-SPECT), and the Source Loading and Management Model (SLAMM).

Lake Michigan Watershed Stewardship

As a partner in the Lake Michigan Forum (an EPA stakeholder group to promote Lake Michigan Lakewide Management Plan implementation), WI Sea Grant helped organize and conduct an assessment of stewardship capacity for the Baird Creek watershed – a tributary to Green Bay of Lake Michigan that is rapidly urbanizing and experiencing declining water quality. The purpose of the assessment was to engage a coastal community in examining their watershed problems and in building capacity for land and water stewardship. The Baird Creek Stewardship Assessment was published by the Delta Institute in November, 2004.

The assessment raised public interest in protecting a unique watershed with high biodiversity. Access to information about funding sources, technical assistance, training, organizing assistance and networking were provided. The assessment process strengthened consensus and cooperation among local watershed-based groups, county and town officials, land use planners, resources management agencies, land owners and developers to pursue recommended actions from the assessment report. Several projects are proposed or underway to implement recommendations for headwater wetland restoration, stream buffers, in-stream habitat restoration, community outreach, demonstrations of low-impact development, and training on stormwater and construction erosion BMPs. The Bay-Lake Regional Planning Commission examined the quantity and quality of stormwater runoff that would be generated in the Baird Creek watershed under a variety of build-out scenarios using the L-Thia model.Sea Grant further examined runoff in the watershed using several other models.

Exploring Wisconsin's Great Lakes Schooners: Integrating Underwater Archaeology, Shipwreck Preservation and Public Education
This project has greatly increased public access to Great Lakes shipwrecks and maritime history, strengthening Great Lakes tourism for coastal communities and public appreciation of the need to preserve these finite cultural resources.  The shipwrecks website is a major component of Wisconsin’s Maritime Trails, which is being developed in a partnership between Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) and UW Sea Grant (www.maritimetrails.org).  In addition, last summer’s archaeological fieldwork was documented daily on the popular online journal, “Notes from the Field 2004: Exploring Wisconsin’s Shipwrecks,” a Web-based chronicle of shipwreck exploration and related activities (www.maritimetrails.org/notes/index2.asp).