Link and photos the Dynamic Great Lakes

Barbara Spring's author page with books & videos  click the link to my books on Amazon.

Wetlands are an Important Part of the Great Lakes' Ecosystem

A red fox strolls through a wetland while a mayfly passes by.  Wetlands filter out pollutants and give shelter to young fish, frogs and turtles and other parts of the living web.

Some people may bulldoze these areas thinking they are worthless, but they are necessary and help sustain the ecosystem of the Great Lakes.

Watercolor by Barbara Spring

Read more about this in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes

The Dynamic Great Lakes

Whether fishing, enjoying the beach, wind surfing or looking for information about each of the five Great Lakes,  The Dynamic Great Lakes is for you.

This book is available on Kindle or as paper back.  It's easy to throw in your backpack or small bag as a reference to the amazing freshwater seas.

This handy little book is available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Schuler Books and Music, The Bookman and many other fine bookstores.

Barbara's Amazon Page  click here

Nuclear Power Plants on the Great Lakes

Here is an excerpt from my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes:
Plutonium, the most toxic substance known, is a by-product of
nuclear power plants. It is extremely hazardous because of its high
radioactivity: for half of its quantity to decay, it takes 24,360 years.
Our aging Nuclear Power Plants on the Great Lakes presently have
nowhere to store plutonium except on their property.
On the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant property on the shore of
Lake Michigan near South Haven, eight 100 ton casks stand on a
concrete slab only 150 feet from the waters of Lake Michigan.
The 16½ foot high casks are eleven feet in diameter and weigh
100 tons. They consist of a steel basket encased in 29 inches of
concrete and stand on a concrete slab. Palisades may eventually have
25 casks. Plutonium is so toxic that it could mean an end to life as
we know it in the Great Lakes region. Low-level radionuclides like
tritium escape into the ecosystem from these plants and like other
toxins, radioactivity magnifies through food chains. The nuclear
power plants are aging and must be phased out. Their radioactive
wastes pose an urgent problem that will have to be solved soon. No
one has solved the problem of how to store plutonium safely.

 photo of Palisades showing storage casks.

Palisades plans to shut this plant down in October of 2018.

Donald Cook Plant water usage  Click the links

Donald_C._Cook_Nuclear_Generating_Station

Energy Solutions and the Dynamic Great Lakes

Energy and the Great Lakes  
Click the link

This link has important information about new ways to create energy that is good for Planet Earth including the Great Lakes.

Nuclear Power is NOT the way to go.  On Lake Erie

Read more about this in The Dynamic Great Lakes a critically accalaimed non-ficiton book.
Available wherever books are sold.

Podcast about Books and the Great Lakes

My interview with Kevin Collier will be available March 26-27, 2016 and then after those dates:
Barbara Spring's podcast  or go to http://bookmarkedradio.blogspot.com/

I talk about the Great Lakes and how I wrote my book,  The Dynamic Great Lakes.  I talk about my poetry books, Between Sweetwater and Sand, Sophia's Lost and Found, and The Wilderness Within.

Bookmarkedradio is a podcast about books.  Tune in.

Ice Builds on the Great Lakes

While ice builds on the Great Lakes, the wooded dunes in West Michigan are blanketed with snow. The birds work to find food and have been coming to bird feeders and suet cakes. We have seen woodpeckers, cardinals making splashes of red against the white snow. Chickadees and nuthatches along with many other birds enjoy the handouts and we are happy to see them in our yard. Out on Lake Michigan's ice packs we have been seeing the American bald eagles. These birds will have their high flying courtships in February. Right now they are looking for any fish that may have washed up. Read about the return of the eagles, an environmental victory in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes available where fine books are sold such as Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble etc. Also available for the Kindle reader.

The Lakes are Always Changing

Read about natural and man made changes in the Great Lakes in The Dynamic Great Lakes.

They are truly freshwater seas.

http://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Great-Lakes-Barbara-Spring/dp/1588517314

Great Lakes Water Levels are Down

The Great Lakes water levels are down.  With so much water it does not seem possible that people in the Great Lakes basin need to conserve water, and yet it is becoming necessary.

 According to Alan Steinman, PhD and director of Grand Valley State University’s Annis Water Resources Institute in Muskegon, dredging in the St. Clair River by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has lowered water levels by a couple of inches. Dredging opened the drain to cause the lake water to run out to the Atlantic at a faster pace.  Other causes of lower water is evaporation—a hot summer—little rain and snow and little or no ice cover in the winter.  Global warming is causing great changes in the Great Lakes.  Lower water levels dry up wetlands around the lakes.  These areas are nurseries for fish and birds and serve to filter out pollutants.  Boaters may find themselves high and dry. 

So for those living in the Great Lakes watersheds, don’t waste water.  Think of ways to conserve.

Read more about the Great Lakes in The Dynamic Great Lakes.  The book will provide you with basic facts about Great Lakes and how they function.  The book is available on Amazon’s Kindle and in paperback.  Also available from Barnes and Noble and many other places where books are sold.

Steelhead Fishing in a Great Lakes' Tributary

Steelhead are running from Lake Michigan to tributaries.  Pictured is Norm Spring holding a steelie. He is on the Grand River that runs right through downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Norm is a founder of the Steelheaders organization.

Steelhead are a strain of rainbow trout that spend part of their lives in the Great Lakes where they grow larger than rainbow trout that stay in streams and do not migrate.

Read more about Great Lakes fish in The Dynamic Great Lakes widely available on the web and in stores such as Schuler Books and Music, The Bookman, Barnes & Noble.

Also available on Amazon's Kindle reader.

The Steelhead are Running Now

Unlike some types of salmon that may die after spawning, the steelhead lives to return and spawn year after year guided by their uncanny senses. Their particular place of birth is imprinted in their bodies and nothing short of death can keep them from returning to it. Their senses, especially their senses of taste and smell and extra senses located in lateral lines, lines that run along both sides of their body from the tail to the head, guide them to their traditional place for spawning. Beneath their lateral lines are a system of pores, canals and sense organs linked to the brain. With their lateral lines, fish are able to detect unseen enemies or prey. They sense currents, obstacles with the lateral line's sixth sense, in an intermediate area between hearing and touch; it allows the fish to remember low frequency vibrations and pressure waves built up as the fish passes rocks or other fish. Experiments have shown that fish use their keen sense of smell to help them home in on their traditional spawning grounds imprinted in their memories.


Great strength, speed and endurance make trout and their close relatives the salmon, the champions of fish. Their strength propels them over dams and through swift currents.

Read more about fish and other denizens of the deep in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes available on the Kindle reader, and as a paperback on Amazon.com, bn.com, Schuler Books and Music and many other fine bookstores.

Satellite picture of the Great Lakes

From a satellite the Great Lakes waters are easily seen from space.

These freshwater seas support an amazing array of life from the prehistoric looking sturgeon to recently planted fish such as Pacific salmon: chinook and coho.

Read more in The Dynamic Great Lakes available at Barnes and Noble as well as Amazon.com and many other online stores such as Schulerbooksand music.

Barbara Spring is a former university professor, and journalist and environmental activist. I have published three books:
The Dynamic Great Lakes is about what lies below the waters of the five Great Lakes and the importance of their ecosystems. The book is for the general public and may be used in schools from middle school on up. Folks who like to fish, boat, kayak, and just beach comb are enjoying this book. It has a search inside feature on Amazon.com and it has been updated in a fourth critically acclaimed edtion.  When ordered from this link, the price is $9,95 + s&h. http://www.publishamerica.net/product23502.html

My book of poems, The Wilderness Within has a look inside feature on Amazon.com. It received wonderful reviews. These are nature poems and a couple of essays. The poems are from many countries and about many peoples.

Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below is now available on line and in bookstores. Sophia personifies wisdom and sometimes she seems to be lost to humans.

Book Review of the Dynamic Great Lakes

photo by Steve Damstra

Here is a review of The Dynamic Great Lakes.

 It is a green book--perfect for Earth Day.

U.S. Water News - Peter Wild

Are dinosaurs cruising the benthic depths of the Great Lakes even while we go about our daily tasks? Not exactly. Yet sturgeon, fish weighing up to 300 pounds and similarly plated with armor,are nosing around down there. Occasionally you can see the monsters appear, making their spawning runs up rivers and surfacing like submarines in the pools beneath waterfalls... The five Great Lakes, holding nearly twenty percent of the earth's fresh water, are quite young. Gouged out by glaciers, they assumed their present shapes a mere 3,000 years ago. For that, they are a dynamic shifting system, still changing and exhibiting surprising differences. Lake Ontario, for example, the easternmost, although smallest of the bodies, holds more water than Lake Erie, its shallower nearby sister. Here's a handy primer for all such things, from the interaction of phytoplankton and calcium carbonate that gives a white cast to these inland oceans come August and helps clean the water to the charming ice volcanoes spouting chilly "lava" in the winter. This is intriguing stuff for adults, but the straightforward presentation also lends itself to use in schools, beginning about the sixth grade and up. And yes, we get the latest news on the zebra mussel, the tube nose goby, and other threats to the natural scheme of things. Also good news; how since the banning of DDT in the 1970's, the bald eagles have come back.

For an up to date copy, order from bn.com or from the publisher.

http://www.publishamerica.net/product23502.html

Beach Grass at Hoffmaster State Park

I painted this on the beach at Hoffmaster State Park where one can learn about dune succession.

This single beach grass can withstand drought and wind and helps build sand dunes.

I got much of the information for my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes from park naturalists at Hoffmaster State Park located in Norton Shores West Michigan. 

http://www.publishamerica.net/product95488

Now $9.95 + s&h

The Dynamic Great Lakes and Earth Day

The Dynamic Great Lakes shows what people have been able to do by thinking globally and acting locally.  Since before the first Earth Day, people have brought about environmental victories in and around the Great Lakes.  There is still much to be done.  Read the book and think of ways to participate.

Order the book here: http://www.publishamerica.net/product725.html DGL

Water Levels in the Great Lakes: NOAA Information

The information below is from the NOAA educational website.  The photo is on the cover of my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.  The scene is an alvar on the Bruce Peninsula in Canada on Lake Huron.

"Water levels in the Great Lakes change because of meteorological effects, not tides.

Water levels in the Great Lakes have long-term, annual, and short-term variations. Long-term variations depend on precipitation and water storage over many years. Annual variations occur with the changing seasons. There is an annual high in the late spring and low in the winter. These changes occur at a rate that can be measured in feet per month.

True tides, changes in water level caused by the gravitational forces of the sun and moon, do occur in a semi-diurnal (twice daily) pattern on the Great Lakes. Studies indicate that the Great Lakes spring tide, the largest tides caused by the combined forces of the sun and moon, is less than five centimeters (two inches) in height. These minor variations are masked by the greater fluctuations in lake levels produced by wind and barometric pressure changes.

Consequently, the Great Lakes are considered to be essentially non-tidal.

For more information:

Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services

Great Lakes Water Level Data

Great Lakes Online

Tide Predictions and Data Frequently Asked Questions

Tides Tutorial, NOS Education

What are Tides? - Diving Deeper audio podcast "

Review of the Dynamic Great Lakes by Barbara Spring

U.S. Water News - Peter Wild


Are dinosaurs cruising the benthic depths of the Great Lakes even while we go about our daily tasks? Not exactly. Yet sturgeon, fish weighing up to 300 pounds and similarly plated with armor,are nosing around down there. Occasionally you can see the monsters appear, making their spawning runs up rivers and surfacing like submarines in the pools beneath waterfalls... The five Great Lakes, holding nearly twenty percent of the earth's fresh water, are quite young. Gouged out by glaciers, they assumed their present shapes a mere 3,000 years ago. For that, they are a dynamic shifting system, still changing and exhibiting surprising differences. Lake Ontario, for example, the easternmost, although smallest of the bodies, holds more water than Lake Erie, its shallower nearby sister. Here's a handy primer for all such things, from the interaction of phytoplankton and calcium carbonate that gives a white cast to these inland oceans come August and helps clean the water to the charming ice volcanoes spouting chilly "lava" in the winter.

This is intriguing stuff for adults, but the straightforward presentation also lends itself to use in schools, beginning about the sixth grade and up. And yes, we get the latest news on the zebra mussel, the tube nose goby, and other threats to the natural scheme of things. Also good news; how since the banning of DDT in the 1970's, the bald eagles have come back.

Youtube Video and The Dynamic Great Lakes

The Dynamic Great Lakes, a non-fiction book  by Barbara Spring has been called empowering since it shows what people can do to solve pollution problems in the Great Lakes.

Barbara Spring's Books

I have an author's page on Amazon.com.  On this page you can find out something about me and the books I have written.  There is also a forum for discussion of  my books.  Also I have a website: Barbara Spring's Books: http://barbaraspring.yolasite.com

The Great Lakes are a powerful presence in my life and in my books.