Over the summer Midwest Underwater Explorers deployed the first of many Project Baseline stations in Southern Lake Michigan. The project seeks to track changes in environmental conditions in the lake, and serves as a point of engagement on Great Lakes environmental issues for all divers. We're keen to share our efforts both so local divers know how they can get involved, but also so that other groups thinking of undertaking projects in their area can take inspiration, best practices, and learnings from our effort.
What is Project Baseline?
Science strives to define an objective starting point - a baseline in which starting conditions such as water quality, water clarity, fish counts, living reef coverage, etc are compared to evolving conditions. Environmental declines can then be quantified and appropriate corrective actions developed. This comparative process is compromised when the measure of decline stems from nonexistent or poorly defined historical conditions. In this case, the baseline continually “shifts” downward as people with a different historical memory are outnumbered by newcomers – we refer to this phenomenon as Baseline Shift.
Baseline Shift is a significant force for environmental degradation because it shrouds problems from the light of public recognition. Establishing a global library of baseline measurements is one of the most important things we can do to protect our cherished natural environments – this effort is called Project Baseline.
Project Baseline Midwest
Project Baseline Midwest seeks to deploy a network of water monitoring stations in Lake Michigan, enabling data collection and community engagement. Officially launched during the summer of 2024, the project is testing station design in an iterative approach with plans to deploy 10+ stations in 2025.
The stations include temperature data loggers as well as instrumentation to enable citizen science data collection and engagement with any diver visiting the stations. An instruction sheet with QR codes to submit data is available on the boat that commonly visits the wrecks the stations are being placed next to.
Permits, Funding & Insurance
Working in Federal waters requires us to obtain permits, and siting the stations near wrecks additionally requires consent from the State Historic Preservation Office. As a volunteer organization, there was a learning curve as we sought out the correct offices to contact and permit processes to follow. The US Army Corps of Engineers Chicago Division office were great at guiding us through the process. Scientific devices are able to be authorized under a Nationwide Permit, which helps expedite things, but each station we deploy must apply for and receive separate authorization under the permit. Thanks to work done by the Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago, we often have good quality drawings and historical information about the wrecks that we can leverage in our permit applications. These prove essential in communicating our plans to the various parties whose approval we need.
In addition to the permitting requirements, our organization also undertook the effort of becoming a 501(c)(3) non-profit and obtaining liability insurance. This helps us to raise funds to offset the materials cost for the stations ($3-400 each in their current form) while also providing protection in the unlikely event of an issue.
Data Loggers and Data Publishing
Making the data collected widely available is key to the success of the project. MWUE will be publishing the data logger data sets to a number of scientific data aggregators as well as the Project Baseline database. The data loggers are set to record at 15 min intervals with the following parameters:
The data comes in a simple CSV format that we can export from the loggers - we expect this data to be married up to other data sets when being leveraged by researchers who access it via the aggregators.
We'll update this thread overtime as we get more stations installed. We're optimistic that out station will last through the winter storms. Several years ago current data loggers were deployed in the southern end of Lake Michigan. When the team went back to retrieve them in the spring, only one was still there, and the data was at times off the scale! So we're taking an iterative approach to the design, refining based on the experience installing, and ensuring we're not going to lose expensive data loggers.
Happy to answer any questions, either here on Scubaboard or via email!
What is Project Baseline?
Science strives to define an objective starting point - a baseline in which starting conditions such as water quality, water clarity, fish counts, living reef coverage, etc are compared to evolving conditions. Environmental declines can then be quantified and appropriate corrective actions developed. This comparative process is compromised when the measure of decline stems from nonexistent or poorly defined historical conditions. In this case, the baseline continually “shifts” downward as people with a different historical memory are outnumbered by newcomers – we refer to this phenomenon as Baseline Shift.
Baseline Shift is a significant force for environmental degradation because it shrouds problems from the light of public recognition. Establishing a global library of baseline measurements is one of the most important things we can do to protect our cherished natural environments – this effort is called Project Baseline.
Project Baseline Midwest
Project Baseline Midwest seeks to deploy a network of water monitoring stations in Lake Michigan, enabling data collection and community engagement. Officially launched during the summer of 2024, the project is testing station design in an iterative approach with plans to deploy 10+ stations in 2025.
The stations include temperature data loggers as well as instrumentation to enable citizen science data collection and engagement with any diver visiting the stations. An instruction sheet with QR codes to submit data is available on the boat that commonly visits the wrecks the stations are being placed next to.
Permits, Funding & Insurance
Working in Federal waters requires us to obtain permits, and siting the stations near wrecks additionally requires consent from the State Historic Preservation Office. As a volunteer organization, there was a learning curve as we sought out the correct offices to contact and permit processes to follow. The US Army Corps of Engineers Chicago Division office were great at guiding us through the process. Scientific devices are able to be authorized under a Nationwide Permit, which helps expedite things, but each station we deploy must apply for and receive separate authorization under the permit. Thanks to work done by the Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago, we often have good quality drawings and historical information about the wrecks that we can leverage in our permit applications. These prove essential in communicating our plans to the various parties whose approval we need.
In addition to the permitting requirements, our organization also undertook the effort of becoming a 501(c)(3) non-profit and obtaining liability insurance. This helps us to raise funds to offset the materials cost for the stations ($3-400 each in their current form) while also providing protection in the unlikely event of an issue.
Data Loggers and Data Publishing
Making the data collected widely available is key to the success of the project. MWUE will be publishing the data logger data sets to a number of scientific data aggregators as well as the Project Baseline database. The data loggers are set to record at 15 min intervals with the following parameters:
Range: -20° to 50°C in water
Accuracy: ±0.5°C from -20° to 70°C
Resolution: 0.04°C
Drift: <0.1°C per year
The data comes in a simple CSV format that we can export from the loggers - we expect this data to be married up to other data sets when being leveraged by researchers who access it via the aggregators.
We'll update this thread overtime as we get more stations installed. We're optimistic that out station will last through the winter storms. Several years ago current data loggers were deployed in the southern end of Lake Michigan. When the team went back to retrieve them in the spring, only one was still there, and the data was at times off the scale! So we're taking an iterative approach to the design, refining based on the experience installing, and ensuring we're not going to lose expensive data loggers.
Happy to answer any questions, either here on Scubaboard or via email!
