PELLSTON, Mich. — The University of Michigan Biological Station in northern Michigan is offering visitors the opportunity to tour the historic field station, meet scientists and learn about their research.
UMBS will host an open house at its main research and teaching campus along Douglas Lake just south of the Mackinac Bridge from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, July 21.
Guests will be able to explore campus and meet with UMBS researchers who will be available to discuss their areas of expertise — including the Great Lakes Piping Plover captive rearing team who has been working for more than 30 years to save the iconic shorebird species — and showcase living organisms as well as mammal specimens from the UMBS collection. Entry is free and open to all.
During the open house, visitors also are invited to participate in a poetry workshop at 12:30 p.m. with the artist in residence at UMBS in July.
“We are thrilled to welcome local community members and families to one of the nation’s largest and longest continuously operating field stations,” said Dr. Aimée Classen, UMBS director and a professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “Founded in 1909, it’s a place of scientific discovery that alters the way you see the world. Together we can inspire deeper understanding and appreciation of local lake ecosystems and improve public engagement to support conservation.”
Refreshments will be served at the open house at 9133 Biological Rd. in Pellston, located off Riggsville Road.
Laboratories and cabins are tucked into 10,000 acres along Douglas Lake.
Research areas at the Biological Station are wide ranging yet interwoven and share the collective goal of understanding the changing environment of northern Michigan.
For example, scientists track carbon storage and fluxes through successive forest systems and to the atmosphere, monitor mating habits and nesting sites of the endangered Great Lakes Piping Plover, and assess the impacts of dam removal on animal and plant populations in local rivers and wetlands.
The poetry workshop is titled “Imagining Futures.” No poetry experience required. Dr. Madeleine Wattenberg, an award-winning poet and an assistant professor of writing at Lakeland University in Wisconsin, describes the plan for the session: “What will human society look like through a whale’s eye hundreds of years into the future? What if toxic algae blooms overtook the oceans? What poems would the dust write after humans are gone? Speculative poetry inhabits future worlds, visionary perspectives and alternate realities. During this session, our conversation will be rooted in the belief that a necessary part of advocating for our environment is imagining futures that offer new possibilities for life. We’ll read a poem that accomplishes this work and then write a poem from the perspective of an animal or plant in the far future.”
Learn more about Wattenberg in the UMBS news story about her artist residency.
Founded in 1909, the U-M Biological Station is one of the nation’s largest and longest continuously operating field research stations. For 116 years, students, faculty and researchers from around the globe have studied and monitored the impact of environmental changes on northern Michigan ecosystems.
The core mission of the Biological Station is to advance environmental field research, engage students in scientific discovery and provide information needed to understand and sustain ecosystems from local to global scales. In this cross-disciplinary, interactive community, students, faculty and researchers from around the globe come together to learn about and from the natural world and seek solutions to the critical environmental challenges of our time.
For more information about the scientific field station, visit the UMBS website and follow us on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram.
