PELLSTON, Mich. — Undergraduate students in the new “Observation and Modeling of Climate Change Biology” course at the University of Michigan Biological Station built a flux tower along Douglas Lake on Tuesday, May 27, to measure atmospheric data and environmental conditions.

It’s the same portable device that Dr. Gil Bohrer has erected in extreme environments around the world, including the Arctic in February 2023 when the temperature was -30 degrees.

Dr. Gil Bohrer helped his students build a flux tower at UMBS on May 27.

“The portable flux tower will stand along the shoreline at UMBS outside Stockard Lakeside Lab for two weeks,” said Bohrer, the course instructor, a UMBS researcher and a professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at The Ohio State University. “If the wind is right, we can measure carbon fluxes from the lake.”

The tall metal structure, which requires a ladder to reach the top of, holds different sensors and computers to measure atmospheric data and environmental conditions.

From the wiring to the instrumentation, students worked together under Bohrer’s guidance to get everything balanced, secure and operational.

Sarah Bungard, a UMBS student and a junior at Ohio State University studying ecological engineering, built a flux tower with her UMBS class on May 27.

“It’s a really fun class,” said Julia Cole, a senior at U-M studying Program in the Environment (PitE). “We’re doing a lot of hands-on stuff and working with data and doing modeling and the more coding and science-y stuff with computers which I enjoy a lot of.”

“I didn’t even know what a flux tower was going into the class,” said Nickolas Holcomb, a senior at U-M double majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology and PitE. “There are different kinds of flux towers. This one seems to be more on the meteorology side — taking humidity details, wind speed, temperature change. Over time you can see how the temperatures, humidity, and different measurements change and you can compare that to other literature to kind of peel back some of the layers of what could potentially be causing climate change. It’ll be super cool to get that data back and be able to do things with it.”

Ameriflux tower at UMBS

Bohrer said the hands-on field experience in the students’ first full week of class for the 2025 spring term prepares them to use one of the most iconic research pieces in the UMBS catalog that’s much higher in the sky: the AmeriFlux tower.

AmeriFlux is a network of instrumented eddy covariance sites in North, South and Central America that measure ecosystem carbon dioxide, water and energy fluxes as well as other exchanges between the land surface and atmosphere.

UMBS is one of AmeriFlux’s Core Sites where ongoing observations are updated regularly for more than 25 years.

The tower at UMBS provides one of the highest quality long-term datasets on forest carbon dynamics in the world. And its data is downloaded every day by scientists to understand how ecosystems respond to climate change and improve the performance of models that predict climate change and interpret satellite-borne observations on the state of our ecosystem.

View of the students' flux tower at 6:15 a.m. on Friday, May 30. Photo from Renee Kinney, UMBS maintenance supervisor.

For UMBS students, their smaller but mobile flux tower is opening a window to a whole new world.

“A lot of our in-the-class time is spent learning about different aspects of climate change and the history of it as well as learning how to code certain things in different languages — whether that’s in R, JuMP or MATLAB — to analyze the data we’re looking at,” Holcomb said. “And what we just built was a machine that helps collect data to analyze and do stuff with in the class.”

“It’s very new for me,” Cole said. “This is my first time at the Bio Station and, honestly, it’s awesome having classes where you’re going outside and moving around. Right now, we’re listening to music, we’re next to the lake, the wind is blowing, but we’re still learning and doing things. And that is incredible. I didn’t really realize what I was missing back on campus in Ann Arbor. You don’t really get to go outside and be hands on for most of your classes. And just getting to have that at UMBS, it gives so much joy and engages so many different parts of your mind.”

This is the debut of the “Observation and Modeling of Climate Change Biology” course at UMBS. It focuses on the science behind climate change, and specifically on physical processes at the Earth-surface, and the interactions between the ecosystem, human activities, and climate change. This course is unique in that students have the opportunity to practice measurement techniques of surface fluxes, radiation and ecosystem interaction with climate change in northern Michigan.

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The U-M Biological Station — the largest of U-M's campuses — is one of the nation's largest and longest continuously operating field research stations.

Founded in 1909, the Biological Station supports long-term research and education. It is where students and scientists from across the globe live and work as a community to learn from the place.

The University of Michigan Biological Station serves as a gathering place to learn from the natural world, advance research and education, and inspire action. We leverage over a century of research and transformative experiences to drive discoveries and solutions to benefit Michigan and beyond.

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Nickolas Holcomb, a UMBS student and a senior at U-M double majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology and PitE, stood on a ladder outside Stockard Lakeside Lab to work with his class to build a flux tower on May 27.