# Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health

> **NIH NIH P01** · UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR · 2024 · $548,641

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY: OVERALL
The Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health (the Center) at the University of Michigan (UM) is
building on five years of successful interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement to further our
understanding of the critical risk that climate change, and resulting cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms
(cHABs), pose to freshwater ecosystems and human health. Increased precipitation, more powerful storm
events and warming waters all encourage the proliferation of cHABs, which now occur in all five Great Lakes.
This Center, led by a multi-institutional team of biomedical scientists, limnologists and community engagement
experts with an extensive history of working together, seeks to advance the work begun in Lake Erie, which
has experienced the most severe cHAB events in the last decade–including a 2014 episode that led to a
complete shutdown of the Toledo, OH, water supply. The Center’s four research projects will directly address
overarching themes prioritized by the COHH4 program. First, we will specifically resolve how climate change
influences the spread of cHAB taxa, development of blooms, production of toxins, and transport of those toxins
in the Great Lakes and in the atmosphere. Second, we will study toxins and mechanisms of toxicity, including
identification of emergent toxins and determination of health risks associated with airborne and waterborne
toxins. Third, we will develop new technologies for enhanced monitoring and forecasting; we will collaborate
with colleagues at NOAA and the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR) to integrate our
findings into state-of-the-art forecasts and other data products that reach a wide stakeholder audience. Fourth,
we will leverage an extensive network of community engagement vehicles in the Great Lakes, including the
Michigan and Ohio Sea Grants, public health departments, state and local agencies, the Great Lakes
Integrated Science Assessment (GLISA), and community science initiatives involving Lake Erie Charter Boat
captains and the U.S. Coast Guard. The Center’s Administrative Core is focused on supporting and
coordinating the four integrated research projects, a Community Engagement Core, and a Facilities Core, to
ensure progress toward the stated goals of understanding and translating climate change effects on cHAB
events and their threats to human health in the Great Lakes region.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10732522
- **Project number:** 2P01ES028939-06
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
- **Principal Investigator:** Gregory James Dick
- **Activity code:** P01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $548,641
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2018-09-30 → 2029-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10732522

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10732522, Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health (2P01ES028939-06). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-11 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10732522. Licensed CC0.

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