Video: New program brings together hundreds of students to solve sustainability challenges.

Video: Michigan Sea Grant researchers are constructing rock reefs to boost populations of lake sturgeon and other rare native fish. First stop: the St. Clair River delta northeast of Detroit. The goal is to promote “really robust, self-sustaining populations of lake sturgeon, whitefish, and walleye,” says project leader Jennifer Read.

Study: Pregnant female geladas show an unusually high rate of miscarriage the day after the dominant male in their group is replaced by a new male.

The percentage of Americans who believe in global warming has reached the highest level since the fall of 2009, rebounding from a period of significant decline, a new survey reports.

Fifty million years ago, India slammed into Eurasia, a collision that gave rise to the tallest landforms on the planet, the Himalaya Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau. India and Eurasia continue to converge today, though at an ever-slowing pace. University of Michigan geomorphologist and geophysicist Marin Clark wanted to know when this motion will end and why.

For the first time, the chemical “fingerprints” of the element mercury can directly link environmental pollution to a specific coal-burning power plant. “We see a specific, distinct signature to the mercury that’s downwind of the power plant, and we can clearly conclude that mercury from that power plant is being deposited locally,” said U-M researcher Joel Blum.

Related: Acid rain threatens Great Lakes sugar maples

Because they grow in calcium-rich soils, sugar maple forests in the Great Lakes region have largely been spared the damage caused by acid rain in the Northeast. But now, U-M ecologists has uncovered a different and previously unstudied mechanism by which acid rain harms sugar maple seedlings in Upper Great Lakes forests.

More than 3,000 gallons of Huron River water were trucked to the U-M campus recently to create 150 mini-Hurons that are used to study how environmental changes affect freshwater habitats like rivers and streams.

A wastewater treatment plant can provide the perfect mating ground for carelessly disposed of antibiotics to form superbugs that are eventually discharged into streams and lakes, says U-M researcher Chuanwu Xi.