Focused CoPe: Strengthening Resilience of Manoomin, the Sentinel Species of the Great Lakes, with Data-Science Supported Seventh Generation Stewardship

Native communities are disproportionately affected by threats of land development (e.g., mining, logging, oil/gas pipelines) and climate change. Extreme weather events, warming waters, and rapid habitat loss reduce the ability of these communities to access, maintain, and use coastal resources such as Manoomin (Ojibwe word for wild rice). Manoomin grows in coastal wetlands, and its range has decreased considerably, making understanding, conservation, and restoration of manoomin habitat a critical challenge for the Great Lakes.

Manoomin ties the physical and ecological issues of coastal wetlands to the spiritual, social, and subsistence issues of the people who have lived on these coasts, and acts as an interface between people and coastlines. This Focused Hub will develop cyber, scientific, educational, and community foundations to ensure 7th generation sustainability and resilience of the Great Lakes by bringing together tribes, government, conservationists, and researchers around Manoomin as a pillar of Ojibwe culture and livelihood, and as a keystone sentinel species for understanding and conserving Great Lakes coastal wetlands.

This Focused Hub will use a holistic, transdisciplinary approach to untangle the interconnected human, coastal, and climate change issues causing region-wide manoomin decline in the Western Great Lakes. The Hub will advance scientific capacity to measure, understand, and predict changes in coastal wetland ecosystems, focusing on manoomin as a vital sentinel species.

Direct partnerships with Native Nations and Communities will affirm local sovereignty over coastal land, water, and ecosystems, and inform resilience decisions at community, tribal, national, state, and regional levels. The Hub will increase coastal community capacity through community engagement, knowledge co-production, and training a new generation of scientists and leaders from currently underrepresented communities in the region.

The Hub enables basic research on coastal wetlands processes across four Themes: 1) Sensing and Data Science Cyberinfrastructure will combine local and remote sensing with Data Science approaches to develop a deeper understanding of coastal wetlands. This theme will provide data to support the other Themes: 2) Physical and Environmental Processes will unravel the fundamental processes that underlie wetland systems, focusing on the combined effects of water, sediments, and contaminants in manoomin ecosystems, 3) Governance, Social, and Human Dimensions will investigate the governance systems that guide decision-making and the social and human dimensions of manoomin resilience. 4) Community Engagement, Communication, and Education will strengthen relationships between university researchers, government, tribal entities, and conservation organizations while building novel educational opportunities for Indigenous students.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.