Despite the decreased disaster resilience of rural communities in the Great Lakes region to flooding, flood mitigation efforts have been impeded by inadequate data and lack of appropriate tools for understanding flood risk. Development of such resources often requires data and computationally intensive approaches, which are challenging in data-scarce conditions. This study presents the development of a web application in Google Earth Engine (GEE) for flood risk assessment. The application utilizes the Height Above the Nearest Drainage (HAND) model and synthetic rating curve (SRC) for fluvial flood inundation modeling, the Simulating WAves Nearshore (SWAN) model for coastal flood inundation modeling, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) regional regression equations for estimating peak discharge, and depth-damage functions of the HAZUS-MH flood model for estimating losses due to building-level impacts. The GEE-based geospatial web application, which is operational across five counties in the Western Upper Peninsula (WUP) of Michigan, fulfills the requirement of the community and decision-makers to assess the risks caused by flooding in the region. We demonstrated the applicability of the tool in the Ontonagon River, Michigan, and the results indicate the suitability of the platform for implementing decisions, long-term planning, and understanding flood risk with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

High-resolution multispectral satellite imagery was utilized to quantify shoreline recession at eleven beaches around Lake Michigan during a record-setting water level increase between 2013 and 2020. Shoreline changes during this period ranged from 20 m to 62 m, corresponding to 52-95 % of the initial beach widths. Average estimated shoreline erosion across all beaches varied from 1 % to 75 % of the observed changes, with the remainder attributed to inundation. Significant correlations were found between shoreline erosion and waverelated factors, including offshore wave power, offshore bathymetric slope, storm energy, and potential alongshore sediment transport divergence. In contrast, parameters related to cross-shore transport, such as dimensionless fall velocity, exhibited weak correlations. Additionally, the results underscore the importance of distinguishing between immediately reversible changes (inundation) and morphological changes that could be reversible over longer timescales, when assessing the impact of rising water levels. The findings also suggest that in addition to waves playing a key role in regulating shoreline changes, alongshore sediment transport processes may play a more crucial role in beach erosion during significant water level increases than cross-shore processes, challenging traditional models of beach adjustment to rising waters.

Accelerated coastal erosion in Lake Michigan has been reported throughout the basin and on regional scales. A significant portion of regional coastal erosion is influenced by coastal structures such as harbor jetties of varying sizes. To understand the effects of coastal structures on local sediment transport and budget, this study focuses on medium-sized harbor jetties at South Haven, MI, in southeastern Lake Michigan, representative of many recreational harbors and harbors of refuge along Great Lakes shorelines. The wave-current-sediment transport processes were simulated using a coupled model, which integrates Simulating Waves Nearshore (SWAN), FiniteVolume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM), and Community Sediment Transport Modeling System (CSTMS). Our results indicate that during storm events, the presence of a pair of jetties consistently leads to a substantial decrease in longshore sediment transport on the downdrift side within a 2 km region. For the entire navigation season from April to December, the storm-time averaged currents and longshore sediment transport are predominantly southward. The jetties increase net sediment transport updrift of the jetties and enhance offshore sediment transport. Simultaneously, they significantly reduce downdrift sediment transport, with persistent eddy structures near the jetty limiting the sediment transported out of the immediate region adjacent to the southern jetty. Consequently, sediment can accrete on both sides of the jetties, potentially widening the beaches. Meanwhile, the region further south of the jetties experiences severe erosion due to a reduced sediment supply from upstream. Understanding the dynamics of sediment transport and budget, particularly with the jetties' influences, is crucial for coastal management.

In response to record-high water levels in the Great Lakes, there has been a notable surge in engineering interventions and the construction of armoring structures to mitigate shoreline erosion. However, the efficacy of these defensive measures against erosion and their broader implications for the physical vulnerability of coastal communities remain critical concerns. Our pilot study applied the Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) method to the Muskegon shoreline, enhancing it by calculating CVI values for individual parcels and integrating the shoreline rate of change and shoreline armaments. This approach localized variations and provided a precise understanding of factors influencing vulnerability. We found that using the shoreline rate of change allowed us to identify vulnerable areas prone to erosion due to dynamic shoreline processes and seasonal variations. In the study, seasonality significantly influenced vulnerability, particularly through ice cover, which aligns with findings on seasonal shoreline erosion risks from previous studies. It also underscores the importance of considering temporal dynamics in assessing coastal vulnerability in the Great Lakes region. We observed higher vulnerability in the northern and southern parts of the county's shoreline compared to the central areas. Sites near heavily armored properties exhibited increased vulnerability, highlighting the complex impacts of shoreline armors on adjacent areas. The developed CVI holds the promise of providing coastal managers with invaluable insights. Specifically, it guides the reclassification of high-vulnerability areas and informs the formulation of policies that address the multifaceted challenges associated with shoreline armoring.

Historically, research on coastal processes has largely been concentrated on oceanic environments which have much in common with the Great Lakes but also differ in significant ways. This is particularly true with respect to substantial and lasting water level fluctuations that occur on seasonal and decadal time scales that differ temporally from shorter term tidal fluctuations and greatly exceed long-term oceanic sea level rise. Since the late 1990s, the Great Lakes basin has experienced record-breaking high and low water levels as well as more frequent and intense storms. This combination of factors has led to changes to these nearshore environments and stimulated new and exciting coastal research characterizing and quantifying these changes and offering new insights into Great Lakes coastal processes. Studies in this special section address these unique coastal landscapes shaped by both natural forces (e.g., ice dynamics, waves, and fluctuating lake levels) and human influences (armoring, coastal structures, sediment nourishment, and policy interventions). The findings shared in this collection provide actionable knowledge for anticipating change, mitigating risk, and building long-term resilience while calling for adaptive management frameworks to foster proactive, equitable stewardship of the Great Lakes shorelines.

Coastal erosion is a hazard for sandy beaches along the Great Lakes of North America, especially during periods of high lake level. A barrier to managing these hazards is the lack of a process-based understanding of nearshore sediment transport and geomorphic connectivity. In this study, a multidecadal dataset of beach and nearshore profiles collected at six sandy beaches along the eastern coast of Lake Michigan and contemporaneous hydrodynamic data are utilized to quantify long-term boundaries of sediment transport during accretionary and erosive conditions. Our results indicate that at most sites longshore sediment transport is the dominant force shaping multidecadal profile evolution. Accretionary wave conditions can generally only transport sediment onshore from shallow sediment ridges of the inner nearshore and from the lower reaches of the subaerial beach in longshore drift. In contrast, erosive wave conditions can mobilize sediment from all areas of the profile and transport it offshore. Sediments stored in deeper nearshore bars can be activated by high-energy erosive wave conditions, but these features likely primarily function as multidecadal sinks for eroded beach sediment given the dominance of offshore-directed transport for these wave conditions. Furthermore, these results suggest that the likelihood of recovery following high lake level should decrease in this region as extensive coastal armoring reduces sediment availability and increases reflective wave energy in the accretionary wave-accessible portions of the nearshore. Ultimately, this study puts forth a simple method for predicting the likelihood of future beach recovery that can be used to help guide coastal management.

A recently completed study has created and documented the first comprehensive compilation of spatio-temporal shoreline change for a significant portion of Lakes Michigan, Huron and Superior with historical snapshots dating back to 1938. In total, more than 4100 km was mapped at sufficient fidelity to allow resolution at the individual property owner level, allowing property owners, communities, regional managers and planners as well as regulatory agencies to directly observe not only natural changes to shorelines, but also anthropogenic impacts associated with shoreline hardening. Products produced by this study are publicly accessible via a geospatial data portal, and include historical aerial photography mosaics, historical shoreline and bluff line positions, long-term shoreline rate of change analysis input and outputs, and an interactive web-based viewer incorporating these products with other complementary datasets. Long-term rate of change analyses found that while some areas of Lakes Michigan and Huron exhibited isolated rates of recession greater than 1 m-per-year (m/yr), the majority of the shorelines were stable over the 82 years analyzed, with Lake Superior exhibiting the most stability (85 %), followed by Lake Huron (65 %), while Lake Michigan exhibited the lowest percentage of stable shorelines (52 %). Additionally, analysis of short-term rates-of-change shows the potential to detect shoreline hardening based on the variance between a transect's short-term and long-term rates-of-change.

Sediment suspension and transport driven by waves and currents play a significant role in both the ecological and physical environments of large lakes. Lake Michigan has faced a rapidly increasing water level associated with intensified wind waves in the past decade. To investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) and associated coastal sediment budgets in southern Lake Michigan, a 30-year (1991-2020) hindcast was performed using a coupled wave-current-sediment model (SWAN-FVCOM-CSTMS). We found that in southern Lake Michigan, the basin-wide mean SSC increased, and the coastal sediment loss accelerated dramatically, corresponding with intensified waves, currents and lake water level rises over the past decade. The basin-wide mean SSC, coastal sediment loss, wave height, wind speed, current speed, and water level in southern Lake Michigan are highly correlated. Spatially, the results reveal decreases in coastal SSC and sediment loss in the western portion of the southern basin, while the eastern sectors show an increase in both metrics. This reflects a clear shift in the wave climate and hydrodynamic environment. The alterations in long-term coastal sediment budgets imply that considerable shoreline transformations are being influenced by modifications in the wave climate. Understanding the spatiotemporal characteristics of SSC and coastal sediment budgets is crucial for strategic water resource management and coastal infrastructure planning. The movement of sediment caused by waves and currents greatly impacts the health and shape of large lakes. Over the past decade, Lake Michigan's water level has been rising rapidly, associated with stronger wind waves. To understand how these changes affect the amount of sediment in the water and along the shore in southern Lake Michigan, we employed a complex model to capture sediment changes over past the 30 years (1991-2020). We found that the average amount of sediment suspended in the water and the loss of sediment along the shore both increased as the lake's water level rose and waves became more intense. These changes were strongly correlated with the height of the waves, wind speed, and water level in the lake. We also saw decreases in coastal suspended sediment concentration and sediment loss in the western portion of the southern basin, while an increase in sediment loss within its eastern sectors, reflecting a clear shift in the wave climate and hydrodynamic environment. The changes in coastal sediment over time suggest significant shoreline reshaping, driven by shifts in wave patterns and the hydrodynamic conditions. It's important to understand these changes to manage our water resources effectively and plan our coastal infrastructures wisely. Mean SSC and coastal sediment loss in southern Lake Michigan accelerated with intensified waves and lake level rise in the last decade Coastal SSC and sediment loss decreased in the western lake but increased in the eastern lake following the changes in incident wave energy Basin-wide mean SSC, coastal sediment loss, wave height, wind speed, and water level in southern Lake Michigan are highly correlated

Michigan enjoys along its inland seas, the Laurentian Great Lakes, one of the longest coastlines in the U.S. Much of that shoreline is privately owned. Because of a confluence of development pressures and irrepressible physical dynamics, growing numbers of Great Lakes shoreland properties, built on shifting sandy shores, are at heightened risk of loss from coastal storm surge, inundation, erosion, and shoreline recession. In response, property owners are installing extensive hardened shoreline armoring structures like seawalls and revetments to arrest those erosional processes. Those structures, however, will substantially impair, if not ultimately destroy, the state’s natural coastal beaches and other shoreland resources, as well as accelerate erosion of neighboring shoreland properties. The clash of imperatives to protect shoreland properties versus conserve coastal resources signifies a wicked dilemma the State cannot avoid: armor or withdraw? More precisely, should we allow the armoring of Michigan’s Great Lakes shorelines in an attempt to fix in place shoreland properties, at great and ongoing private and public expense, and ultimately risk the loss of public trust resources? Or should we allow—and should we compel shoreland property owners to allow—natural processes to proceed, even though doing so will increase the rate at which privately owned shorelands naturally convert into state-owned submerged bottomlands? We cannot hope to simultaneously protect both the beach and the beach house along naturally receding Great Lakes shorelines; we must choose which interest to prioritize first, recognizing the cost of doing so by losing the other. In addition to the complex physical dynamics at play along Michigan’s Great Lakes coasts, there are evolving legal complexities as well. The State, as sovereign, enjoys police power authorities that encompass coastal shoreland management. The State has also long recognized the applicability of the public trust doctrine to its Great Lakes shores, and its constitution mandates the protection of natural resources. This article first analyzes current Michigan law to determine how those doctrines and mandates apply to Great Lakes shoreline armoring, particularly in terms of what to prioritize. Based on that assessment, we conclude that Michigan’s courts, legislature, and people have consistently and clearly prioritized protecting and conserving Great Lakes natural coastal resources above developing or impairing them for private use, except when such development truly serves larger public trust interests. In contrast, the administrative rules now used to execute those protections prioritize protecting the private beach house first, even at the expense of destroying the natural beach and impairing other public trust interests. This administrative approach was not inevitable— indeed it may be unlawful—and it has created strong expectations on the part of shoreland property owners, heightening the likelihood of litigation. The article then analyzes current Michigan law to determine how the courts might resolve disputes between property owners hoping to armor the shore and State or local constraints on such armoring. Here we find that while the Michigan courts have resolved a number of key questions regarding coastal shorelands, there is no caselaw addressing directly the lawfulness of shoreline armoring. Based on our review of relevant caselaw, we conclude the courts are not likely to find that the State lacks authority to regulate—or prohibit altogether—shoreline armoring to protect coastal resources. There is conflicting caselaw, however, upon which the courts could rely to find either that the current regulatory regime provides adequate protection of coastal resources, or alternatively that it is deficient. Finally, beyond questions of regulatory authority, the courts are not likely to find that reinvigorated regulatory efforts to prevent the destruction and impairment of public trust coastal resources from armoring—even those resulting in the accelerated loss of private properties—violate constitutional protections, especially if State reforms are undertaken with deliberation and care. If the courts conclude that current regulatory efforts are lawful and require no greater protection, then Michigan will likely see much of its Great Lakes shorelines armored and its natural coastal beaches destroyed. If they conclude that current regulatory efforts are deficient (or if they approve of reinvigorated protection efforts), however, then private shoreland properties may be lost to the lakes. Such losses cannot be avoided forever, especially along naturally receding shorelines, but they might occur sooner than would happen absent attempts to arrest shoreline erosion with armoring. As with most wicked policy dilemmas, the best response may not be at either extreme—always armor or always withdraw—but somewhere in between. Crafting that hybrid approach, and the appropriate rules for applying it, will be the most challenging course to navigate.

In this paper, high-resolution multispectral satellite images were used to uncover a remarkable shoreline transformation in Lake Michigan coastal areas, driven by a record-setting increase in the water level between 2013 and 2020. Shoreline change analyses were conducted for eleven different natural beaches around the lake, unveiling significant variations of shoreline retreat despite being affected by the same water level increase. The average observed shoreline retreats between 2013 and 2020 for the beaches ranged between 20 m and 62 m. When the passive inundation was excluded, the estimated morphological changes were found to differ significantly from site to site, with some locations experiencing minimal changes, while others encountered considerable morphological changes of up to 38m. The examination of the correlation between the morphological changes and ten hydrodynamic and morphological factors revealed strong correlations with the offshore slopes and beach width, with steeply sloping, wide beaches experiencing more erosion. Notably, wave power, longshore sediment transport divergence, and the number of storms exhibited moderate correlation with the observed morphological changes. The results of the shoreline changes and correlation analysis offer valuable insights into the varied effects of increased water levels on Lake Michigan beaches, including erosion and passive inundation, while shedding light on the key factors driving shoreline erosion in this context. These insights can help decision and policymakers in making informed choices regarding the protection and management of Lake Michigan coastal areas, particularly in anticipation of future incidents of water level increase.

Resilient planning for coastal hazards requires an understanding of both short-term and long-term coastal change dynamics. Numerous studies have been conducted throughout the Great Lakes of North America on processes and responses associated with short-term coastal changes, such as storms and seasonal fluctuations in lake level; however, few datasets exist that can capture long-term coastal morphodynamics in this region. Lack of data and knowledge creates a barrier for accurately modeling future coastal change, which underpins proactive coastal management. This is particularly problematic at sites adjacent to coastal infrastructure, such as those near harbors. To address this, we utilize a 32-year record of coastal profile change from several sites along the Lake Michigan shoreline of Michigan to examine profile evolution in response to changing lake levels and human disturbance. These data reveal that coastal sites without shoreline armoring can recover from erosive high lake level phases if lake level remains low for an extended period. However, if sites are armored, or if future climate conditions result in more frequent or more extreme lake level fluctuations, full recovery of the coastal profile is unlikely. Managers and decisionmakers can utilize this information to evaluate their site conditions and proactively plan for future coastal changes.

Among its many impacts, climate warming is leading to increasing winter air temperatures, decreasing ice cover extent, and changing winter precipitation patterns over the Laurentian Great Lakes and their watershed. Understanding and predicting the consequences of these changes is impeded by a shortage of winter‐period studies on most aspects of Great Lake limnology. In this review, we summarize what is known about the Great Lakes during their 3–6 months of winter and identify key open questions about the physics, chemistry, and biology of the Laurentian Great Lakes and other large, seasonally frozen lakes. Existing studies show that winter conditions have important effects on physical, biogeochemical, and biological processes, not only during winter but in subsequent seasons as well. Ice cover, the extent of which fluctuates dramatically among years and the five lakes, emerges as a key variable that controls many aspects of the functioning of the Great Lakes ecosystem. Studies on the properties and formation of Great Lakes ice, its effect on vertical and horizontal mixing, light conditions, and biota, along with winter measurements of fundamental state and rate parameters in the lakes and their watersheds are needed to close the winter knowledge gap. Overcoming the formidable logistical challenges of winter research on these large and dynamic ecosystems may require investment in new, specialized research infrastructure. Perhaps more importantly, it will demand broader recognition of the value of such work and collaboration between physicists, geochemists, and biologists working on the world's seasonally freezing lakes and seas.

Detailed knowledge of wave climate change is essential for understanding coastal geomorphological processes, ecosystem resilience, the design of offshore and coastal engineering structures and aquaculture systems. In Lake Michigan, the in-situ wave observations suitable for long-term analysis are limited to two offshore MetOcean buoys. Since this distribution is inadequate to fully represent spatial patterns of wave climate across the lake, a series of high-resolution SWAN model simulations were performed for the analysis of long-term wave climate change for the entirety of Lake Michigan from 1979 to 2020. Model results were validated against observations from two offshore buoys and 16 coastal buoys. Linear regression analysis of significant wave height (Hs) (mean, 90th percentile, and 99th percentile) across the entire lake using this 42-year simulation suggests that there is no simple linear trend of long-term changes of Hs for the majority (>90%) of the lake. To address the inadequacy of linear trend analysis used in previous studies, a 10-year trailing moving mean was applied to the Hs statistics to remove seasonal and annual variability, focusing on identifying long-term wave climate change. Model results reveal the regime shifts of Hs that correspond to long-term lake water level changes. Specifically, downward trends of Hs were found in the decade of 1990–2000; low Hs during 2000–2010 coincident with low lake levels; and upward trends of Hs were found during 2010–2020 along with rising water levels. The coherent pattern between the wave climate and the water level was hypothesized to result from changing storm frequency and intensity crossing the lake basin, which influences both waves (instantly through increased wind stress on the surface) and water levels (following, with a lag through precipitation and runoff). Hence, recent water level increases and wave growth were likely associated with increased storminess observed in the Great Lakes. With regional warming, the decrease in ice cover in Lake Michigan (particularly in the northernmost region of the lake) favored the wave growth in the winter due to increased surface wind stress, wind fetch, and wave transmission. Model simulations suggest that the basin-wide Hs can increase significantly during the winter season with projected regional warming and associated decreases in winter ice cover. The recent increases in wave height and water level, along with warming climate and ice reduction, may yield increasing coastal damages such as accelerating coastal erosion.

Navigation of autonomous surface vessels, less than 20 m in length, in large sea states is difficult and often precludes successful completion of the assigned mission or, in the worst case, survivability. Operation in high seas requires sensing of the local wave environment and determining a vessel trajectory that maximizes survivability based on knowledge of the vessel response functions and prediction of the incident wave field forward in time. To achieve this objective, new technologies are being developed and tested in full scale at the Marine Autonomy Research Site (MARS), located in central Lake Superior and operated by Michigan Technological University. In this initial set of experiments, a skilled human operator was used as a surrogate for an envisioned wave-adaptive autonomous control system. The test vehicle is a fully instrumented personal watercraft, operated by a U.S. Coast Guard-trained surf-boat operator in moderate sea states with Froude number (Fr) = 1.0 through a course consisting of upwave, cross-wave, and down-wave legs. Results dramatically document that the wave-dodging maneuvers employed are designed to minimize vessel pitch (preserve propulsor and rudder control) while allowing increased vessel roll. Comparisons of the straight line with wave-dodging circuits during constant sea state conditions show that vehicle roll is at times twice greater in wave-dodging runs while vehicle pitch averages half to one third of that in the straight-line course. These data suggest that optimum paths do exist through steep, evolving incident wave fields and these optimum paths can produce significant improvements in vessel survivability.

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Scenario-based planning offers the promise of enhancing local coastal management given uncertainties from shoreline dynamics and climate change. Deploying it can require substantial capacity, however, or can obscure the key policy choices a community faces. We set out to develop and test a simple, decision-centered approach to scenario-based planning as a way to improve local management of coastal shorelands through master plans, focusing on coastal hazard mitigation. We also looked for ways to use basic spatial analysis techniques and off-the-shelf data sources that could be manipulated to generate meaningful and reasonably accurate analyses. We find the simplified and decision-centered methods we have developed can provide useful information for local decision makers. We also find the quality of the master plans adopted by two partner localities that used our scenario-based planning methods substantially exceeds the quality of comparison plans with regard to coastal management.Takeaway for practice: Using simplified, decision-centered, scenario-based planning methods can facilitate enhanced hazard mitigation analysis and policy adoption in local master plans. Those methods necessarily will and should be tailored to the unique political and physical conditions of the community, as demonstrated by the leadership provided in the localities studied here.

This paper represents the overview of hydrographic surveying and different types of modern and traditional surveying equipment, and data acquisition using the traditional single beam sonar system and a modern fully autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) IVER3. During the study, the data sets were collected using the vehicles of the Great Lake Research Center at Michigan Technological University. This paper presents how to process and edit the bathymetric data on SonarWiz5. Lastly, it compares the accuracy of the two different sonar systems in the different missions and creates 3D models to display and understand the elevations changes. Moreover, the 3D models were created after importing the data sets in the same coordinate system. In this study, the data sets were recorded by two different sensors in the two study locations in the Keweenaw Waterway in Michigan, U.S. between the cities of Houghton and Hancock. The first one equipment is the Lowrance HDS-7 sonar on the surveying boat, and other one is the EdgeTech 2205 sonar on the fully AUV of IVER3. One of the purposes of this study is to explore the sonar post processing programs, which are very important to interpret sonar and bathymetric data, and obtained the same coordinate system of the study areas. During the project, three main processing programs were used. The first one is UnderSee Explorer 2.6, which has been used to process the data sets of Polar SV boat. Secondly, EdgeTech Discover 4600 bathymetric software used EdgeTech 2205 sonar data sets to create bathymetric files that were used in SonarWiz5. Lastly, SonarWiz5 sonar processing software can be used to process the data sets. After the data acquisition and the data process, six profiles from the first study area and the five profiles from the second study are created to compare the data sets and elevations difference. It is shown that single beam sonar might miss some details, such as pipeline and quick elevation changes on seabed when we compare to the side scan sonar of IVER3 because the single side scan sonar can acquire better resolutions to understand the 3D features, such as pipelines, reliefs etc.

A study was conducted to address the wind energy potential over Lake Michigan to support a commercial wind farm. Lake Michigan is an inland sea in the upper mid-western United States. A laser wind sensor mounted on a floating platform was located at the mid-lake plateau in 2012 and about 10.5 kilometers from the eastern shoreline near Muskegon Michigan in 2013. Range gate heights for the laser wind sensor were centered at 75, 90, 105, 125, 150, and 175 meters. Wind speed and direction were measured once each second and aggregated into 10 minute averages. The two sample t-test and the paired-t method were used to perform the analysis. Average wind speed stopped increasing between 105 m and 150 m depending on location. Thus, the collected data is inconsistent with the idea that average wind speed increases with height. This result implies that measuring wind speed at wind turbine hub height is essential as opposed to using the wind energy power law to project the wind speed from lower heights. Average speed at the mid-lake plateau is no more that 10% greater than at the location near Muskegon. Thus, it may be possible to harvest much of the available wind energy at a lower height and closer to the shoreline than previously thought. At both locations, the predominate wind direction is from the south-southwest. The ability of the laser wind sensor to measure wind speed appears to be affected by a lack of particulate matter at greater heights. Article History: Received June 15th 2016; Received in revised form January 16th 2017; Accepted February 2nd 2017 Available online How to Cite This Article: Standridge, C., Zeitler, D., Clark, A., Spoelma, T., Nordman, E., Boezaart, T.A., Edmonson, J., Howe, G., Meadows, G., Cotel, A. and Marsik, F. (2017) Lake Michigan Wind Assessment Analysis, 2012 and 2013. Int. Journal of Renewable Energy Development, 6(1), 19-27. http://dx.doi.org/10.14710/ijred.6.1.19-27

This project, funded by the Department of Energy as DE-EE0005376, successfully measured wind-driven lake ice forces on an offshore structure in Lake Superior through one of the coldest winters in recent history. While offshore regions of the Great Lakes offer promising opportunities for harvesting wind energy, these massive bodies of freshwater also offer extreme and unique challenges. Among these challenges is the need to anticipate forces exerted on offshore structures by lake ice. The parameters of interest include the frequency, extent, and movement of lake ice, parameters that are routinely monitored via satellite, and ice thickness, a parameter that has been monitored at discrete locations over many years and is routinely modeled. Essential relationships for these data to be of use in the design of offshore structures and the primary objective of this project are measurements of maximum forces that lake ice of known thicknesses might exert on an offshore structure.