Lush, green lawn may be a point of pride for many lakefront homeowners, but the fertilizer used to achieve it can have unintended consequences.

Wetlands are easy to overlook, especially their importance. They may look like unassuming acres of native plants, wet soil, and trees, filled with frogs and other amphibians and animals. That is, until your basement floods, your favorite lake turns green, the shoreline at your lakeside home erodes, or the spring night chorus of frogs you usually enjoy goes silent. These aren’t wastelands but an assembly line of working landscapes – part sponge, part kidney, part nursery – tha

Michigan lakes, streams, and rivers get their life from the watersheds that feed them, and the health of those watersheds is crucial to the life of those waterbodies. With 63 major watersheds in Michigan that break into another 267 sub-watersheds, these networks of lakes and streams eventually make their way to the Great Lakes. To dive deeper into efforts to maintain the health of watersheds, five Southeast Michigan Watersheds, including the Clinton River, Rouge River, Huron

Dredging an inland lake is necessary for recreational reasons but can also be destructive to a lake’s local ecosystem.

Blessed by the Southeast Michigan Catholic Churches as a Lenten rescue, hailed as an ecosystem indicator, a boon to the fur industry, but can also be a bane to the existence of lakefront property owners – Michigan muskrats. For generations, these small furry nocturnal or crepuscular (active at dawn and dusk) creatures have navigated Michigan’s rivers, lakes and streams, making their homes on the banks and creating huts on the water.

Home insurance can be complex for lakefront property owners, with insurance agents recommending these homeowners have the necessary amount of insurance to provide significant financial protection against a catastrophic event like structure fire or serious personal injury.

More than 300 named lakes are scattered across Oakland County, which suggests that the number of lakefront restaurants with water views are plentiful.

Aquatic water insects are some of the least studied elements of the Michigan lake ecosystem, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways for local residents to support the insect population.