Great Lakes WATER Institute (also known as the WATER Institute, Wisconsin Aquatic Technology and Environmental Research Institute, GLWI) is a freshwater research center of the University of Wisconsin System administered by the Graduate School of

University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UW–Milwaukee, UWM, or Milwaukee) is a public urban research university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is the largest university in the Milwaukee metropolitan area and a member of the University of Wiscons ...

.Great Lakes Water Institute Gives UW Researchers Unique Access to the Study of F resh Waters
, Wisconsin Idea, December 1999, Volume 16, No. 3, Page 5. Located on

Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...

's inner harbor, it is the only major aquatic research institution located on

Lake Michigan Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...

and the largest of its kind in the

Great Lakes region The Great Lakes region of North America is a binational Canadian–American region that includes portions of the eight U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin along with the Canadian p ...

. The WATER Institute is both a UW-Milwaukee Center of Excellence and a UW System Regents Center of Excellence. It became the main component of UW-Milwaukee

School of Freshwater Sciences A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compulsor ...

in 2009 with the goal of turning

into a world freshwater research hub.

Fleet and facilities

''Neeskay'', whose name was derived from Native American language in

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

, is the Institute's main research vessel. In addition to Neeskay, the institute also has a fleet of small boats. The WATER Institute also houses aquatic holding tanks for

aquaculture Aquaculture (less commonly spelled aquiculture), also known as aquafarming, is the controlled cultivation ("farming") of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, mollusks, algae and other organisms of value such as aquatic plants (e.g. lot ...

and an instrumentation shop capable of making custom-made instruments.

Institutions

The WATER Institute hosts UWM Center for Great Lakes Studies, NIEHS Marine and Freshwater Biomedical Sciences Center, University of Wisconsin Aquaculture and Fisheries Research Center, University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute, Advisory Services Milwaukee Field Office and Wisconsin DNR Southern Lake Michigan Fisheries Management, and Law Enforcement Units. The WATER Institute is also home to the GLUCOS buoy sensor network and the ROV Team at UWMs PantheROV.

GLUCOS

The Great Lakes Urban Coastal Observing System (GLUCOS) is a buoy-based sensor network that will support research on the interactions between Milwaukee Harbor and the lake, and other processes in coastal

. The GLUCOS is composed of two types of buoys; Endurance Buoys which are large seasonal buoys and Pioneer Buoys which are small relatively easy to deploy buoys. The Pioneer Buoys are spar buoys anchored to the bottom, with custom electronics attached to the mooring lines monitoring data from

sondes Sondes is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Baron Sondes **Earl Sondes ***George Milles, 1st Earl Sondes (1824–1894) *Viscount Sondes *George Sondes, 1st Earl of Feversham Sir George Sondes, 1st Earl of Feversham KB (Nove ...

, temperature sensor strings, and other sensors as needed for research purposes.

PantheROV

PantheROV is the name of the

remotely operated vehicle A remotely operated underwater vehicle (technically ROUV or just ROV) is a tethered underwater mobile device, commonly called ''underwater robot''. Definition This meaning is different from remote control vehicles operating on land or in the ai ...

(ROV) built by undergraduate students at the

(UWM) for the annual

MATE Mate may refer to: Science * Mate, one of a pair of animals involved in: ** Mate choice, intersexual selection ** Mating * Multi-antimicrobial extrusion protein, or MATE, an efflux transporter family of proteins Person or title * Friendship ...

ROV Competition, essentially an underwater robotics competition. PantheROV is a conjugation of UWMs mascot, the panther, and ROV. The ROV Team at UWM is supported by the Great Lakes WATER Institute and various other sponsors. The team is open to all undergraduate students at UWM. Many of the students on the ROV Team have worked concurrently at the GLWI and have provided large engineering contributions to the Great Lakes Urban Coastal Observing System (GLUCOS).

References

External links