Working Waterfront Lecture Series- Exploring Great Lakes’ Hidden Geoparks: Lake Huron’s Sinkholes

Modern-day benthic microbial mats resembling those in early Earth’s shallow seas and those found today in the deep sea, find refugia in low-oxygen, high-sulfur, submerged sinkholes of Lake Huron. Prof. Bopi Biddanda will share the excitement of two decades of exploration of Lake Huron’s sinkholes, and ponder the relevance of the findings to major issues of both scientific and societal interest such as oxygenation of our biosphere in the distant past, Earth’s current biologic and physiologic diversity, and humanity’s ongoing search for extra-terrestrial life.

Presenter Dr. Bopi A. Biddanda is a professor at Grand Valley State University where he studies and teaches about the microbial biogeochemistry of the Laurentian Great Lakes – explores life in extreme environments, operates a time-series buoy observatory in Muskegon Lake, and teaches graduate and undergraduate classes. In 2022, he was a Fulbright Fellow in Spain studying Earth’s lakes as sentinels of ongoing global change. He serves as GVSU’s representative to NASA’s Michigan Space Grant Consortium.