After Labor Day, many Lake Michigan beachgoers lament the unofficial end of summer. While they have enjoyed average to slightly below-average lake levels this summer, many Michiganders will remember a very different scenario that began playing out just a little over a decade ago. Starting in 2014, Lake Michigan, like the other Great Lakes, experienced increasingly high water levels, peaking in 2020. As water levels and wave energy increased during this time period, so did beach, dune, and bluff erosion.
For home- and business owners, as well as lakefront communities, the desire to protect their properties increased. In many instances, coastal property owners responded to these hazards by armoring their shorelines using a variety of hard structures, such as seawalls, revetments, and groins. However, while research shows that these structures may successfully protect an individual location from erosion, they often lead to unintended consequences such as disrupted sediment transport, enhanced coastal erosion of adjacent properties, and negative impacts on ecological communities.
While shoreline armoring is prevalent throughout the Great Lakes region, no studies have documented the changes in the percentage of armoring that results in response to a specific phase of high water levels and its associated effects of coastal erosion. Ethan Theuerkauf, a coastal geomorphologist and assistant professor with the Department of Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences at Michigan State University, decided to document the increase of shoreline armoring in response to rising lake levels.