Research and Innovation

The Wild Mile is not only a gateway to the Chicago River, but a critical hub for the study of ecosystems on a heavily urbanized waterway.

  • Plants — Chicago Botanic Garden

 

Plants — Chicago Botanic Garden

The plants of the Wild Mile and our other locations are *painstakingly* chosen by the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Woman’s Board Curator of Aquatics, Peter Nagle. Peter has over a decade of experience working with the artificial lake’s shoreline at the Botanic Garden, and his expertise has been critical to the health and success of the gardens. Through our work together, we have identified a handful of rockstar species that perform exceedingly on our floating wetlands, coming back year after year, despite the faunal attrition (e.g. perpetual war with geese & muskrats). Since planting the first islands, our top performing plants have been:

Asclepias Incarnata (Swamp Milkweed), Carex Comosa (Bristly Sedge), Eupatorium Perfoliatum (Common Boneset), Euthrochium Maculatum (Joe Pye Weed), Filipendula Rubra (Queen of the Prairie), Hibiscus Moscheutos (Swamp Rose Mallow), Iris Virginica (Blue Flag Iris), Juncus Effusus (River Bulrush) and Verbena Hastata (Blue Vervain)

Chicago Botanic Garden’s Budburst Program also helps us compare blooming times between our plants and the same species in more traditional wetland or terrestrial settings. This is important, as many insects, birds and other pollinator species need diverse food types available year round, and the phenology of the plants (when they start growing, blooming, producing seed) could be an important factor when considering plant selection. 

Water Chemistry — Illinois State University

The success of our projects in improving the health of urbanized waterways begins with studying the most direct mechanisms by which the environment is changed by our interventions. In the Chicago River, we’re interested in a number of chemicals, such as heavy metals, nutrients, and chloride, oxygen, chlorophyll, and others. Since 2018, Urban Rivers has worked with the lab of Dr. Eric Peterson from the geology department of Illinois State University.

Studying the hydrology and nutrient cycling of streams and rivers throughout Illinois, Dr. Peterson’s support for our water chemistry research has been key, and lead to publication of a paper in the journal Hydrology in 2021 that demonstrates the uptake of phosphorous and nitrogen as water filters through the root systems of the floating wetlands. Other co-authors Emmett and Abigail, former graduate students in the Peterson lab, focused on heavy metals and nutrients respectively, and their work has been critical in evaluating the ability of floating wetlands to mitigate pollutants.

Future research planned with Illinois State includes multidisciplinary work tying water chemistry improvements to community wellbeing, and to study how river-based green spaces may impact gentrifying areas of the city. 

Aquatic Macro Invertebrates - Northeastern Illinois University, DePaul University, & the Chicago Metropolitan Water Reclamation District

Why care about bugs? Because they care about you, and do a LOT of stuff for you because of it! They are the ones breaking organic debris down and helping recycle the nutrients back into the ecosystem, mostly by getting eaten (a thankless task). Bug populations are routinely used as indicators of stream health, and by studying the changes in bug populations surrounding our islands, we can determine if our islands are supporting more diverse and abundant bug populations like we would suspect might happen. We measure this by deploying Hester-Dendy apparatuses, which are little bug hotels that we leave in the river for 6-8 weeks. As the gaps fill up with sediment, bugs crawl in, and then we pull the whole structure up, which allows us to get a snapshot of the community living in the river.

Northeastern Illinois University and DePaul University have supported work from undergraduate researchers Steph Mueller and Sam Garcia. Steph has continued on to help build the Bugs in Urban Rivers Program (BURP) which is our continuous monitoring program at the Wild Mile, Bubbly Creek, and our future location at River Park, the confluence of the North Branch and North Shore Channel. 

Fish — Shedd Aquarium and the Chicago Metropolitan Water Reclamation District

There are many habitat needs that fish have, which are generally in short supply in urbanized waterways. The presence of porous natural materials such as logs can disrupt current, and also support the growth of periphyton communities- algae, microbes, plankton and etc. Woody debris also offers places for fish to hide and escape predators, and provides shade and cooler waters on hot, sunny days. The root systems underneath the floating wetlands mimic this by blocking current, and providing growing surface for periphyton. As another benefit, the plants also uptake excess nutrients, increasing water clarity, which allows sunlight to penetrate deeper, and ultimately give submerged plants more opportunity to grow and add even more plants and oxygen from the bottom of the river.

Besides structure, fish also often require specific environmental conditions to support their reproductive cycles. Some fish stick their eggs to natural submerged surfaces such as logs or roots, while other fan out sandy or gravely spots on the bottom of the river where they will guard their nests until the juveniles hatch. In order to support these fish, we add submerged modules, which can mimic diverse bottom types, which are largely absent from urbanized rivers in general. In the case of the Chicago River, most channelized portions are several feet thick of sticky, fine organic sediment, which is difficult for most organisms to use.

The Shedd Aquarium and MWRD have been conducting fish surveys in the Wild Mile since 2016, and research biologist Dr. Austin Happel looks specifically at larval and juvenile fish that inhabit the area, as well as tracking larger fish that pass through the canal. When focusing on fish, it is crucial to understand what about artificial floating wetlands they are attracted to, or might find useful. Among other surprising results thus far, in 2020 the MWRD tagged 10 largemouth bass in the Wild Mile, and one was later found having swam past the removed bridge at River Park and made it’s way 30 miles upstream to Skokie Dam!

Mussels — DuPage County Urban Stream Research Center

Freshwater mussels are some of the most important organisms in supporting healthy rivers, but they are also some of the most endangered in the world, due to extensive alteration to their habitat. Unlike oysters or non-native dreissenid mussels like zebra and quagga mussels, which glue themselves to hard surfaces, native mussels generally belong to the family unionidae, and a predominantly burrowing mussels.

With funding from 11th Hour Racing and Molson-Coors, we have developed submerged habitats that allow us to add diverse types of benthic substrate- which is the limiting factor keeping freshwater mussels from having robust, healthy populations in many stretches of the river. In order to help populate these habitats that we’ve built, we work with the DuPage County Forest Preserve’s Urban Stream Research Center. In the winter, we go out looking for gravid (pregnant) female mussels, and bring them back to the URSC, where they can extract the glochidia, and raise the juveniles in a protected place, escorting them through the most vulnerable part of their life cycles.  

Trash and Microplastics — Loyola University Chicago & the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

At Loyola University, the lab of Tim Hoellein looks specifically at sources of trash, and how litter and microplastics can effect biology and ecosystems. Apart from contributing data to Chicago’s litter task force, students in his lab have been able to use the Wild Mile as a location to do some novel work on exploring the relationship between plastics and the environment. Experiments such as those conducted by Raul, who looked at the differences in microbial communities growing on natural versus unnatural surfaces. Emily, a student and also a river ranger volunteer of ours, is using collected data to

With the student art institute of Chicago, we take this a step further. Student Valerie is designing and building ‘Gregory the Goose’, a functional art piece that will help strain out various sizes of plastic, gathering good data and bringing attention to microplastics issues in a fun, visually appealing way.

Birds and Bats — University of Illinois at Chicago & the Chicago Ornithological Society

Birds and bats are also critical to aquatic ecosystems, and likewise, healthy riparian corridors are vital for them. Birds and bats are doing a lot of pollinating and nutrient cycling, and they perform critical functions by eating fish and bugs from the river, and their waste then fertilizes things on land, which is a critical link in the ecosystem. Birds are especially threatened by urban environments, where the high abundance of glass and short trees next to windows causes excess injury or mortality. Bats likewise are impacted by excessive lighting, poor habitat quality, and fungal disease such as white nose syndrome. Rivers running through urban environments can create safe corridors which birds and bats can travel through or make homes in, and the disconnection from the land means they can more easily hide from predators such as rats and raccoons.

We’ve seen some pretty cool and impressive birds throughout the years, including tons of Black Crowned Night Herons, Cormorants, all kinds of ducks and songbirds, and even a Bald Eagle! Our volunteers monitor birds regularly, and at a public birding event in the spring of 2023, hosted with the Chicago Ornithological Society, we were able to identify the 100th and 101st bird species recorded in the Wild Mile. We have also experimented with building bird boxes to create nesting habitat for Cliff Swallows and Wood Ducks. 

Claudia has been Urban River’s bat expert since 2018. She, with the help of Lincoln Park Zoo, has deployed acoustic monitoring devices which can detect bat presence, and determine species by analyzing the specific feeding and territorial calls they make. Some species of bats need a regular water source, and others are looking for nocturnal insects to feed on.

Artificial Lighting — Northeastern Illinois University

Working with the lab of Dr. Aaron Schirmer, we have begun to explore the implications of artificial lighting on our aquatic ecosystems. Past work with satellite data has revealed that very few greenspaces in the city remain unimpacted by ecologically relevant levels of artificial lighting. And while the city’s riverfront ordinance does a great job of maintaining public accessibility to our waterways, property developers aren’t always required to do what’s best for the river ecosystem. The two actions they are required to take, are to maintain the walking path 24/7 year round (which means heavily salting in the winter) and to provide security lighting, which may or may not be redirected to exactly where it’s needed. Additionally, many river front properties over time have developed a generally shrubby, but persistent canopy. Multi-storied canopty is a very important feature for riparian edges to have, but in many cases, redevelopment means removing the existing canopy and replacing it with a handful of young trees, which no longer would prevent artificial light sources from being cast on the river directly. For this reason, we are interested in the amounts of light cast on the river, how it affects the wildlife that rely on the river, and develop ways and procedures to ensure that public riverwalk spaces are both safely illuminated, without contributing to local photo pollution. 

Trash Robot

In 2017 we built a trash robot designed to be piloted by the community. This interactive robot linked to our website and let anyone, anywhere, help clean up the trash in the Chicago River. The robot is currently down for maintenance but may one day return to clean waterways near you. Read more about development journey of this innovative machine here.

 

Research Partners