June 4 | Issue 20

Brought to you by the Michigan Vernal Pools Partnership

Greetings, Vernal Pool People! 

As per usual, spring monitoring season was a flurry of activity. This year, virtual training was moved up to February, so when the first spring rains started in early March in southern Michigan, we were ready. In typical midwest fashion, we all dealt with temperature swings and a few surprising and unwelcome storms. 

But the Pool Patrollers persisted, with over 40 partner organizations & program coordinators hosting events and providing education and support, while more than 250 volunteers took to the forest to collect data on Michigan's magical wetland ecosystems. 

We are excited to share a quick spring recap of all this good work and will continue to highlight it across the summer. 

In this issue, you will find:

• An outreach and training effort summary,
• The spring 2026 Vernal Pool Patrol mapping and monitoring report, and 
• A wonderful example of community action in Clinton County that led to the protection of vernal pools!

Enjoy!

Field Training & Outreach Effort. We should absolutely be celebrating the education & outreach efforts of our partners this season.

In 2026, partners hosted 21 field trainings, 6 presentations, and 27 guided vernal pool explorations/monitoring visits, for a total of 54 events.

We estimate in total that about 1,000 people across 28 counties were engaged in vernal pool education and conservation this year!

Student Education Effort. Vernal pools are an excellent opportunity to engage students with hands on ecology. Between individual teacher trips & larger partner efforts, partners worked with around 200 students at vernal pools this spring. 

Chippewa Nature Center, Michigan Nature Association, Inland Seas, Stoney Creek Metropark, and Little Traverse Conservancy explored and monitored vernal pools with elementary age students, girl scouts, and preschoolers. 

At the college level, students at Mid-Michigan College in Trish Finerty's ENV200 class mapped and monitored pools as part of their classwork!

In total, over 1,200 individuals were engaged across the season. A big thank you to all our partners for a successful outreach and training effort!

Watch our social media this summer for partner spotlights and season highlights!

Man, those Pool Patrollers were busy! Here is a summary from the Michigan Vernal Pool Database of the spring monitoring effort.

This effort occurred across 45 Michigan counties and there were over 250 volunteers surveying this year. A successful season for the Pool Patrol!

Look out for the summer Pool Report in August for more data analysis after we have spent some time with the data! 

*This summary includes ONLY data submitted via the Survey123 field app and does not include paper data forms that will be entered into the database this fall.

Clinton County Parks Incorporate Pools into their Master Plan

Written by Hannah Jacobowitz

Every day, we pass by places we’ve seen hundreds of times, and we recognize the parts we know: the stores we shop at, the streets we drive on, the plants and animals we find familiar. But the more you learn about the world, the more there is to notice – and sometimes, if you look carefully, it might just so happen you spot something that you’re uniquely qualified to help protect.

Last year, Adelyn Geissel, then the CTAI program assistant at the Clinton Conservation District, uploaded a photo of some fairy shrimp she had encountered to the Conservation District’s monthly board meeting – and to her surprise, one of the board’s members noticed something that caught his attention. He recognized the fairy shrimp from a recent trail mapping expedition he had gone on at the Clinton Trails County Park, where the wet, spring weather had drastically changed an ecosystem that had been dry during the first round of mapping the previous fall. Wanting to know more, he reached out to Geissel – and that’s where her partnership with the Clinton Trails County Park began.

“It ended up being kind of a series of right time, right place [events],” said Geissel. “It just happened to be that I was trained for this, I was doing it, I decided to add a picture for the first time to my board report, and he happened to see it and recognize it – and it just kind of went from there.”

The mission of the Michigan Vernal Pools Partnership is to increase awareness, understanding and protection of vernal pools through conservation, research & mapping, education & outreach and collaboration.                                     

The Vernal Pool Patrol is a community science and place-based vernal pool mapping, monitoring, and education program consisting of classroom instruction and data collection in the field. Members learn how to follow a standard protocol to help identify, map, and monitor locations of vernal pools within their local communities.