Upper Peninsula Research Articles

High Daily and Year-Round Variability in Denitrification and Nitrogen Fixation in a Northern Temperate River

Rates of nitrogen (N) cycling processes like denitrification and dinitrogen (N2) fixation, which together are the primary contributors to N2 flux rates from surface waters, may change at different time scales from seasons to weeks to days. Yet, we know little about the magnitude, mechanisms or drivers of these temporal changes, especially at shorter daily and weekly timescales. Quantifying variation in rates and drivers across temporal scales is essential to understand how nutrient cycling processes operate in aquatic ecosystems and predict how they may respond to shifting seasonal dynamics caused by global change (i.e., earlier snowmelt and extreme weather events). This study quantified denitrification and N2 fixation rates seasonally and daily in a northern temperate river, and explored how environmental conditions such as discharge, light, and N and phosphorus (P) concentrations were related to that variation at different time scales. We measured denitrification and N2 fixation rates on biweekly and daily intervals at a single 20-m long sampling reach in the Pilgrim River in Michigan's Upper Peninsula from May 2017 through May 2019. We found high rates of daily change (difference in rate from one day to the next) for both processes in all seasons (maximum daily change 5,690 μg N/m2/h for denitrification and 38 μg N/m2/h for N2 fixation). No detectable differences in rates among seasons were detected using Multiple Response Permutation Procedure (MRPP). Day-to-day variation did not change before and after elevated discharge events, including a 1,000-year flood that occurred in June 2018. Partial least squares (PLS) regression identified total dissolved N, dissolved organic N, and ammonium as important predictors of denitrification and N2 fixation, but explained only 15–28% of the variation in all measured rates. The unexpectedly high daily variation and lack of seasonal difference in rates found in this study demonstrate the need to use caution when studying these processes and/or extrapolating rates across time scales, as discrete and infrequent measurements may be misleading.

Changing Snow Conditions and Shifts in American marten (Martes americana) distribution in Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Changing Snow Conditions and Shifts in American marten (Martes americana) distribution in Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Books Received

Books Received Edwin M. Bradley Jerry Dennis. Up North in Michigan: A Portrait of Place in Four Seasons. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021. Pp. 177. Illustrations. Hardcover: $24.95. Jerry Dennis, the award-winning Traverse City-based nature writer, brings more of his evocative prose to Up North in Michigan, a collection of short essays that celebrates the natural history and scenic wonder of northern lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. Dennis explores the territory in every season and kind of weather, on foot, on bicycle, and in canoes and cars. "After a lifetime of exploring it," he writes about his home territory, "my appreciation just keeps growing." (55) The essay titles are well chosen—pieces such as "Bird Camp Memories," "The Color of Steelhead," "Summer Work and High Water," and "The Overlooked Forest"—evocatively clue the reader in as to what's ahead. Particularly amusing is "The Rules of Cottage Living," which will connect with anyone who has spent more than a season or two in a warm-weather getaway. ________ Bob Hunter. Road to Wapatomica: A Modern Search for the Old Northwest. Columbus, OH: Culloden Books, 2021. Pp. 438. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Maps. Paperback: $32.95. In Ohio, Bob Hunter might best be known as the Columbus Dispatch sports columnist of many years and chronicler of Buckeye football history in multiple books. However, he is also interested in general American history, as evidenced by his tomes on Ohioan James Thurber and on Columbus as a city. In Road to Wapatomica, his journey—physical as well as literary—through the vestiges of the Old Northwest, Hunter begins by wending his way through his native Ohio and ends up in northeastern Minnesota. Of course, he spends much time in Michigan, with stops at Fort Detroit, Fort St. Joseph, St. Ignace, Sault Ste. Marie, and elsewhere. Hunter knows how to tell a good story, and his detailed accounts of the past are nicely supplemented by keen observations of the present state of these sites, where human intrusion can evoke sadness. Then there's the time Hunter watches a little boy visiting Fort Michilimackinac reply to a tour guide's question about the British king during the American Revolution with an enthusiastic answer: "Elvis Presley!" [End Page 167] ________ Joe Niese with Bob Dorais. Gus Dorais: Gridiron Innovator, All-American and Hall of Fame Coach. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018. Pp. 254. Appendices. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Paperback: $25. Charles "Gus" Dorais is an undervalued figure in football history. He is generally linked with the famed Knute Rockne as the Notre Dame duo who revolutionized the forward pass in 1913 (Dorais was the quarterback, Rockne the receiver). But Dorais played a significant role in sports within his adopted home of Michigan. He was head coach of the University of Detroit when it was a regional, and sometimes national, power from 1925 to 1942. He coached the Detroit Lions, although not as fruitfully, during the mid-1940s. (Dorais also served four terms on the Detroit Common Council.) A pioneer of offensive strategy, Dorais played with and coached against most of the football legends of his time. Joe Niese, with the assistance of Gus's grandson Bob, offers a well-researched, informative account of the player-coach's life. Gus Dorais: Gridiron Innovator, All-American and Hall of Fame Coach provides a view into the man behind the coach's whistle while telling a story long overdue. [End Page 168] Edwin M. Bradley Historical Society of Michigan Copyright © 2022 Historical Society of Michigan

FOOT INJURIES IN MICHIGAN, USA, GRAY WOLVES (CANIS LUPUS), 1992-2014.

The range of gray wolves (Canis lupus) in the contiguous US is expanding. Research and monitoring to support population recovery and management often involves capture via foothold traps. A population-level epidemiologic assessment of the effect of trap injuries on wolf survival remains needed to inform management. We describe the baseline rate, type, and severity of foot injuries of wolves born 1992-2013 in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, evaluate the reliability of field-scoring trap-related injuries, and the effect of injuries on wolf survival. We assessed foot injuries by physical and radiographic exam at postmortem and/or time of capture for 351 wolves using the International Organization for Standardization 10990-5 standard and the effects of injuries, sex, age, previous capture and body condition on survival using proportional hazards regression. We used ordinal regression to evaluate epidemiologic associations between sex, age, previous capture, body condition, cause of death and injury severity. Most wolves (53%) experienced no physically or radiographically discernable foot injuries over their lifetimes. Among those wolves that did experience injuries, 33% scored as mild. Foot injuries had little epidemiologically discernable effect on survival rates. Wolves with higher foot trauma scores did experience an increased risk of dying, but the magnitude of the increase was modest. Most limb injuries occurred below the carpus or tarsus, and scoring upper-limb injuries added little predictive information to population-level epidemiologic measures of survival and injury severity. There was little association between injury severity and cause of death. Based on necropsy exams, previous trap injuries likely contributed to death in only four wolves (1.1%). Our results suggest that injuries resulting from foothold traps are unlikely to be a limiting factor in recovery and ongoing survival of the Michigan gray wolf population.

Spatially Explicit Kirtland’s Warbler Habitat Management Scheduling in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

A spatially explicit management strategy is presented for Kirtland’s Warbler (Setophaga kirtlandii) habitat on the Hiawatha National Forest in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The Hiawatha National Forest has a goal of continuously providing large patches of dense young jack pine for Kirtland’s warbler breeding habitat. The problem is challenging as patches of suitable habitat are relatively short lived, forcing large shifts in the location of large patches in the future. In this study, alternative management strategies for providing habitat are described, explicitly mapped, and compared on a 70,600 ha landscape in the context of implementing many desired conditions of the forest’s land management plan. Strategies are developed by using two interacting scheduling models. Comparisons address overall habitat levels, habitat spatial arrangement through time, and financial trade-offs. The financial cost of managing habitat is high and there are further financial trade-offs associated with aggregating habitat into large patches. Furthermore, the marginal cost of habitat increases as more habitat is added to the management system. Managers may use information about the added costs of spatially explicit habitat management to help evaluate the added benefits to the species. It is often expensive to establish wildlife habitat and desirable ecological conditions, but results show that there are potential benefits from using detailed computer-aided management scheduling tools to support the decision-making process.

Access to maternity and prenatal care services in rural Michigan.

The United States physician shortages affect rural health care access, including maternity care. Project aims were to identify and characterize prenatal and delivery care in Michigan's rural counties and to explore access to trial of labor after cesarean (TOLAC) services for women in rural Michigan. Descriptive, cross-sectional design used 2015 Medicaid claims data and public health plan information to identify maternity care services provided within Michigan's rural counties. Publicly available health plan information was used to identify rural maternity hospitals and prenatal care practitioners; findings were verified by Internet searches and telephone interviews. Medicaid claims data were used to determine services provided. High-risk geographic areas were defined as those where women needed to travel >30 miles for maternity-related care. Expected TOLAC rate was determined based on published national birth data; rural hospitals were stratified based on whether they met the expected TOLAC rate, delivered 20%-60% of expected rate, or billed ≤1 TOLAC birth to Medicaid in 2015. In Michigan's 57 rural counties, only 29 hospitals provide maternity care. Geographic high-risk areas were identified in the Upper Peninsula and northeast Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Only two rural hospitals billed for the expected rate of TOLAC births; six delivered at a lower rate, and the remaining 21 hospitals provided no TOLAC services, resulting in large areas of the state where women were not offered this option locally. Maternity care services are limited for many rural Michigan women. Findings can be used to target specific strategies to improve access to care for these women. Similar analyses, exploring patterns of maternity care delivery in other rural regions worldwide, may uncover similar or additional inequities.

Two for One: Conservation of Aquatic Ecosystems With Buffers Protects Terrestrial Ecosystems

Abstract We evaluated how three widths of buffer zones on greater than or equal to 100-ha wetlands (240, 300, and 390 m) and rivers (10, 20, and 30 m) would help meet watershed conservation goals in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, USA, and whether doing so also would protect each of the predominant types of terrestrial natural communities across the landscape. The use of buffer zones (even the narrowest widths assessed) around wetlands and riparian zones met or exceeded conservation targets in 75% of watersheds and greater than or equal to 85% of subwatersheds evaluated. Wetlands and riparian zones with buffers captured each of the predominant types of terrestrial natural community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but not proportionately to their availability across the entire landscape. Our work demonstrates that a landscape-conservation approach focused on wetlands and riparian zones with buffers can conserve terrestrial, wetland, and riparian ecosystems across Michigan's Upper Peninsula and may also be applicable in other areas where mapping of wetlands and rivers occurs.

Assessing the Ecological Need for Prescribed Fire in Michigan Using GIS-Based Multicriteria Decision Analysis: Igniting Fire Gaps

In fire-suppressed landscapes, managers make difficult decisions about devoting limited resources for prescribed fire. Using GIS-based multicriteria decision analysis, we developed a model assessing ecological need for prescribed fire on Michigan’s state-owned lands, ranging from fire-dependent prairies, savannas, barrens, and oak and pine forests to fire-intolerant mesic forests, and including a diversity of wetlands. The model integrates fine-scale field-collected and broad-scale GIS data to identify where prescribed fire needs are greatest. We describe the model’s development and architecture, present results at multiple scales, introduce the concepts of “fire gaps” and “fire sink”, and rate the fire needs of more than 1.8 million hectares into one of six fire needs classes. Statewide, fire needs increase with decreasing latitude. The highest and lowest needs occur in southwestern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, respectively, but actual fire application rates for these regions are inverted. The model suggests burn rates should be increased 2.2 to 13.4 times to burn all lands with greater than high fire needs. The model identifies regional patterns; highlights specific sites; and illustrates the disparity of fire needs and fire application. The modeling framework is broadly applicable to other geographies and efforts to prioritize stewardship of biodiversity at multiple scales.

The Shattered Cross: French Catholic Missionaries on the Mississippi River, 1698-1725 by Linda Carol Jones

Reviewed by: The Shattered Cross: French Catholic Missionaries on the Mississippi River, 1698-1725 by Linda Carol Jones Kenneth C. Carstens Linda Carol Jones. The Shattered Cross: French Catholic Missionaries on the Mississippi River, 1698-1725. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2020. Pp. 297. Figures. Index. Maps. Notes. Cloth: $50.00. I have been fascinated by early (colonial) New World Catholic missionaries since 1959, when my parents first took me to Fort Michilimackinac at the tip of Michigan's Lower Peninsula, then farther north to St. Ignace and Sault Ste. Marie, both in the Upper Peninsula. There, I learned firsthand about the work of the early Jesuit fathers, and their attempts (some successful, some not) to bring Native Americans to Christianity. By the mid-1960s, I had read Vernon Kinietz's book Indian Life in the Upper Great Lakes, 1615-1760 (1965), which further fostered my interest about the assimilation and acculturation process behind culture change. As a budding anthropologist, I read Reuben Thwaites's seventy-three-volume work Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 1610-1791 (1853-1915) through my college years at Central Michigan University. Now, added to these noted works, is a new book written by Linda Carol Jones. Jones, an associate professor of language area studies at the University of Arkansas, has further documented the influence of Jesuits from the Great Lakes area into the middle and lower Mississippi River valley. After reading Jones's work, I am confident her book will be considered of equal importance to the writings of Kinietz and Thwaites whenever studies about early colonial Jesuit history of the pays d'en haut are mentioned. Jones details the extraordinary, often reciprocal, and dynamic interactions (both good and bad) among different Native and European groups along the Mississippi River during the colonial (contact period) era. These dynamic cultural interactions might be Natives (various Illini groups and groups located further south along the Mississippi, like the Tamarois, Quapaw, Chickasaw, Natchez, or others) with other Natives; Natives and Europeans—the world of European traders (both French and English), coureurs de bois, and metis—and Europeans with other Europeans (e.g., Jesuits with various political leaders such as Cadillac, Iberville, or Bienville), explorers (e.g., LaSalle and Tonti), religious leaders (whether back in Montreal with the Petit Séminaire de Québec, in Paris, or with the Holy See at the Vatican), or different missionary sects also vying for Native converts to baptize. Indeed, Jones's book details the significant, and extremely complex, ideological and political considerations Jesuit fathers needed to "stay alive" (although martyrdom was not a bad thing if done for the right reasons), and how best to convert Natives to Christianity: force-feeding Christianity and European values to Native Americans in what Jones calls "Frenchification" (that is, forcefully [End Page 151] making Natives French men and women), or finding ways (linguistically or culturally) that Native Americans themselves selected to adopt; that is, letting the choice of acceptance or rejection be a Native one, whether for what the idea was, or a modification of the idea as it would best fit a Native cultural need or understanding. Indeed, when Frenchification was forced on Natives, the results ended in a "shattered cross." Although I considered my background in Jesuit history in North America better than average, I learned so much more about Colonial Jesuit history that I did not know previously, especially regarding the political climate between Jesuits and church leadership (that is, "Jesuits in the field" versus church leadership in Montreal, Paris, or the Vatican). Nor was I aware that the idea to begin missionary work among Native Americans along the Mississippi River had its origin in seventeenth-century Jesuit fathers in China. And although church philosophy in the late 1600s and early 1700s was to force "Frenchification" on the Natives, Jesuits who were the most successful as Christian missionaries were those who practiced love, allowing Natives to accept or reject on their own terms what part of French culture and Catholicism best served their needs. Colonialism, including intentional forms of assimilation, acculturation, and—yes—genocide, is not to be condoned in today's world. But it did happen. Ignoring that it happened presents an incomplete...

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Reviewed by: Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Boulley, Angeline Firekeeper’s Daughter. Holt, 2021 [496p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781250766564 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781250766571 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys Ad Gr. 7-10 Eighteen years ago, Daunis’ birth was a bit of a scandal, the result of a much-frowned-upon relationship between her white mother and her Anishinaabe father, but now, even as an unenrolled member of Sugar Island’s Ojibwe Tribe, she finds comfort and community in her father’s Firekeeper relatives. Everything goes to hell, however, when her best friend Lily is killed by her drugged-up boyfriend, and Jamie, the new guy Daunis has just started a relationship with, turns out to be an FBI agent investigating meth distribution in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Daunis agrees to go undercover to help Jamie find out where the drugs might be coming from, but as she digs deeper, she realizes her discoveries might irreparably damage her Ojibwe community. A perfectly calibrated pace and a constantly shifting list of suspects keep the tension high, and several red herrings are effectively deployed to surprise even the savviest of sleuthing readers. Unfortunately, the dialogue is frustratingly stiff, often serving more as exposition than realistic interaction, and too many disparate threads (including Daunis’ sexual assault by a friend’s father) are left unaddressed, crowding out the major plotline. Daunis makes an effective guide, however, through her Ojibwe community and traditions, and the tribe’s emphasis on the past informing the present plays out both thematically and in the action. Despite the book’s flaws, Boulley, an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, provides an #ownvoices thriller that may intrigue. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Rural climate resilience through built-environment interventions: modified deliberation with analysis as a tool to address barriers to adaptive capacity

ABSTRACT The public health impacts of climate change, and how they can be addressed through implementable built-environment interventions in non-agricultural-based rural communities, is an understudied area in the academic literature and adaptation planning practice, particularly in the United States. This paper addresses this gap in understanding through a pilot project that developed a climate and health-adaptation plan with Marquette County, a geographically large, coastal, non-agricultural-based, rural community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We show how the Deliberation with Analysis model of public participation, supported by visualizations and followed by post-participant surveys to measure its impact on barriers to adaptive capacity, can be used effectively to overcome barriers to adaptive capacity identified in the literature, specifically in understudied non-agricultural-based, rural, coastal communities in the United States. This study contributes to academic debates on adaptation and rurality by displaying the utility of a method that overcomes these key barriers to adaptive capacity noted in past research, specifically a lack of public awareness, a lack of or difficulty understanding climate information, a lack of leadership, and limited coordination and competing priorities.

“Maxed Out on Efficiency”: Logger Perceptions of Financial Challenges Facing Timber Operations

ABSTRACT Loggers play critical roles in forest management and resource production, yet supply chain pressures can challenge their economic sustainability. We examine logger perspectives on efficiency, financial challenges, and potential solutions from two contrasting perspectives: 1) business strategy and 2) treadmill of production, a sociological critique of resource production that links economic and ecological sustainability. To provide in-depth perspectives based on lived experiences, we conducted interviews with professional loggers and other stakeholders, focusing on firms with mechanized cut-to-length systems in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Our qualitative analysis revealed the intersection of factors that help explain financial stress. Loggers work on contract or buy stumpage from landowners and then sell to mills. Perceived challenges included competition in stumpage markets, relationships to mills that disadvantaged small firms, debt from mechanization, and site access through variable environmental conditions. Loggers worked to increase efficiency and production volume, though some loggers expressed the limits of increasing efficiency and production for improving profitability. Proposed solutions to reduce financial stress included long-term mill contracts, access to loans, and improved financial literacy. Nonetheless, individual firm efficiency will not address structural challenges such as loggers’ role in the supply chain between landowners and mills.

Outcrop and thin section scale descriptions of Silurian carbonates within the Hiawatha National Forest, Mackinac County, Upper Peninsula, Michigan, USA

Silurian carbonate outcrops within the southern part of the St. Ignace District of the Hiawatha National Forest (Mackinac County, Michigan) were examined to develop a local description of the exposed geology. The bedrock geology consists of the Manistique Group (dominantly the Cordell Formation) and the Engadine Group (Rockview Formation, Rapson Creek Formation, and Bush Bay Formation). Building on observations and differentiation from previous investigations, outcrops were selected to describe the macroscopic characteristics of these formations in attempt to develop a local description that would be more useful compared to confusing regional descriptions for researchers and forest officials. In Mackinac County, the Cordell Formation is a dark-to-light gray, chert-rich dolostone with abundant corals, stromataporoids, brachiopods, and echinoids. The Rockview Formation is a dark gray-to-white, chert-poor dolostone with microbiolite laminations, and brachiopod molds. The Rapson Creek Formation is a light gray-to-white, chert-free dolostone with abundant stromatoporoids. The Bush Bay Formation is light reddish brown to white in color, chert-poor, crystalline dolostone with abundant echinoids, brachiopods, and corals.

What do our lakes mean to us? An understanding of Michigan coastline communities’ perceptions of the Great Lakes

Four of the Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair serve as part of the 5261 km coastline of the State of Michigan. Understanding of the relationship between Michigan residents and these Lakes are important for the creation of messages designed to instill the desire to become better stewards of the Michigan coastline. Focus groups totaling 100 Michigan residents were held across the State to learn how residents feel about general issues facing Michigan’s coastline. The two major themes that emerged from the focus groups were issues related to the rising lake waters and the need for education on coastline awareness and stewardship. Other important themes emerged for the focus areas of the research team and its funding organization. There were differences of opinion on some of the issues between residents of the Upper and Lower Peninsulas (for example, public access was not as important an issue in the Upper Peninsula) and also for residents of Lake Michigan versus Lake Huron coastlines in the Lower Peninsula (storms are causing more damage and erosion on the Lake Michigan beaches).

Uses of local ethnic television:Finland Calling(1962–2015) and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

Finland Calling was a bilingual Sunday morning television program targeting Finnish Americans and airing on WLUC-TV, a local commercial station in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The show ran from 1962 to 2015, just over 50 years. This article uses it as a case study to argue that if we look beyond prime-time network programming, we can see that US television has not always promoted a homogeneous national culture; rather, it has at times been a resource for the development of distinctive local and ethnic cultures. Based on an analysis of Finland Calling episodes and written sources about the show, the article demonstrates that while the show’s primary target audience was the local Finnish American community, it also resonated with broader conceptions of Upper Peninsula culture, participated in Finnish American cultural activities at the North American level, and emphasized transnational connections between the Upper Peninsula and Finland.

The Entanglement of Dialectal Variation and Speaker Normalization.

This paper explores the relationship between speaker normalization and dialectal identity in sociolinguistic data, examining a database of vowel formants collected from 88 monolingual American English speakers in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Audio recordings of Finnish- and Italian-heritage American English speakers reading a passage and a word list were normalized using two normalization procedures. These algorithms are based on different concepts of normalization: Lobanov, which models normalization as based on experience with individual talkers, and Labov ANAE, which models normalization as based on experience with scale-factors inherent in acoustic resonators of all kinds. The two procedures yielded different results; while the Labov ANAE method reveals a cluster shifting of low and back vowels that correlated with heritage, the Lobanov procedure seems to eliminate this sociolinguistic variation. The difference between the two procedures lies in how they treat relations between formant changes, suggesting that dimensions of variation in the vowel space may be treated differently by different normalization procedures, raising the question of how anatomical variation and dialectal variation interact in the real world. The structure of the sociolinguistic effects found with the Labov ANAE normalized data, but not in the Lobanov normalized data, suggest that the Lobanov normalization does over-normalize formant measures and remove sociolinguistically relevant information.

The Impact of Working Outside the Home on Breastfeeding in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

Abstract Objectives Working outside of the home is associated with a shorter duration of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF). It is unclear if this relationship exists in rural populations where the workplace environments may differ. Michigan's Upper Peninsula (U.P) is an exclusively rural region with limited access to medical services, which varies greatly across the 15 U.P. counties. According to Michigan Vital Statistics, initiation of breastfeeding across the 15 U.P. counties is low, (range 13–82%, median 44%). We explored the relationship between maternal employment outside the home and a) EBF at 6 months and b) duration of EBF in the U.P. Methods This study is a secondary analysis of a cross sectional study conducted in 2017–18. Mothers of children <5 years old residing in the U.P were eligible to complete a self-administered survey. The outcomes of interest were EBF at 6 months (Y/N) and duration of EBF (months). The primary exposure was working outside the home (Y/N) during the baby's first year. Logistic regression was used to assess the association between working outside the home and EBF at 6 months (SAS v. 9.4). An Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to compare the duration of EBF among mothers who worked outside the home in the first year to those who did not. Confounders were retained in each fully-adjusted model if the odds ratio (logistic model) or coefficient of the primary exposure (ANCOVA) changed by >10% using forward selection. Results After adjustment for mother's education, age, and delivery distance, in the logistic model, mothers who went back to work are less likely to EBF for ≥6 months compared to mothers who did not. These results were not statistically significant (OR = .718, 95% CI: 0.39, 1.33). Adjusting for these and household income, and birth class attendance, in the ANCOVA model, there is a 0.39 month increase in EBF duration for every additional month she stays home (p-value = 0.03). Conclusions This data shows that in the U.P., a rural region with limited lactation services, working outside the home in the first year after birth negatively impacts length of EBF. Although this is a similar trend as seen in urban populations, the reasons for the relationship may differ in rural areas suggesting the need for place-based policy for breastfeeding support in workplaces. Funding Sources MTU Pavlis SURF Grant, Portage Health Foundation.

Developing a science outreach program and promoting "PhUn" all year with rural K-12 students.

Demonstrating how science relates to human health is an important step for generating K-12 student interest in health-related careers. Science outreach is often performed in urban areas; however, ~20% of K-12 schools are in rural areas. Michigan Technological University is located in Michigan's upper peninsula, which accounts for 30% of the state's land mass but only 3% of the total population. Our goal was to create a science outreach program for reaching K-12 students in our rural region. We assembled a team of undergraduate and graduate students, staff, and faculty to implement science outreach with K-12 students. Specifically, we leveraged existing national and international science outreach events [Physiology Friday, Physiology Understanding (PhUn) Week, National Biomechanics Day] to offer hands-on physiology and biomechanics activities during the year. Between 2016 and 2019, we connected with 31 K-12 schools and impacted 327 elementary (19%), 351 middle school (21%), and 1,018 high school (60%) students (total impact 1,696). Over 90% of the outreach visits took place at the K-12 schools. The hands-on activities were delivered by more than 85 undergraduate and graduate students and 10 faculty. Together, the supportive culture and resources within the department (e.g., outreach coordinator, participation from students and faculty, grant funding) were key to developing the program. We recommend starting with a single outreach event, working as a team, and being flexible with K-12 schools. The program also provided service-learning and professional development opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students and faculty. Our robust science outreach program promoted "PhUn" all year-round with rural K-12 students.

Trends in Subspecialization: A Comparative Analysis of Rural and Urban Clinical Education.

Medical students who train in rural communities are often exposed to physicians practicing a broad scope of care, regardless of discipline. We examined how rural education is associated with practice specialization rates for students who match in primary care or general core specialties. We linked practice and specialty data (2016 AMA Masterfile dataset), demographics (American Medical College Application Service data), and internal college data for 1974-2011 Michigan State University College of Human Medicine graduates who received clinical education on either the Upper Peninsula (rural) or Grand Rapids (urban) campuses. Current practice was verified using internet searches. We compared specialty and practice data by rural or urban campus, controlling for multiple variables. More rurally-trained graduates entered primary care (PC) residencies (128/208, 61.5%) than urban-trained graduates (457/891, 51.3%; P<.01), with rurally-trained graduates being twice as likely to enter family medicine (FM) residencies. Most FM residents remained PC physicians (205/219, 93.6%). Internal medicine residents were least likely to remain in primary care (91/189, 48.1%). Of the general core disciplines, general surgeons were least likely to remain in general surgical practice (45/134, 33.6%). Within each PC or general core discipline, the proportion of graduates who specialized did not differ by type of campus. Rurally-trained graduates are more likely to practice primary care, chiefly due to increased likelihood of choosing a FM residency. Graduates entering PC or general core residencies subspecialize at similar rates regardless of rural or urban education. FM residency match rate may be the best predictor of long-lasting impact on the primary care workforce.

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the Role of Language in the Yooper Identity

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the Role of Language in the Yooper Identity