Finished! Looks like this project is out of data at the moment!
Thank you everyone for your help in pushing the project to more than 450,000 classifications! We don't have immediate plans for new workflows, but we will let you know if or when that changes. The entire CHANGES team is grateful for all of your hard work making this project such a success!
Results
Below are a selection of research publications, press coverage, and published datasets from the Angling for Data on Michigan Fishes project
Research Papers and Communication
Alofs KM and KE Wehrly. 2025. Fish mass mortality events in northern temperate lakes happen later in the year than in the past Ecosphere. 16: e70182. DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70182
Alofs KM, King KBS, Lenard M, Schell J, Singer R, Wehrly K, López-Fernández H, and A Thomer. 2025. Community science brings together natural history collections and historical survey data to understand changing ecological patterns. BioScience. DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biae131
Flood P, Schiller K, King K, Runyon A, Wehrly K, and KM Alofs. 2025. Long-term and regional-scale data reveal divergent trends of different climate variables on fish body size over 75 years. Global Change Biology. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.70584
Grabda, E.E., Flood, P.J., King, K.B.S., Breck, J.E., Wehrly, K.E., and Alofs, K.M. 2025. Mismatch between climate-based bioenergetics model of fish growth and long-term and regional-scale empirical data. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. 82: 1-15. DOI: 10.1139/cjfas-2024-0266
King, K.B.S., Schell, J., Wehrly, K.E. et al. 2025. Community science helps digitize 78 years of fish and habitat data for thousands of lakes in Michigan, USA. Sci Data 12, 1038 DOI: 10.1038/s41597-025-05241-z
King, K.B.S., Giacomini, H.C., Wehryl, K., Lopez-Fernandez, H., Thomer, A.K., and Alofs, K.M. 2023. Using historical catch data to evaluate predicted changes in fish relative abundance in response to a warming climate. Ecography. DOI: 10.1111/ecog.06798
ArcGIS StoryMap: Are Michigan's Freshwater Fishes Shrinking? How we know and why it matters
Zooniverse project video
Press Coverage
Davenport, Matt. “Fishes, young and old, are shrinking in Michigan’s inland lakes.” Michigan News, November 5, 2025
Ellison, Graham. “Historic records show warming lakes are shrinking Michigan fish.” MLive, December 4, 2025
Erickson, Jim. "New crowdsourced project to digitize Michigan lake and fish records, looking for climate trends." University of Michigan School of Environment and Sustainability News. March 17, 2021.
Graham, Daniel. "Researchers studied fish from 1,497 lakes in Michigan. What they found is concerning.” Discover Wildlife, November 6, 2025
House, Kelly. “Climate change is shrinking fish in Michigan lakes.” Bridge Michigan, November 13, 2025
Katz, Ellie. “Climate change is shrinking fish in Michigan's inland lakes, study finds.” Michigan Public, November 16, 2025
Matheny, Keith. "Decades of Michigan lake data, hidden in filing cabinets, digitized with volunteer help." Detroit Free Press, July 14, 2025.
Data
Scanned card images and two curated datasets based on Zooniverse volunteer classifications (Lake Summary, Fish Growth and Fish Collection cards) are available in Deep Blue Data, the data repository from the University of Michigan.