Ann Arbor, Michigan – Nearly $315,000 will be awarded to support local organizations in controlling nonnative Phragmites australis, one of the most aggressive plant species invading the Great Lakes basin and North America. Grantees will implement certain combinations of management actions for Phragmites, and the Phragmites Adaptive Management Framework (PAMF) will use the data gathered to improve guidance on management practices that are most likely to be effective.

Phragmites is currently managed using a suite of approaches, including herbicide, cutting/crushing, flooding, and burning. These actions are resource intensive and differ in effectiveness due to site-specific conditions and variations in implementation. PAMF is a predictive model, developed by the Great Lakes Phragmites Collaborative, that uses participant data to continually ‘learn’ more about which management techniques are working against Phragmites in certain conditions and which are not. In turn, the PAMF model predicts optimal guidance for each site. Data provided to PAMF by grantees will reduce the uncertainty surrounding management outcomes, increase the model’s predictive power, and improve best management practices.

2025 is the second year that PAMF Active Adaptive Management Program grants are available for Phragmites management in Great Lakes states. In the first year of the program, AAMP recipients from 17 organizations contributed 70 management units totaling over 130 acres. The grant program contributed data to six combinations lacking data in the PAMF model, three of which had no prior data.

Twenty-one grants have been awarded in 2025:

The Great Lakes Phragmites Collaborative (GLPC) is a regional partnership led jointly by the Great Lakes Commission and U.S. Geological Survey to foster more coordinated, efficient and strategic approaches to Phragmites management and ecosystem restoration. Funding for the PAMF Active Adaptive Management Program is provided by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI).

The Great Lakes Commission, led by chair Timothy Bruno, Great Lakes Program Coordinator at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, is a binational government agency established in 1955 to protect the Great Lakes and the economies and ecosystems they support. Its membership includes leaders from the eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces in the Great Lakes basin. The GLC recommends policies and practices to balance the use, development, and conservation of the water resources of the Great Lakes and brings the region together to work on issues that no single community, state, province, or nation can tackle alone. Learn more at www.glc.org.