Wednesday, Jun 3, 2026
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.”
Geissell, who had first learned about vernal pools through MSU’s Michigan Conservation Stewards Program and subsequently gone on to complete trainings through the Michigan Vernal Pool Patrol, soon got connected with Clinton Parks and Green Space Coordinator Kyle Thornton, and set up a time to come check out the park. Bringing along her kit of vernal pool monitoring tools, Geissel began the process of assessing the park’s four pools – measuring depth, checking for indicator species, and mapping the pools’ boundaries for the first time onto the geographic data collection app ArcGIS Survey123.
“We found basically one of each [indicator species] at least at [each of the] different pools there,” said Geissel. “All four pools had at least fingernail clams, three of the four pools had fairy shrimp, and two of the pools had blue spotted salamanders' eggs.”
Returning the next fall, Geissel and those with her were also able to spot two adult blue spotted salamanders, and were able to add to the list an adult spotted salamander and a group of wood frogs they encountered upon their return this spring.
As for the park itself, those in charge of the park’s new trail construction were more than happy to adjust their plans to accommodate the area’s newfound vernal pools.
“They want to make sure they avoid as much as possible where the vernal pools are, and they're really hoping to use it for future educational opportunities,” said Geissel.
While the project’s original design had a trail crossing directly through one of the pools, new plans will redirect the trail to leave the pool’s ecosystem intact, and are considering the potential of vernal pool-related initiatives in the area such as informational signage, educational field trips, and opportunities for interactive citizen science.
“I [also] think the hope with the more accessible path is that people in wheelchairs could even get out to see it from above where the trail is from,” said Geissel. “It's [still] in the brainstorming stage, but it sounds like they're really interested in… educating the community more about it.”
While Geissel has since transitioned to a new position outside of the Clinton Conservation District, she still helps out with vernal pools at the county’s parks – and she remains an advocate for becoming educated on the natural world all around us.
“[I'd recommend people] take the [MVPP vernal pools] training, because it opens up a lot of really interesting information,” said Geissel. “It's really exciting to learn about vernal pools, and the class is really a great way to understand more about them and actually get hands-on experience checking [them out]. They look boring on the surface, but then as soon as you get close to them, [they’re] so much more interesting.”