Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast

Preserving Indiana Lakes through Collaboration with the Wawasee Area Conservancy Foundation

• Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams • Season 1 • Episode 14

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Discover the secrets behind effective lake conservation with Heather Harwood, executive director of the Wawasee Area Conservancy Foundation. Heather shares her transformative journey with the Foundation, taking it from a modest initiative to an environmental powerhouse with over 1,000 acres secured for conservation. Gain insights into how these wetland and upland areas are critical for maintaining water quality, acting as nature's funnel directing rainwater into lakes. Heather opens up about the Foundation's evolution from land acquisition to diligent property maintenance, focusing on erosion control and native species restoration, to ensure the vitality of Wawasee and Syracuse Lakes.

Explore the art of habitat restoration as Heather Harwood, Suzie Light, and Nate Bosch, from the Lilly Center, reveal the meticulous process of removing invasive species and nurturing plant diversity to restore ecological harmony. Learn about the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) and how community education plays a pivotal role in promoting sustainable landscape management. Feel the impact of conservation efforts through the Foundation's strategic projects for erosion control and soil stabilization, which are vital to prevent harmful runoff and foster healthier local ecosystems.

Experience the synergy of collaboration in improving lake health through innovative water management practices. Understand how tools like Water and Sediment Control Basins (WASCOBs) and two-stage ditches are employed to protect the lakes from sediment and nutrient overload. Celebrate community engagement with exciting conservation activities like canoe trips and interpretive hikes that bring people closer to nature. Heather and Nate inspire listeners with their passion for preserving wetlands and ecosystems, highlighting the enduring importance of these efforts for future generations.

Learn more about the Lilly Center's work at https://lakes.grace.edu/.

Have a question we could answer on the podcast? Send an email to lakes@grace.edu or submit a comment below.

Help us improve the podcast by filling out this short survey: https://forms.gle/MzGSXHcnkEQC8T74A.


Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to the Lake Doctor podcast. I'm your host, Susie Light. I get to share some stories and talk about our beautiful lakes with my friend, Dr Nate Bosch. Nate, you received your degree in limnology from the University of Michigan. Aquatic systems.

Speaker 2:

On this podcast, we're going to dive into some lake science. We're going to meet folks who are passionate about our lakes, just like Susie and I are, and we're going to have some fun together as well.

Speaker 1:

Visit lakesgraceedu, where you can learn more about the topics in this episode and support the Lilly Center's work.

Speaker 2:

In today's episode we have Heather Harwood. She's the executive director of the Wawasee Area Conservancy Foundation and we're going to talk about collaboration around the Wawasee and Syracuse lakes.

Speaker 1:

We are so excited about today's episode. The doctor is in. Welcome to this episode of the Lake Doctor podcast. Today we have Heather Harwood joining us. Heather, welcome, we are so excited to have you here. We've known each other for probably the whole time you've been at the Wabasi Area Conservancy.

Speaker 3:

Foundation. That's correct.

Speaker 1:

yes, Tell us a bit about you.

Speaker 3:

Well, I started at the Wabasi Area Conservancy Foundation. Yes, Tell us a bit about you. Well, I started at the Wawasee Area Conservancy Foundation in 1998. And we were just a small organization. We had some random wetland pieces around the watershed and since then we've grown quite a bit. We have over 1,000 acres that we've acquired now of wetlands that we consider important for protection Some upland areas that are upland from important wetlands Define what upland means.

Speaker 1:

I've heard that expression before. What is it?

Speaker 3:

Well, that's more of a dry piece of ground that you could walk on, maybe and um, so it's literally up, up from the wetlands okay yes, when I first started, our wetlands that we owned we owned just a few were so isolated that it wasn't really an issue of can we go and visit your lands, because they weren't very accessible. But now we've got some properties that actually have trails on them and so people are welcome to come out and walk on our trails on three of our properties. So we're growing slowly that way.

Speaker 1:

So you have wetlands and you have uplands. When was the first piece of property acquired by the Conservancy?

Speaker 3:

It was acquired in 1991. Acquired by the Conservancy it was acquired in 1991. It was owned and donated to WACF from Mamie Long and it has our big stone sign on Conklin Bay and she had cows out there originally. It was kind of her farmland and she donated it to WACF and it was before we had any of that education center property adjacent to our sign. So it just kind of sat out there by Conklin Bay all by itself.

Speaker 1:

So you're a mission driven organization.

Speaker 3:

That's correct and your mission is To preserve, protect and enhance the watershed through projects, land acquisition and education, and so we are hoping to protect the water quality in the Wawasee watershed and we're confined to our watershed, so our mission makes it a little bit easier for our projects and land acquisition to know that it is defined by the Wawasee watershed.

Speaker 1:

So some of our listeners may not know I mean, they may be a lake resident some of them may not know what a watershed is. Could you describe?

Speaker 3:

that, yes, it's like a funnel, and so if a drop of rain falls in our watershed, it'll end up in our lakes, in either the upper watershed lakes or the very last lake, which is Syracuse Lake. But it's going to be up above the Syracuse Dam and downstream of the very top of our watershed, which sits against the Continental Divide, our watershed which sits against the continental divide.

Speaker 1:

So everybody in our county lives on a watershed. In essence that's right, because the water travels. Yep and our county actually has the continental divide going through it and a continental divide means part of the water ends up in In the Great Lakes, or it ends up in the Gulf of Mexico. Isn't that fascinating. Depends on which way the wind's blowing sometimes and where the raindrop grows.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, which ditch is dug and that could kind of affect you know the way the water flows sometimes.

Speaker 1:

So you've acquired over 1,000 acres of wetlands and uplands. What is your plan for the future, for the conservancy?

Speaker 3:

Well, I think that we've got some of the low-hanging fruit, so that means the easier properties to acquire. And so now we're more shifting and pivoting our focus to taking care of that property, maintaining it, doing erosion control projects on them, removing invasive species, replacing invasive species with native species, improving drainage, that kind of thing. So our land acquisition is probably going to slow and our maintenance is going to pick up.

Speaker 1:

So how does that maintenance affect the lake?

Speaker 3:

The maintenance is all geared toward protecting the lake and so that maintenance is for putting in plantings where it's open land and it could erode, grading that kind of thing, and so it's all really geared toward the lake and doing what's best for the lake and kind of returning the land to its natural original planting habitat and all that. And people may say, why do you want to take out invasive species and put in native species? Because it affects habitat and wildlife and all that kind of reflects in the health of your watershed and it's wetlands are important to lakes.

Speaker 1:

Are there things that you're working on, nate, at the Lilly Center, to help wetlands?

Speaker 2:

As we look at those wetland or upland properties that the Conservancy Foundation has in those thousand acres, those areas are draining into Wawasee and Syracuse Lakes eventually, and so it's important for their management of those properties then, because, as they manage, they allow those wetlands, those upland areas to hold back more of those nutrients and sediments and not let them get down into Wawasee and Syracuse lakes, and that'll then help those lakes from algae standpoint or from the weeds and not having as much weed growth in those lakes, and so it's really really important work that they do, now that they've acquired those properties, then managing those properties for those things, does that also help water flow.

Speaker 1:

So if we get a really heavy rain.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so wetlands in particular are known as sponges and as kidneys, and so if you have those wetlands functioning correctly, they're going to absorb a lot of that rainfall or that snow melt and not allow that water to move quickly into one of our downstream lakes.

Speaker 2:

And if you slow the water down, it's going to carry less of those nutrients and sediments down into the lake, which where we don't want those things to go Right.

Speaker 2:

And then they're like kidneys, because they also filter, and so those wetland properties then have the ability to filter out some of those sediments and nutrients as well, all with the eventual effect of less nutrients in Wawasee and Syracuse Lakes. And then, looking specifically at the Lilly Center, is we have the opportunity to come alongside groups like WACF and do research that shows sort of where are these nutrients and sediments coming from, what are the most strategic ways to reduce those levels? Maybe they try a new project in one of their wetlands and we can help assess how is that project working, how maybe could it be tweaked to do better in the future? And also with our educational projects that we have going on with younger kids or with adults in the community being able to teach about the importance of wetlands. Let's keep wetlands, let's restore wetlands, because they're going to have such a big impact on our downstream lakes and streams.

Speaker 1:

Sounds like good collaborative partnerships.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's exciting. Heather, I know by profession that you are a landscape architect, correct? How does that play into the work that you're doing at the Conservancy?

Speaker 3:

Oh, it's been great for my landscape architecture business because it helps me understand the importance of good stewardship and how native plantings and restoration can work, and so it's given me a whole education in that arm of landscape architecture, so where I might be designing somebody's home and being more on the aesthetic end with patios or walkways and that kind of thing, overhead structures where it gets important on the property for maintaining good knowledge in natives and restoration and access that way that is so exciting to think about how somebody could take a piece of land and improve it by the plantings as well as the infrastructure that you're putting in.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for doing that.

Speaker 3:

Well, it's a really rewarding job some days. Some days it's a little more challenging than rewarding, but in general it's working for me.

Speaker 1:

So what kind of native landscaping has the Lilly Center been doing?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so, as Heather just talked about, there's always a decision to be made by a lake resident or someone who's living elsewhere in one of our water watersheds here in Kosciuszko County as to what plants and where are they going to put them on their yard. Sometimes they'll have professional help from a landscape architect like Heather, sometimes they'll be doing it themselves. The important thing is to think about sort of where is the water going on your property, right, and so it's always going to flow downhill. So, whether you're in a watershed or on a lake, think about those downslope areas where water is running to and consider putting some native plantings in those areas where it will intercept the water before it leaves the property and kind of like we were just talking about with wetlands it starts to filter and slow down things so that the water leaving your property is clean and not negatively impacting a downstream water body like a lake or a stream.

Speaker 2:

And at the Lily Center specifically, we've got a number of plantings. All of the plants around the Lily Center are all native plants. The plants around the Lily Center are all native plants, beautiful blooms at different times of the year. We've got a swale garden, which is kind of a depression area where water starts to congregate from the property, and so there's water loving plants in that area, like blue irises, and then there's a rain garden area which captures water from the roof, and there's some swamp milkweed there which has got beautiful color, and then there's some drier areas which have asters and just a number of just beautiful, like all different colors pinks and purples, and oranges, and yellows, whites, different times of the year.

Speaker 2:

We also have a turf stone area where it's actually our visitor parking spaces, and so there's pavers that are laid concrete pavers, and then there's areas of soil in between those pavers where grass can grow, and so when you look at it from a distance it looks like a regular lawn, but when you come up close you start to see those little concrete sections, and so that concrete is what holds the weight of a vehicle when it's parked there on those parking spaces, and so it doesn't compact the ground, doesn't kill the grass, but allows it to continue to grow and let water filter down.

Speaker 1:

I still feel so guilty when I park on that.

Speaker 2:

It's so pretty it is.

Speaker 1:

So habitat restoration you were lucky you got to start from maybe square one when you were doing that at the Lilly Center. But how does somebody go about restoring a habitat?

Speaker 3:

somebody go about restoring a habitat. Well, recently we got funding for EQIP, which is Environmental Quality Incentive, and so it's removing invasive species, and so we actually got help for funding that per acre. And so we've just come all the way down all the WACF properties up in the watershed and we had a real problem with buckthorn and honeysuckle.

Speaker 1:

Oh, Asian honeysuckle, yeah just completely.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it was like areas that were just those and that doesn't really do anything for wildlife and so once you get those out, you can depend on the native seed bank or you can enhance it with more seed of native that would be in that area, but that and that's the natural resource conservation service, that that does the equip program and that's open to other listeners or viewers that are listening to this, then they want might want some similar help on their own property.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's been really a great program to be involved with and, um, they've been easy to work with the guys down at soil and water conservation district and our district conservationist has made that a wonderful project and it's just to be able to see through the woods now. And you can, you know, see all the trees and it's a lower planting when it's more native sedges and that kind of thing versus all that you know mess of honeysuckle.

Speaker 1:

So I noticed when I'm driving around there is a something called a common reed that it seems to be growing in ditches. Why are those things so? And Asian honeysuckle? Why are those so harmful to have?

Speaker 3:

They're so aggressive and they will push other natives out, and then they become a monoculture and a monoculture's not good because why? It's all the same plant material? It doesn't give a variety for depth of roots, for erosion control, for wildlife help.

Speaker 2:

I just had a thought pop in my mind that might help you, susie, with this. It's kind of like a choir. So if you think of a choir all different parts and how it sounds really good, all together right With the different parts and different I don't know enough about music to go any deeper than that.

Speaker 1:

Baritones, sopranos, bass, you need all those and it sounds beautiful when it's all together with all of those layers in harmony right.

Speaker 2:

Similarly with an ecosystem. If we have plants that are all the same, it's not going to function as well. There's not going to be some of that same flood retention, some of the nutrient uptake not the same habitat for animals that are in the area.

Speaker 1:

And birds.

Speaker 2:

Birds included, whereas when you have that diversity of plants, just like in a choir, it's going to function then more appropriately and it's going to work a lot.

Speaker 1:

A monoculture may not attract the birds that eat the mosquitoes. Therefore there might be a lot of mosquitoes in that wetlands and a healthy wetlands usually has very few mosquitoes or flies or you know it's all balanced, yeah. So that's something that I think listeners really need to better understand that we need the choir singing well and in harmony to reduce the mosquito population.

Speaker 2:

Well, not just that, not just that.

Speaker 1:

Are there other ways? So if I live on a lake and I'm interested in changing my landscaping, are there ways that the Conservancy Foundation helps with that? Or is that something people would contact you as part of your landscape?

Speaker 3:

architect work. I think that they can learn that by coming to wacf, and so they don't necessarily need to call a landscape architect. We have signage around pointing out good plant materials that can be used in your lawns or shoreline erosion control with glacial stone or bio logs, so that's a good start. I think you can kind of start getting an idea of what you like just by visiting our lakefront and waterfront properties.

Speaker 1:

The community is served by a lot of local landscapers and guys that are mowing yards. Do you work with those businesses to maybe improve?

Speaker 3:

their practices. We do, and we try to encourage them, of course, to use phosphorus-free fertilizer and lessen lawn areas. I know that lawn areas are sometimes important for activities or access, but to minimize the turf area as much as possible and have a variety of plantings, preferably native that can absorb more water, preferably native that can absorb more water, provide better erosion control, good for pollinator gardens. So, yes, we try to encourage less turf, more native plantings.

Speaker 2:

And here we get back to the choir analogy, right? So a turf lawn would be a monoculture. So that's like everybody in the choir singing.

Speaker 1:

What were one of those parts you said, susie well, you wouldn't want to hear all sopranos singing all the time, exactly exactly so.

Speaker 2:

By lessening that lawn area and opening up other areas for plantings, as Heather was just talking about, we increase the diversity of that yard and allow the ecosystem in our own yards to function better, with absorbing nutrients, absorbing water and keeping less things from flowing into our lakes.

Speaker 1:

We understand now a little bit more about watersheds and wetlands. What else do we need to understand about the function of the conservancy?

Speaker 3:

Well, we've done 43 different projects for erosion control, soil stabilization, and that's been over the last about 35 years, and so a lot of those projects are either with the DNR, with lake and river enhancement. Us Fish and Wildlife Service has been helpful. The Kosciuszko County Community Foundation oh, thanks, yes, they have funded several projects of ours, and so that's kind of my role with WACF is to help run the projects. My role with WACF is to help run the projects and so, whether it's conservation reserve, planting of a bunch of trees, we've done two 7,000 tree plantings, so almost 15,000 trees we've got on two different sites.

Speaker 2:

Wow, and when you do those tree plantings related to what we were just talking about I'm guessing it's multiple species to have a diversity of a new forest kind of growing.

Speaker 3:

Yep Evergreens mixed in with the oaks and shagbark, hickories and that kind of thing.

Speaker 2:

What are maybe a couple other projects, if you could just go into a little bit more detail about those you talked about tree plantings as one you mentioned as you were going through reducing sediments. What would be maybe an example of a project that would do something like that?

Speaker 3:

You know the Dillon Creek that flows through a lot of the agricultural area in Noble County. It's really falling fast. To look at it it doesn't really seem like it's falling fast because it's just sheeting in a big flat area, but it's falling fast and it goes through Enchanted Hills and out into Wawasee.

Speaker 1:

So explain that when you mean falling fast, is it the topography of the land makes the water flow?

Speaker 3:

Yep, it drops about 90 feet from Cromwell to Lake Wawasee, which is just a little over a mile or so. Wow, and that's I mean, that's reallyoration Association, and we've got a lot of two-stage ditches. We've got some WASCOBs which are slowing water down and collecting it, allowing it to get into the system slower.

Speaker 2:

WASCOB Water and Sediment Control Basin right. Yes, okay, that's right Not all of our listeners will know all those acronyms.

Speaker 3:

Yes, Thank you for backing up on that. And grade control, which is in a stream and sometimes you don't even recognize it as something that's been added because it stones in a stream and it's usually going across a stream and it just helps the water slow down and kind of directionalizes the water so it's not slamming into one side of the stream or the other side, they're kind of keeping it in the middle of the stream so why is it important for that to slow down?

Speaker 3:

just because when we get a big rain flow fall event, it can bring in like 75% of the sediment that we inherit throughout the year in just one big event.

Speaker 1:

And then sediment would make the lake.

Speaker 2:

Well, sediment is going to have then, as the water slows down when it enters the lake, and they're going to start to make the lake shallower over time with that kind of mucky bottom that we don't like to see in a lot of parts of our lakes, but sediment particles also have connected to them there's nutrients, which will adsorb onto the sediment particles, and wherever the sediment particles go, the nutrients go as well, and so those nutrients then are going to feed extra aquatic macrophytes or weeds will adsorb onto the sediment particles, and wherever the sediment particles go, the nutrients go as well, and so those nutrients then are going to feed extra aquatic macrophytes or weeds, as well as phytoplankton, also known as algae.

Speaker 1:

So these efforts to help make sure that the ditches are well-maintained. I love that two-stage ditch. I know what that is, but for our listeners explain what a two-stage ditch is and where they might see some Right.

Speaker 3:

So a ditch has typically got a profile of a V, and if you take that V halfway up on either side and you make it wider, so a V with wings, a V with wings, yes, and so when the water comes up it can go out on those shelves and it just has much higher water holding capacity during a big rain event. And so, again, slowing it down. And so it's not just slamming down through a little V-shaped ditch, it has more of an area to spread out, slow down, absorb.

Speaker 2:

And it all it also helps with if you think of that. Normally in a ditch it's a channelized straight sort of a stream channel, whereas when you widen out those, those benches, what we would call the floodplain there, the V with wings, as you said, it allows the stream channel to start to meander, which our streams naturally do, and so you'll get some pools and riffles and run areas, which are different speeds of water and different depths of water that allow better habitat, allow better filtering of that water to clean it up, as it moves through that area as well as, as Heather said, in a rain event.

Speaker 2:

When the water level comes up it overflows onto those benches and those benches will have that little floodplain, will have vegetation. That can also slow down absorb hopefully native species yeah, and it can help clean up the water that way too.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it can help clean up the water that way too. So Wabasee in Syracuse is served by that particular ditch. Dillon Creek, dillon Creek. Are there other creeks that feed?

Speaker 3:

into the lake. Yep, there's Turkey Creek, which actually is more of a supply than even Dillon Creek. It's at least twice as much as Dillon Creek and so it's got a bigger sub watershed, it's got a bigger agricultural area that's draining into Turkey Creek and that includes the 10 lakes where we lead canoe trips on Friday mornings. So we start way up at the top of the watershed, at Knapp Lake, and we lead the canoes down the 10 lakes and you can be back in this area that you can't see really any sign of man and it's.

Speaker 2:

I've been on that trip before. It's amazing. I would recommend it for anybody who enjoys paddling and wants to see some beautiful countryside.

Speaker 1:

How does somebody get connected with one of your paddle trips?

Speaker 3:

You can go on our website and sign up for it and it's every Friday, so you can say I'm interested in a Friday in August or Friday in July or whatever, and we'll respond back on if it's available. Available and you let us know how many canoes you need, and then we have canoe leaders and all you need to bring is a life jacket and it costs five dollars per person.

Speaker 2:

One of the added benefits I know from when I went on it is that you get to see up close and personal a lot of the properties that WACF has acquired over the years upland properties, wetland properties so you get to see them right from your canoe or kayak, which is really cool.

Speaker 1:

Fun, so canoe or kayak.

Speaker 3:

Yes, we have the canoes.

Speaker 1:

People sometimes bring their own kayaks, okay, how is Wawasee better off through the work that Heather and her group are doing at the conservancy?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think Heather's already been highlighting that for us, I think the land acquisition is amazing. Protecting those properties now over 1,000 acres that is a huge accomplishment for your organization. Congratulations on meeting that milestone for your organization, congratulations on meeting that milestone. And so it's not only preventing those things from moving into other land uses that would maybe add more sediments or nutrients to the downstream lakes while we're seeing Syracuse, but it's also then the management, like what Heather's been talking about. It's the invasive species removal and adding more natives and reducing erosion and helping those assets really absorb and hold back and filter some of those nutrients and sediments. And so I think that's just wonderful that they get to do that for Wawasee and Syracuse Lakes.

Speaker 1:

You both are working in Wawasee and Syracuse Lakes. You both are working in Wawasee and Syracuse Lakes. How are you working together? How are you working differently?

Speaker 2:

Well, one way, I guess, would be whereas the Conservancy Foundation focuses in on just those two lakes and the watershed around just those two lakes, the Lilly Center focuses on the other lakes in the surrounding area, within the county, as well as the streams, and I would use an out well, so we did the choir analogy. Let's do a, let's use a medical analogy as well. So, going into the doctor's office and you want your doctor to be focused on you as an individual, just like WACF is focused on Wawasee and Syracuse lakes as individual lakes but you also want your doctor to be able to think through other patients and other procedures and things that he or she has learned from medical journals and other expertise and comparison studies and those sort of things. And so I think that's one of the things that the Lilly Center brings to the table for those two lakes is being able to compare at a broader scale and give additional insights for how those two lakes can get better. So I think them working in their areas of strength with land acquisition and managing these properties, as we've been talking about habitat restoration, the Lilly Center working in our strength of research and being able to look at the broader impacts and broader influences. That makes for a better Two Lakes.

Speaker 2:

Would you have anything to add? Heather, a better.

Speaker 3:

Two Lakes right. Would you have anything to add? Heather Well, annually, nate and I partner on presentations like with Kosciuszko Leadership Academy. That's always kind of fun because we get to see people that are interested in knowing more about the county and more about other people that are active in the county and organizations, and so I always get to meet new people that way and we go to the Lilly Center and have usually breakfast there or at the Education Center at WACF, and that's kind of a highlight.

Speaker 2:

We do some interpretive hikes together.

Speaker 3:

Yes, that's in the fall.

Speaker 1:

What is an?

Speaker 3:

interpretive hike. We'll take a lap through the Wawasee Area Conservancy Education Center. We have several trails there and just Nate will walk up to a tree and talk about what's going on there. Going on there and sometimes you can see some insect remnants of what's been going on there or what kind of a tree it is or why.

Speaker 3:

That's native and it's just kind of a impromptu what we come across and it's always really fun because of that, because you never really know what Nate's going to find out there. And I can talk about the education center and what we have there and we go by the memory garden and that kind of thing and some of the history of the Conservancy Foundation and how you're restoring that property, kind of as you go. Yep, it's a work in progress. And so we would talk about that, but then Nate can, kind of off the cuff, tell us more about what we're looking at and why it's important to protect.

Speaker 2:

Are you saying I'm coming out of a nerd, Heather? Is that what you're saying. I would say Science geek.

Speaker 3:

Science geek, it's okay.

Speaker 1:

We love science geeks. Yeah, so, heather, how can people you've already talked about, how somebody could come and do a canoe trip with you, or somebody can do an interpretive hike with you how else can people who live on lakes or, like me, live near a creek, how can they engage with you?

Speaker 3:

Well, we have like Lake Talks, and Eats is something we offer in the summer. So it's the first Saturday of June, july and August and every June it's a native plant sale where local vendors bring in their native plants. In July it's our annual bug catch, very popular with the kids we had like a hundred kids this year and we serve them a little breakfast and they come with their parents and then we all tromp out to the lake and they have nets, they catch bugs and then those bugs are looked at under little microscopes right out there on the lakefront and it tells the kids the water quality because certain bugs are sensitive to clean water and so if you find those bugs you know you've got good water quality and it tells you a lot about the lake. Maybe we all find those good bugs yes and then also in july.

Speaker 3:

usually the first wednesday of july uh, right around the fourth we have fishing with the DNR at Between the Lakes and that's always fun. Lots of kids come out and the DNR brings the fishing gear and they bring the worms and they help kids load up the hooks and they put a big aquarium out and all the kids put the fish that they catch in the aquarium so they can see what they caught and then we let them go at the end of the fishing time.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, Heather, for joining us today. This has been so informational and I appreciate understanding. I appreciate your analogies. I think that helps us understand a bit about the importance of harmony in nature and the good work that you are doing. Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for having me. I appreciated you being here. Susie and Nate your analogies and explanations back up.

Speaker 1:

Science, geeky good. Thank you all for joining us on this podcast.

Speaker 2:

Hey, I'm Dr Nate Bosch with the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams. Today we're answering the question what's the difference between a bog, a marsh, a swamp? The quick answer is they're all different types of wetlands. Right now we're standing in a marsh. It's an herbaceous, plant-dominated wetland, meaning the plants are green and they're coming up every year from scratch. We could also have a swamp, which would have more woody plants, plants that have bark on them and twigs, and they're gonna be standing all year long, even though they might lose their leaves at certain times of the year. And a bog is gonna be a type of wetland that has a sphagnum mat on the top, a sphagnum moss mat on the top. It'll be kind of squishy. As you walk on it almost you can feel the waves of water, water layer and then sphagnum mat on the top that usually can hold up the weight of a person or a critter walking across the top of a bog. Why do we even care about wetlands? Wetlands we call them sponges and kidneys. They're sponges because they hold in. They absorb water from snowmelt or from runoff from a big rain event and then they slowly let that water out. Maybe they let it out into one of our local lakes and streams. Maybe they let it recharge our groundwater, the aquifers down beneath our feet. They're like kidneys because they filter. They actually will filter out pollutants out of the water. Maybe it's excess nutrients from fertilizer runoff or maybe it's sediments that are coming off of a construction site or an agricultural field, and they can help filter those things out and leave the water cleaner as it leaves the wetland into one of our local lakes and streams. So wetlands are interesting and diverse, but they're also really helpful to our local aquatic ecosystems. Let's talk a little bit about how wetlands are interesting and diverse, but they're also really helpful to our local aquatic ecosystems. Let's talk a little bit about how wetlands have changed over time. In our country, the United States, we have only about half the wetlands that we had back in the late 1700s. In Indiana, where we are right now, we've lost 85% of our wetlands in just the last century. We don't have as many wetlands even though they do some really cool things. Let's talk a little bit about some of the things that live in and around our wetlands.

Speaker 2:

So most obvious right here in front of me is the soil. So we've got an organic, rich soil here. It's dark in color, low oxygen levels. I can see little bits of twigs and leaves and other plant material that's decomposing slowly because of low oxygen levels. We can look at the plants around us as well. We've got cattails over here with a mix of some reed canary grass amongst the cattails. Both of those are invasive, so we're not standing next to a really high quality wetland here right now. The cattails are a hybrid form from a European and a native form the reed canary grass not from around here either.

Speaker 2:

If we go to more to the edge we can see behind me here is a sycamore tree that's got somewhat green, little bit brownish leaves here as we're going into fall. A great wetland, loving plant, low oxygen levels by its roots. Sycamores are actually great for city urban sort of environments because there's not a lot of oxygen in the soil, often in an urban environment as well. Coming back around here, we've got some weeping willows. We've got some black willow trees. Coming a little bit closer over here to my left we've got eastern cottonwood. The cottonwood leaves are kind of waving to you. I love how they have a flattened petiole. That's the little connector between the leaf blade and the twig. That petiole is flattened and so it allows it to wave in the wind and kind of cool off the leaves in the hot summer sunlight. There's also some duckweed and water meal here around my feet, right on the surface of the soil, so that will start to float as this wetland becomes more flooded and then we'll just sit right on the top of the wet organic soil. Times of the year, like right now, when there's not standing water. Those are actually the smallest seed bearing flowering plants in the entire world here in these wetlands. Pretty cool that we have those things here.

Speaker 2:

Critters live in our wetlands as well. There's a number of animal tracks around here. De and raccoons will come out here, even some snakes. I'm not a big fan of snakes personally, but the eastern Massasaugua is an endangered snake species that we have in northern Indiana which is found in wetlands just not very commonly. We also have different waterfowl sandhill cranes we have in our area which are beautiful and have really distinct calls.

Speaker 2:

Which is gonna have more woody wetland plants amongst the wetland itself, maybe red maple trees, buttonbush those shrubs and then a bog. A bog is gonna have that sphagnum moss on the top, sometimes some trees growing out of it, like a black spruce maybe, and it's going to sort of have waves in it as people jump or walk across it. Wetlands are important for our local lakes and streams. They help filter the water so it comes into our lakes and streams cleaner, with less nutrients, so we don't have as much algae and weeds growing in our local lakes. They also help hold back some of the water so we have less flooding on our lakes and streams as well, so we all can take better care of our wetlands and protect them for the future, so that our lakes and streams can be cleaner and healthier and safer and more beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Lake Doctor podcast. Join us next time. It's bound to be fun.

Speaker 2:

Listening to this podcast is just the first step to making your lake cleaner and healthier. Visit lakesgraceedu for more information about our applied research and discover some tangible ways you can make a difference on your lake.

Speaker 1:

We'll see you next time. The Doctor is In you.