Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast

Protecting Natural Resources with the Kosciusko County Soil and Water Conservation District

• Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams • Season 1 • Episode 17

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Unlock the secrets of sustainable lake conservation and soil health with our guests, Tashina Lahr-Manifold, Soil Health Specialist, and Amanda Heltzel, Education-Outreach Coordinator. Discover how Tashina, who grew up on a Clydesdale farm, and Amanda, who was raised on a row crop farm, transform their agricultural backgrounds into a mission for environmental change. Their inspiring stories reveal a commitment to nurturing the land and engaging the community, from Tashina’s work as a Soil Health Specialist educating farmers on conservation practices to Amanda’s role as Education Coordinator lighting the spark of nature appreciation in young minds through programs like the Indiana Master Naturalist Program.

Join us as we explore the vital link between soil health and aquatic ecosystems, emphasizing sustainable agricultural practices such as reduced tillage and cover cropping. These methods not only preserve topsoil but also prevent erosion and nutrient runoff that harm fish habitats and encourage toxic blue-green algae growth. Learn about the indispensable role of conservation districts, especially in Kosciusko County, where local and federal partnerships fuel impactful, yet often underappreciated, initiatives. With insights into technology like drone seeding and the essential involvement of community volunteers, this episode paints a hopeful picture of a future where sustainable practices lead to thriving ecosystems both above and below the water’s surface.

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.

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Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to the Lake Doctor podcast. I'm your host, susie Light, and I get to share some stories and talk about our beautiful lakes with my friend, dr Nate Bosch. Nate, you have a doctorate from the University of Michigan, is that correct?

Speaker 2:

Yes, it's in limnology. It's like oceanography, only it's the study of freshwater aquatic systems. On this podcast, we'll dive into lake science. We're going to meet some folks who are passionate about our lakes, just like we are, and we're going to have some fun together.

Speaker 1:

You can learn more about the topics in this episode or support the Lilly Center's work by visiting our website lakesgraceedu.

Speaker 2:

In today's episode we have Amanda and Tashina from the Kosciuszko County Soil and Water Conservation District.

Speaker 1:

We are so excited about today's episode. The doctor is in. Thanks for joining this episode of the Lake Doctor podcast. Today we have Tashina and Amanda from the Casiasco County Soil and Water Conservation District. We're going to call it Conservation District. That's a lot of an acronym stuff you've got going on there. So first of all, welcome. We want you both to tell us a bit about yourselves.

Speaker 3:

So I have been with the Soil and Water District for three years now. I was with Wabash Soil and Water District four years prior to that, but on a personal level, I grew up in a Clydesdale farm in Allen County and then I ended up going to Manchester University and I got my degree in environmental science from Manchester and since graduation there I have worked in every governmental entity there is. So I've worked with federal government, state government and now local government wow, that's great yeah, thanks for being here and Amanda, tell us a you.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so I grew up on a row crop farm in Akron, indiana, over in Fulton County, so spent a lot of time outdoors growing up, helping my dad out with their excavating business and the farm and camping all those fun things. I went to Tippecanoe Valley for school so totally a local gal Went to Purdue and studied wildlife management in their forestry school there. It's a great program. And when I graduated I went to work for the Missouri Department of Conservation working on their brown-headed nuthatch reintroduction project and helping to manage some of the MODIS stations that were in Missouri reporting on what kind of birds and bats and things we were detecting at the stations. And then my husband and I are both from Akron so we moved back to the area eventually and we live on the Tippecanoe River.

Speaker 1:

You know we were joking earlier that we have the birders on this side of the table and the hobby farmers on that side of the table. Tashina, tell us about your hobby farm.

Speaker 3:

Yes, so we have a very small farm over by Chapman Lake. We're just south of the Conservation Club over there so we have a high tunnel so we have extended growing seasons for our specialty crops.

Speaker 1:

So High Tunnel is one of those big like hoop houses.

Speaker 3:

Yep, so it's in-ground growing. It's not a greenhouse where you'd be growing in pots on shelves, but it's in-ground. So, yeah, we've been fiddling around with that for quite a while. And then we also have a miniature pony that bounces around from time to time for my daughter, and then we have two coony coony pigs that we got this last year.

Speaker 1:

You got any pigs on your hobby farm?

Speaker 2:

No, we do not.

Speaker 1:

At least not yet. That sounds kind of interesting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we've got chickens, we've got some barn cats, a rabbit, we've got some alpaca and also some sheep as well.

Speaker 1:

Ah yeah. So if your two farms came together, would you still be a hobby farm?

Speaker 2:

I don't know, it's getting pretty big then.

Speaker 1:

So, Amanda, we were talking about birding and a fun app that we share to identify birds. Tell us a bit about what you're doing at the conservation District, because you're the educator person there, right?

Speaker 4:

Yes, so I'm the education coordinator. I do most of our educational programming that's outside of the agricultural realm. So Trishina is our soil. Health specialist works with farmers on education and I work with everybody else. Health specialist works with farmers on education and I work with everybody else. So I do K-12 education. We take kids out to local natural areas on field trips. We run a rafting program which is really fun. We have one here on Grassy Creek and then we also assist with a rafting program at Tippecanoe River State Park that the Arrowhead Country RC&D Group, which is a 10-county group of conservation districts, does. That program has been going for over 30 years, so we have a rafting legacy.

Speaker 1:

That's pretty exciting, yeah, but you're also doing something with naturalists.

Speaker 4:

Yes, yeah, so I also coordinate the Indiana Master Naturalist Program for our county. So that's a program of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and its focus is to bring experts into our county to teach adult learners about different natural resources topics. So the class runs once a year and we have about eight different topics that we cover, ranging from wildlife to forestry. We do an astronomy class, geology, and we have a lot of fun. We listen to a lecture from the professional that we bring in. Then we do some sort of field experience, and another part of the program is that the master naturalist interns spend time volunteering in the natural resources field, because you really learn more from doing hands-on things and volunteering. I think you they get a lot more out of the experience by having that whole well-rounded volunteer experience as well.

Speaker 1:

And Tashina you work with with farmers in our community around soil. Tell us a bit about that Correct.

Speaker 3:

So my title is the Soil Health Specialist and it's a relatively new position. It just launched last year. So the key framework of my position is to be working with any producer. So whether that's a large row crop producer or a specialty small farm grower row crop producer or a specialty small farm grower trying to learn about their operations, how we can improve some of their soil health on their farms, what programs would fit best for them, that sort of thing. So a lot of my work is just one-on-one going out to a farm, visiting with folks, getting to know what practices they are doing and why and if there's any room for improvement scenarios like that, just building relationships and then also making those connections within our community as well. So agro business folks, whether it's private or building on our federal relationships and our state relationships yeah, there's elevators to build relationships with and insurance agents and anyone in the ag business.

Speaker 1:

So healthy soil? I mean, if I go out to my garden and I look at the dirt that's there, it's dirt to me, because I'm not that plugged into healthy soil. What does healthy soil mean? What does it look like? How do I get it?

Speaker 3:

Yes, so healthy soil can be anything that has a large diversity, whether that is through the crops that you're producing or the microbial life in the soil, the entomology that's around. Yeah, it's building organic matter, matter. It's having better infiltration where you're not having crusting and ponding issues. It's having the appropriate balance of your chemistry. So your nutrients that are growing, the crops that you're trying to grow, there's a lot of facets to it.

Speaker 1:

I saw a demonstration once where they took two fields right across the street from road, right across the road from each other, and one had been no-till and the other had been tilled, and they looked at the soil, the water absorption. In your professional opinion, where is the healthier soil going to be?

Speaker 3:

Well, definitely in the no-till probably, especially with water infiltration. So the more plant growth you have in a healthy soil, you're going to have more aggregate stability. You're also going to have more organic matter. So it's, every 1% of organic matter can allow each acre to hold 20,000 gallons more of water.

Speaker 1:

Wow, and that's important to us because we're working with water, right.

Speaker 2:

Right, yeah, we want to see water infiltrate down into the soil and then percolate to deeper layers, rather than running off the surface and washing soils or nutrients or other things. And we get to bring Grace College students out to a local farm every fall and you've helped with that before and that's such an amazing time when you guys bring your rainfall simulator out and do that demonstration Like you were just talking about Susie where you've got the different dirt dug up from different fields under different management scenarios and you can see that rate of runoff versus infiltration and it's a pretty stark contrast with the coloration of the water that's coming off, as well as the amount of water that's running off versus infiltrating in. That's a really cool simulator that you guys have simulator that you guys have?

Speaker 1:

What kinds of educational opportunities or initiatives is the conservation district?

Speaker 4:

working on right now. Well, I talked about Master Naturalists a little bit. That's our big adult program that we have. Most of what we do is with K through 12. So we work really closely with the STEM schools that are in the Warsaw School Corporation. We also work some with Tippecanoe Valley Schools and we really focus on getting students outside in their community so that they can develop a connection with their local land and have positive experiences in the outdoors.

Speaker 1:

Any kind of educational programs for the ag producers in our community?

Speaker 3:

Yep, so in March we just hosted SoilCon, which was a large. We had over 100 people at this event. We had speakers come in from across the country. It was pretty successful as far as I would be concerned. So, yeah, that was great.

Speaker 3:

And then this summer we have several research opportunities coming in, as well as a women's learning circle that we're going to be partnering with Purdue Extension on. Oh, talk a bit more about that Annie's Project, which is a several week long course directed to women in ag. And then these women learning circles got started out of Iowa and now have migrated into Indiana, and so this is more of a one day snapshot. So it's targeting women who are in ag, whether they've inherited land and they want help or they are one of the main farmers on the operation. So it's just allowing those women to have a space to communicate and talk openly and be able to ask what we would call dumb questions and not be judged. No dumb questions? Yeah, exactly. And then, of course, there's always field work with that. So then in the afternoons we go out and do some field analysis of soil health.

Speaker 1:

So you both talked about some of the partnerships that you're working with Purdue, the local schools. What other kinds of partnership opportunities are you looking for additional things? Are you partnering with anybody else that we need to know about?

Speaker 3:

If they're in the county we would partner with them or like to partner with them. We're open to anybody. I'd say but yeah, county Surveyor, purdue Extension, all the lake organizations around the county.

Speaker 4:

We do a lot with the Watershed Foundation. They help us with our rafting trip that we do for sixth graders every year and some other projects.

Speaker 1:

Cool. So lake associations, though, could reach out to you for help on educational opportunities. Okay, nice, nate, there is a soil connection between the work that you're doing. Tell us a bit about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so, speaking of soils and some of the educational programs that we're doing, tell us a bit about that. Yeah so, speaking of soils and some of the educational programs that we're doing with some of the local schools, you guys at the conservation district have been involved in those and it's wonderful to have your soil expertise come into those sort of aquatic focused programs for a lot of youngsters in our community and, as you said, in kind of a hands-on way, right, amanda?

Speaker 2:

And then as these students grow up to be maybe agricultural producers but maybe not, they're going to be helping to make good decisions, and so that educational is one connecting point.

Speaker 2:

And then looking tangibly at the actual lakes and streams themselves, there'd be kind of an indirect and then a direct connection with soil. So whenever soil then gets into an aquatic environment, if it comes off an agricultural field or a construction site or a stream bank, we would call it sediment then, and that's typically a negative thing in an aquatic system. Directly, what it will do is it can we call it siltation If it starts to settle out over gravel beds or sandy areas that some fish use as habitats, and so it can, or aquatic insects, so it can cause some problems there directly, but then indirectly that soil often has adsorbed nutrients, so nutrients that are kind of hitchhiking with the soil particle and that can flow down a stream into a lake, and those nutrients then can cause um algae to grow in the lake and, and, as we've been learning, some of those algae can produce toxins which can be harmful to people and pets.

Speaker 2:

Uh, it's also just uh, a uh, something that makes the lake not as clean. Then as well, if you have excess algae, or it can cause more rooted plant growth, like what we would call weeds in lakes, as well Rooted plant growth Weeds.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, that's not a scientific name, well, the algae is a plant too.

Speaker 2:

And so you got to distinguish between the rooted plants and the free-floating plants.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for clarifying that.

Speaker 2:

You've always wondered that I'm sure I have.

Speaker 1:

I have, you know. I know I grew up near Mentone and agriculture was part of our—not planting crops so much, but still we were around a lot of folks who did and farmers like that topsoil that's on their land is is their black gold. So what kind of programs can a farmer work with you so that they can preserve and not have so much like runoff?

Speaker 3:

Correct. So the main, the whole reason my position exists is to promote soil health, so that's building organic matter within your topsoil with sustainable practices. So whether that be reduced till no, till introducing cover cropping if you want to install waterways to prevent goalie erosion filter strips. Goalie erosion, goalies, goalie, oh okay, got it. Filter strips between the row crop production and the ditch to prevent any surface runoff.

Speaker 1:

that way, what's the fun aspect of your work.

Speaker 4:

Well, just about every day is fun at my work. Sometimes I can't believe that I get paid to go play with kids in the creek and run around the county to all these cool natural areas, so I really do enjoy working with the students. That is probably how I spend most of my time during the school year is out in the field with kids. I enjoy showing them that there's value in our landscapes around here. I feel like sometimes we forget to talk about how amazing Indiana's resources are, and so it's fun to see kids experience like finding a crawdad for the first time and picking it up and holding it and just being like so amazed, and so my job's very rewarding. There's a lot of fun you have crawdads at the Lilly Center.

Speaker 2:

We do, yeah, and some of our aquariums, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And do you have a fun aspect, the thing that you like? Oh, that is the most fun part of my job.

Speaker 3:

I think all of it's very rewarding. It's a very uphill battle at this point. I'm still trying to find my base in this position and build relationships, but just having one-on-one conversations and getting to know folks and what their operations are and why they manage the way they do, I mean that's I love one-on-one conversations.

Speaker 1:

Building those relationships. It's always key, isn't it? We've noticed that, Nate, in working with donors to the Lilly Center. We've noticed that, Nate, in working with donors to the Lilly Center. If you could change one thing when it relates to soil in our county, what would be that one thing?

Speaker 3:

I think we should go from 13.5% cover crop acreage to 100%. That's a dream.

Speaker 1:

That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. So 13% currently so cover crops. Kind of explain that to those who may not understand what a cover crop is. Yeah, of course.

Speaker 3:

So when you have your cash crop whether it be corn or soybeans in this area most likely and that comes off in the fall, a cover crop is a variety of plant that gets planted that will hopefully overwinter, but some varieties don't need to overwinter if they don't want to mess with termination in the spring. So these cover crops live over winter and they help build the organic matter in the soil, which in return, allows for water infiltration and less fertilizer maybe.

Speaker 1:

Yes, it's holding on to more nutrients um, yeah, so I noticed a lot of times in in the fall, these airplanes, um that I would. My husband would say, oh, it's a crop duster, not at this time of year, honey. It's not a crop duster, correct? They? They're planting, yep, what kind of cover crops get planted by air?

Speaker 3:

Anything that doesn't have to be planted in the soil. So there's some varieties of cover crop that do best if you drill them in. There's some varieties that will do fine with an aerial application. Now drones are coming into the market, so drone aerial application is on the market. There's high boys that can go above the crops of the corn they interseeded in before it's harvested interesting.

Speaker 1:

There's a whole bunch of different methods. Technology is really playing a big key in agriculture now. Um, how is it helping you?

Speaker 3:

um, I think my position, specifically a lot of it is data-based, so to have the aerial imagery or the survey data that comes out or the research that comes out of tile drains or anything like that can be utilized for my role. Technology play a role with you.

Speaker 4:

Well, sometimes I try to avoid technology.

Speaker 2:

When I'm on field trips with kids, we do it the good, old-fashioned way and use our ears to listen for birds.

Speaker 4:

But there are some really great tools out there that I like to share with teachers. So, like the Merlin Bird ID app we were talking about earlier is great at helping to identify birds by their song, there's an app called Seek by iNaturalist that it has a software that, when you point your camera at a plant or an animal or a mushroom, it will help you identify it. So those are things that I like to share with people to use on their own.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, lots of cool tools with people to use on their own. Yeah, lots of cool tools. What is one thing you wish people in our community would know that the conservation district does?

Speaker 3:

I do think we're a well-kept secret just because we're part of the local government and not a public entity or a private entity. I mean. So, yeah, we don't have the biggest marketing crew or anything like that, but we do a lot of good work and we have a ton of programming and we partner on a lot of different things. So, whether you're a private entity and you'd like to partner on anything conservation or water or soil related in the county yeah, definitely reach out and see what we can do.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I'd say one of our strengths is that we're very well networked, so we're connectors. We work in the US Department of Agriculture, building alongside the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. There is a soil and water district in every county in the state of Indiana and so we, if we don't know the answer to your question, we can connect you to somebody who is going to be a reliable source of information. So Tashina does a great job at connecting producers to pots of money. I can connect you to somebody who could help you with developing an educational program. I mean, we are able to point you in the right direction if we're not able to help you ourselves. But we do have a lot of expertise in our office as well.

Speaker 1:

So every community, every county served by a conservation district. Do you have, does your funding come from the federal government or from county government, and do you have a board of directors?

Speaker 3:

That is a great question. Conservation districts are very convoluted, so we are a subset of state government, so we receive a pot of money from the state, but we also our salaries and most of what we do is from county tax. So we have tax dollars invested locally. We have state dollars invested, like Amanda had mentioned. We are co-located with the USDA, so they actually fund, like our computers and equipment and the roof over our head.

Speaker 2:

So we have some federal, yeah, we share data.

Speaker 3:

So we have federal dollars invested in us. We have state and local yeah.

Speaker 4:

And our county government has really seen the value in investing in the conservation district, which isn't necessarily the case in every county in Indiana. So we're really fortunate that our people at the county are willing to spend money on conservation. In our county it is very unusual to have a staff of four people at a soil and water district. Most offices have one staff person.

Speaker 1:

So we've kind of been asking what you can do for us as community. What can we do for you?

Speaker 4:

Well, one thing I always need is volunteers who are passionate about conservation, and we have about 40 regular volunteers and I think in 2023, they put over 1,200 hours of service in. Most of our education programs are volunteer run, so I train up our volunteers in the instructional materials and then I send them off and they are working with the kids out in the field and we have such a fun time. We also have volunteers who help us out in the office with planning events, mailing things out for us. We have some volunteers who collect soil samples for our urban soil health program, and so we could not do any of the work that we do without our volunteers. So that is one thing that you could do is send volunteers our way if you know people who are passionate about conservation in their local community so be an advocate, be a volunteer and then, along with our annual meeting each year, we also have corporate and affiliate sponsors that go along with that.

Speaker 3:

So, if you don't want to, or if you don't want to, if you don't have the time, physical capability, whatever we take, corporate sponsorships are $100 each or affiliate sponsors are $30. And those funds get rolled right back into the programming that we do. Okay, and do you have a website? Kosciusko SWCDorg.

Speaker 1:

SWCD Soil Water Conservation District. We love our acronyms.

Speaker 4:

You can find a calendar of events. You can find information about signing up to volunteer. If you're a teacher and you're interested in our educational programs, there's a lot of pages that go over those options. If you'd like to enroll in Indiana Master Naturalist or sign up to get a soil sample, all of those things can be found on our website.

Speaker 1:

Tashina, amanda, thank you so very much for joining us today and sharing a bit about the conservation district. One in every county in Indiana. Ours is stellar, apparently.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yes, for sure. One of the best of the state. Yeah, yeah, thank you, guys for your work.

Speaker 4:

We did win an award last year at the. State Conservation Association.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, Well, that's one thing we wish people knew about more right. Award winning.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, conservation district. Good work. Like I said, best kept secret.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you for joining us. Thank you for listening to the Lake Doctor podcast. Stay tuned, we have an exciting segment coming up.

Speaker 2:

Hey, I'm Dr Nate Bosch. We're here on a sandbar today in one of our local lakes, winona Lake. You can see behind me is a stream. This is called Cherry Creek and as Cherry Creek flows out into this lake, we start to get sediment getting deposited which has created this sandbar. So let's talk a little bit about how that happens. So right now this stream is flowing at about 30 gallons per second not a whole lot, but under the right conditions maybe a big rainstorm, thunderstorm in the summertime, maybe a snowmelt event in the wintertime that amount of water could be 10 times what it is right now and rather than being fairly clear like it is right now, it's going to have a chocolate milk brown coloration to it, and that chocolate milk color means there's a lot of sediment that's in the water. As that water starts to come out here towards the lake, it's going to slow down as it enters the lake and as the water slows down it can no longer hold on to that sediment like it was before. So what happens to the sediment? It starts to deposit on the bottom of the lake leading to the sandbar. If I pull up some of this sediment here, you can see we've got some gravels. In here We've got some sand which is a little bit coarser of a soil particle. There's some clays in here as well, a little bit of organic material which gives it that darker color, and so what we're seeing here is we're seeing everything that used to be up on the land in the drainage area or the watershed of this creek, that has come into the creek and then washed into this lake, creating this sandbar. So what impact might that sediment have on our downstream lake One, it could start to what we call silt out some areas where fish normally would do spawning and lay their eggs. That could cause some problems. It also can bury some areas where we'd have good types of plants, like aquatic macrophytes we call those in a and that could be a bad thing as well. But perhaps the worst thing that the sediments bring with them into the lake is something we call nutrients.

Speaker 2:

Nutrients there's two major types of nutrients in lakes that we keep track of. One is nitrogen and the other is phosphorus. There's different types of nitrogen, like ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, even organic nitrogens. There's also different types of phosphorus. There's different types of nitrogen, like ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, even organic nitrogen. There's also different types of phosphorus. It could be particulate or dissolved phosphorus. The dissolved form of phosphorus actually will adsorb onto sediment particles almost like a hitchhiker. So as the sediment particle comes into the lake and settles out, the phosphorus comes right in with it and settles out there as well.

Speaker 2:

And when we get nutrients in the lake, those are going to cause some different things to happen in the lakes themselves. We'll get more plants to grow, we'll get algae to grow which makes up the base of the food chain in our lakes. And if we get too much nutrients which is the case in this lake and most of the lakes around the Midwestern United States we get an excess of those aquatic macrophytes, those weeds, and an excess of algae, that phytoplankton, which can start to cause problems. Too many weeds can start to hinder the ability of recreation. It can start to hinder even the ability for fish. In some instances where things start to get too crowded and we don't have that natural type of vegetation and the natural amount of vegetation On the side of phytoplankton or algae, we can actually have toxic phytoplankton which can grow in our lakes and those toxins can be harmful to people and their pets.

Speaker 2:

So let's talk about a little bit. Where is the sediment coming from, as it comes from this stream. Even the ducks out here enjoy this sandbar area. The sediments are going to come in a couple different areas. They'll come from the stream channel itself, and so along the stream channel you'll have areas of erosion. Maybe a tree falls in and what used to be held to the bank with the roots of that tree, now it's exposed dirt and it's open to erosion as the water level starts to increase after a rain event, for example. You also could have the sediment coming from the land itself. Maybe it's an agricultural field that doesn't have a cover crop on it during the fall or winter months or early spring months. Maybe it's a construction site that doesn't properly have the silt fence around that construction site. Maybe it's along a roadway where there's exposed dirt and that could get washed into a road-sized ditch, which could go into a stream and then end up into a lake, like we are here today. All the while, again, those sediments, as they get washed into the lake, they're bringing with them nutrients into the lake, which can cause some of the problems we see in our lakes with excess weed growth and excess algae growth. Alright, so we've talked about some of the problems associated when soil runs off the land and moves into an aquatic environment, where we call it sediment, and then creates a sandbar or something like this, where I'm standing today.

Speaker 2:

Let's talk about what we can do about it to be a little bit more responsible with those soils in the landscape. So let's start with thinking about that stream channel that might be eroding. There's different restoration techniques that can be done on a stream channel. Probably the simplest is just planting some native plants. Those native plants are well adapted to our area here in the Midwestern United States. They don't need a lot of maintenance as far as nutrients or irrigation. They're going to have deep roots that are going to hold that soil in place rather than allowing it to erode into the stream channel and then come into a downstream lake. We can also look at what can be done up on the land itself, even away from the stream.

Speaker 2:

So let's think about agricultural, since we have a lot of agricultural area around our lakes and streams here in Kosciuszko County. Agriculture can have filter strips along edges of fields which can intercept some of those sediments that might be running off. Agriculture can also do things like no-till or cover crops. No-till is, as the name would suggest, not tilling the soil and instead injecting seeds into the soil at different times of the year to grow those cash crops. We also can have cover crops which hold on to the soil in those off times of the year, late in the fall, also into the winter and early spring times, and help hold on to those soils again to help cut down on the erosion.

Speaker 2:

Not just agriculture, though people's properties, a new construction site, for example, of a home being built or a business being built, having silt fences along the edge, maybe even on the outside of the silt fence, having some sort of a filter strip of vegetation that can help again intercept some of those soil particles so they don't get into one of our aquatic ecosystems. Thinking about golf courses, for example, what sort of filter strips can be around the edge of the golf course property can be around the edge of the golf course property? Thinking along roadways, where sometimes there's exposed soil, how can we cut that down and have grasses, preferably native grasses, in some of those areas? Again, we wanna hold on to those soil particles. Nobody wants to lose those soil particles from a golf course or from a yard or from an agricultural field, so let's hold on to them on land, rather than letting them get into one of our aquatic systems.

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 the first step to making your lake cleaner and healthier. Visit our website for full studies of our applied research and discover some tangible ways you can make a difference on your lake at lakesgraceedu.

Speaker 1:

We'll see you next time. The doctor is in.