Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast

How to Eat like a Wetland with Landon Vine

• Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams • Season 2 • Episode 10

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In this episode of The Lake Doctor Podcast, we wade into the world of wetlands with Landon Vine, a wetland scientist at V3 Companies. Landon shares his passion for these vital ecosystems and explains how wetlands serve as nature’s filtration systems—cleaning water, supporting biodiversity, and protecting communities from flooding. Through his work, Landon bridges the gap between environmental science and everyday impact, showing how restoration and responsible development can work hand-in-hand. With visual aids, Landon shows how unique Indiana's wetland plants are as well as their aesthetic beauty.

Together, we explore the challenges and rewards of wetland conservation and what it takes to maintain, restore, and even create these complex landscapes. Landon’s insights offer a fascinating look at how science, stewardship, and collaboration can preserve the health of our waterways for generations to come.

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_05:

Thanks for joining us on the Lake Doctor Podcast. I'm Susie Light and my co-host, Dr. Nate Bosch, an official Light nerd.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, that's right. I received my doctorate from the University of Michigan in Lymnology, study of freshwater lakes, and streams. In today's episode, we're really excited to have Landon Vine. He's a wetland scientist with V3 companies, and we're talking about wetlands.

SPEAKER_05:

And we might learn about pickerelweed and other wetlands plants. I'm so excited about today's episode, the doctor is in. Tell us a bit about Landon Vine. How did you get to where you are now?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me onto this podcast. This is just a delight to be here. And it's nice to see the center and everything. So who am I? My business card says Project Scientist.

SPEAKER_01:

Ah.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's all you need to know, I guess. No, that's not. So I am I am a strictly speaking, I am a natural resources consultant. Okay. So in other words, there are things out in nature that are complicated. The science, the regulations, the engineering is complicated. So if you need to deal with some of these things out in nature, then you would call a natural resource consultant. My specialty happens to be wetlands, lakes, and streams. And I've been doing that uh for a while. And um so yeah, that's that's that's who I am, uh a consultant. And uh I've been doing it in Indiana for about 11 years.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Cool.

SPEAKER_05:

So a Purdue grad.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_05:

And then other schools that you went to to help get your degree to get you to be a project scientist.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, yeah. I so I I went to Purdue for my bachelor's degree in environmental science. Uh, and then I I went for a master's degree from the State University of New York in Syracuse, New York. And my first job was in Washington, D.C. And I was an environmental consultant then too. That was my first job at a graduate school. But I I, you know, I didn't really know too much about wetlands or or rivers or lakes, frankly, at that time. Um I uh I got into consulting for rivers in my first job, specifically the Missouri River. And I moved to Colorado to continue that job as transferred. And uh ultimately the project got stopped. And so I I got laid off. And I kind of traveled around the country um trying to get back into that particular industry of working on rivers. And when I learned that uh there were some real opportunities being a wetlands specialist. So moved back to Indiana, where my family is from, okay, and got a job in the wetlands consulting industry. And that's been uh a real blessing ever since then.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_05:

Well, you people will know from previous podcasts, wetlands are one of my favorite things. Um why are wetlands important?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I guess that depends on who you talk to. Um, I actually did watch that the podcast that you did with the man from the Fish and Wildlife Service. Scott Fetters. Yes, we talked, yeah, that was a beautiful interview, by the way.

SPEAKER_04:

That was season one.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So uh why are wetlands important? Well, important is a relative word, but if you asked me, and if you ask uh most of the people who who uh are in the natural resource industry, we'd say they're they're important for a very large number of reasons. Number one, I mean, maybe let's let's back up a little bit and just consider like what is a wetland and what do you what do we mean what do people mean when they say wetlands? Um if you the next time you're out in nature on a hike or just outside, if you look at the landscape, you notice that there may be low spots on the landscape, and these low spots can be wetter than the high spots, and they can have um plants growing in them that look a little bit different from the plants in the high spots. If you really pay attention, you will see that it's it's kind of like the land is sending water to those areas, so some of them are always going to be wet. Even could be like six inches beneath the soil. If you dig down a little bit, they could be they could be wet all the time. So if they're wet all the time, then the plants that live there are gonna be different because plants that live on dry land can't live in water all the time like that. Right. And the uh the soils, if you were to really dig into the dirt, the soils are gonna look very different. That's what a wetland is. It has to be getting water, it has to have a special soil that is uh a soil that gets a lot of water, and it has special plants that can live in water, like the ones that you guys uh brought here today.

SPEAKER_05:

So if you're tuning in, just listening to the podcast, you are missing some beautiful plants that we have. I think some Lily um center lakes and stream students went out and gathered these specific for this. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

Um and what are these plants that we see on the table?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm gonna start with my favorite. Um, this is one of my favorite plants of all time, and it is called a pickerel weed. So if you are, I guess for the people who are just listening, you cannot see it, so I'll describe it as best I can. But this is a sort of beautiful lime green to dark green arrow or heart-shaped leaf. And it's got a thick stalk with little purple flowers. And the flowers are irregular. They have how many petals is that? Uh six petals with a yellow symbol in each petal. You I think you can see it from where you are. Um that's that's a pickerel weed that grows in the wetlands. That's um, but it's it's it's not super common, but if you look hard enough, you will find them.

SPEAKER_04:

And that would be considered an emergent wetland plant, right? Um, usually start below the water surface and then they uh emerge up above the water surface, and so these leaves and these flowers would be up above the water surface.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, yeah. So this is a plant that can really take a lot of water. I mean, let's maybe we should should back up again. Not every obviously it's it's possible to overwater a plant, okay?

SPEAKER_05:

I've done that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I mean, we all have any any kind of houseplant or uh or what have you. Well, this is not one of those plants. Um, it could really take a lot of water. Before this plant would give out if it were totally underwater for a really long time, then it wouldn't live. But generally it likes to be in a lot of water, like enough water to top your boot. Okay. Um, over here we have an arrowhead. Uh, so that's got the really sharp arrow-shaped leaves, and it's got beautiful. I I think they're really beautiful, but they're not as striking as the pickerelweed flowers. But these uh white and yellow three-petaled flowers.

SPEAKER_05:

It almost looks like an orchid.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, it does.

SPEAKER_04:

I don't believe it's a little bit of an orchid look.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't believe it's related to orchids, but uh yes, it does look like that, doesn't it? Yeah. And I love seeing both of these plants. They they they live in kind of the same spot. This arrowhead is uh it really likes to live in that really deep water and it can handle deep water.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay.

SPEAKER_05:

So both the arrowhead and the pickerel plant leaf is about the size of a person's palm. Yep. And we have a couple of other plants that have leaves that are a lot smaller.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so so these ones here, um, I'm looking at an iron weed, which has uh the man, that that purple color on the flowers, I think, is is a really striking shade of purple. There aren't very many flowers out there in the landscape that have that deep rich shade of purple. So it kind of stands out. Um, that is one that does not it lives in wet, wetland soils. It likes water, it needs water very, very much, and it can't live in dry soils, but it doesn't usually want to live as deep as the pickerel weed in the arrowhead. So if you go to a wetland, you might see that in the drier parts of the wetland.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, we have at our house we actually have some iron weed uh growing along the side of our house, not in a wetland area, but it is it does have pretty good moisture there, and the iron weed grows up really tall. Butterflies love it, it's really a fun plant.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And then last but not least is the this beautiful yellow flower, which is a wing stem. And it does have uh I to me, those are really striking flowers, but the the really remarkable part about this plant is along the stem, it has these uh long fringes that look like wings all the way down the stem, hence the name. And that also like the iron weed that lives in a wet like the dry part of the wetland.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay.

SPEAKER_05:

So, Nate, from an ecological point of view, wetlands are important.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_05:

We have examples of plants that are growing in the wetlands. What other kinds of things are ecologically important?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, so I would say wetlands from an ecological standpoint, we have plants and animals that live there. So the wetlands themselves are valuable as a habitat for some of the plants that Landon was just talking about, but also some really cool uh critters as well on the animal side. So we can think of reptiles. Um, snakes are not my favorite, but there's a lot of species of snakes that will live in wetlands. Um, we can have other uh animals like beavers and otters and muskrats and raccoons uh can move through wetlands quite often. We've got lots of uh birds that use wetlands, either for parts of their life or longer periods that will move through wetlands, uh, insects, lots of amphibians, uh turtles, even some fish can move in and out of wetlands during especially certain times of the year when wetlands are maybe in flood stage and they're connected to a nearby lake or a stream. Um, but wetlands not only are valuable kind of in and of themselves for what's living there, but they also provide a value for other ecosystems that are nearby. And so when we think of lakes and streams, wetlands are really important for lakes and streams because oftentimes water will move through a wetland on its way to a lake or a stream, or a lake or a stream might um flood its banks, and then that extra water goes into a wetland area. And those wetlands have the opportunity then to filter the water to make it cleaner, also to absorb some of the extra flood water when we have really intense snowmelt events or or rain events. And so wetlands just provide just a whole bunch of really important services.

SPEAKER_05:

So, Landon, one of the things I think that you might be working on, what is the relationship between wetlands, lakes, and algae?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I was thinking about that um after I listened to that episode where you did an interview with uh what's the man's name again? Scott Fetters. Scott Fetters. Um one of the most striking images that he referenced in that interview was that wetlands are like the Mother Nature's kidneys. Okay. I've I've I mean that uh we if we we unpack that a little bit, it's it's like if you if that's true, then if a landscape doesn't have wetlands, it's almost like a human body without kidneys. Okay. You you the there's stuff that that can cause our organs not to work, and our it's our kidney's job to take care of that so that all the other stuff works the way it's supposed to and can do its job. So that's kind of a good metaphor for what a wetland will do specifically to a lake. And they'll do it for all sorts of things other than lakes, but specifically for a lake, okay? On the one hand, uh Nate, like you were saying, when when water is moving into a lake, whether it's moving across the landscape or whether it's moving from a creek or river or stream that drains into the lake, okay, it's gonna be carrying some kind of pollution with it. Especially, you know, in certain certain landscapes, especially in Indiana, there might be some kind of pollution or a lot of pollution in the water that goes into your lake. And once it gets into your lake, it's gonna hit that slow-moving water and it just stays there. Now it's the lake's problem.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Well, you were saying, Nate, wet that the wet if that water has to pass through a wetland on the way to the lake, it slows it down. Some of that pollution will fall out of the water and will stay in the wetland instead of going to the lake. And that's not a problem for the wetland because wetlands kind of love pollution. Just like uh I mean it's kinda it's kind of like our kidneys, you know? Yeah. Um I I I feel like that that image of uh the wetlands as kidneys or wetlands as cleaning systems, that's in circulation. But it's it's not as it I haven't heard as much commentary on like what does that mean specifically, like why? Right. Okay. So I guess if you if you're the sort of personality type that needs like a the reasons why, right, which is me. Yeah, um, here are the reasons why. Number one, slowing down the water. Imagine uh you have a polluted water in a creek, it's headed for the lake, and it floods, and some of that water gets up into a wetland. That water is polluted. The flood waters go down, that water can stay in the wetland and not go back into the creek and not go into the lake. So uh I said like a wetland likes pollution, it eats pollution in a certain sense. So if you have um fertilizers, I mean nutrients, you know? Phosphorus. Yeah, phosphorus would phosphorus would be the big one now. Um but let's let's back up. Wetlands are a sort of slam dunk with nitrogen. Ah let's back up even more for whoever might be listening. Plants need nutrients to grow, just like we do, you know, okay. Uh the big three, if you're a gardener or I guess a farmer, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. So wetlands really eat a lot of nitrogen. That's easy for a wetland. But why?

SPEAKER_04:

Because of lack of oxygen, right? And so denitrification, so that nitrogen actually can turn into nitrogen gas and go up into the atmosphere.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a specific reason. So, I mean, if you think like um some people didn't, I didn't know this until I went to Purdue and took a soil science course. There can be um as many as at Purdue I heard 10 million microorganisms in a teaspoon of a healthy soil. That's talking about a soil on dry land. Okay. I don't know what the figure is for wetlands, but I plugged it into AI late last night and it said uh so AI, I hope you're correct about this. Uh, because I'm gonna say it publicly now, 100 million microorganisms per teaspoon in a wetland.

SPEAKER_05:

So it's the soils are different in the wetlands and dry lands, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Okay. So think about that. Uh imagine a little teaspoon of that black muck from a wetland. You have 10 uh 10 to 100 million, we'll say, whatever, it's it's over 10 million, probably, little microorganisms that live in that soil. Well, here's the trick, here's the catch. If you are a germ, we'll say, can we call them germs?

SPEAKER_05:

Bacteria?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, bacteria. If you're a bacteria and you live in soil, you need to breathe in some way. It's not that hard most of the time if you live in dry soil. I mean you may have other problems, but oxygen is not gonna be that big of a problem.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

It's gonna be a problem if you're in the wetland because you're underwater all the time and you can't breathe.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

So you have to come up with a fancy way of getting well of breathing in in the wetland. What I was thinking about um like last night, I was thinking about a cool way to describe this. I'm thinking like if you are a soil bacterium in a dry soil, you're like a ten-foot-tall basketball player making slam dunks.

SPEAKER_02:

Pretty easy.

SPEAKER_00:

It's easy and it's just like you you knock it out of the park. Yeah. Okay. If you're a soil bacterium in a wetland, you need to be doing like trick shots. You need to be going for like a really fancy play. Pass it to this guy, whatever, like the fanciest basketball play. So um what that that's a metaphor for like the chemistry that these bacteria are working. In order to do their chemistry to get the air that the oxygen or respiration that they need, they have to work trick shots off of chemicals that are in the pollution. And they're gonna hold on to it. So in order to get what they need, they have to eat that pollution in the water. That's the fundamental principle. It gets way more gnarly than that when, say, like the bacteria are gonna be interacting with the plants in a wetland. Because you consider like uh you could just run water through polluted water through uh soil with no plants in it, those bacteria will usually start to start to work in the in the soil. But if you have wetland plants, um, like any of the four plants that that are before us right now, they're sticking their roots down into that wetland soil. Okay, they are subject to the same problem. They need to breathe in some way. And especially when when their roots are underwater, maybe for their entire life of the plant, the roots are underwater. It's just it's it's like breathing doesn't work. Okay. Um, a stock of corn, something in like a houseplant or whatever, okay. For those plants, it's like it's all about where are you gonna get your water? Oxygen is is not a problem. But when you're in a wetland, you have all the water you could considerably conceivably want. It's it's not an issue. Now oxygen is the problem, right? So when the the roots, the plants have special ways of getting oxygen down into the roots so that the roots don't die. Because if you don't get oxygen to the roots in some way, the roots will not live. Okay. There are uh many different ways that plants do that, and some plants have more than one way in case the first way fails. But think about it, um, around that root, if you have bacteria that can't breathe, those bacteria are gonna be doing some very complicated chemistry that can result in toxic chemicals that'll kill the roots. So sometimes plants will take their leaves that are in the air and shoot oxygen down into the roots, and they they are they have special organs that can do that, okay, uh, in a way that a plant on dry land can't do, and they they pump out oxygen right around the root. So there's like this little sheath of oxygen, very, very tiny sheath around of oxygen around the root. The bacteria that can live in that tiny sheath of oxygen around the root, they can just breathe normally as if they were on dry land, because the plant is giving them oxygen. And then they take chemicals and they send it out to the soil where there's no oxygen. And then the bacteria that can't use oxygen get those chemicals, and then they work their fancy chemistry off that.

SPEAKER_04:

I feel like it's kind of like a snorkel. Yes, it's the wetland plant is like a snorkel bringing oxygen down then to below the water surface.

SPEAKER_00:

That that's exactly what it's doing, and that's why uh some wetland plants have to get so tall. Like uh we we don't have one, but a soft stem bulrush that can get uh and it's it to me, it's a really cool plant. It feels like as like this rubbery, it feels like a piece of rubber tubing, okay? That can get like nine, ten feet tall. That there's a reason, right? Because because it's expensive to grow up like that. You wouldn't, if you you think like if if you're a plant, you don't want to sit here and grow things that you don't need because you would need that, you need to grow only things that you need so you don't waste growth on things. They're that tall so that when it floods, they can just keep a little bit of the plant above water, breathe the air, and then they have a special organ that fires that oxygen all the way down 10 feet to the roots, so the roots live.

SPEAKER_05:

Is a bulrush native species in Indiana?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So the one that I'm talking about is native.

SPEAKER_05:

Okay. That's fascinating. So we've talked a lot about wetlands and what their function is. What is the state of wetlands in northern Indiana?

SPEAKER_04:

Well, we don't have as many wetlands as we once did. We still have a lot of wetlands, though. And so now the ones that we do have are even more important to protect and take care of because they do so many good things as we've just been talking about, especially for uh lakes and streams in our communities, which is the focus of this podcast series. And so we need to continue to prioritize taking care of them. Uh, we can construct new ones if there's opportunities for that. We can rehabilitate existing ones, we can um uh then protect ones that are already functioning at a high level and are already, you know, filled with native plants and functioning just as Landon was describing them functioning as their I love that concept of eating pollution. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

We talked about bacteria in wetlands. Yes. How about algae, like blue-green algae? And I know that's a problem at lakes. How does the wetlands help with that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, um, well, it it's real simple. If you have an algae problem in your lake, you certainly have a nutrient problem. Right. I mean, it's just a fact because the algae need nutrients to grow. So uh simply put, wetlands want those nutrients too. They're gonna compete with the algae for the nutrients. So there won't be as many left over for the algae. They're they're they're fighting with the algae over those nutrients. So it just makes life more difficult for the algae, and you could have a lot less algae if you cut off their source of food by giving it to the wetland instead of the algae.

SPEAKER_04:

And that wetland could be up in the watershed, the drainage area that's flowing towards the lake, where those wetlands will pull out those nutrients even before they get to the lake, but those wetlands also could be around the border of the lake itself. Now, we don't have many of those wetlands left anymore around our lakes. Historically, we would have lots of wetlands around our lakes that would constantly be pulling in those nutrients and keeping them away from the algae. So now, since we've lost a lot of those wetlands around our lakes, because we have a lot of beautiful homes around our lakes, because people want to be on those beautiful ecosystems and recreating there, the wetlands that are up in those watershed areas or the few that are still dotted around the shorelines of our lakes are even more important now because there's less of them there.

SPEAKER_05:

If someone wanted to see a good example of a wetlands in Casciasco County, where would one go?

SPEAKER_04:

Well, a few that come off the top of my mind. Uh, one would be Pisgah Marsh, which is a DNR um uh location that we have kind of right on the edge of Casciasco County, beautiful example of uh marshland there, as well as some small ponds and lakes. In addition to that, on the on Lake Tippecanoe, we have the Ball Wetlands, which is a great uh example of a wetland between Lake Tippecanoe and Little Tippy, or also known as James Lake, there, moving through that channel between them. You can see great views of that. Uh Pike Lake, uh downtown Warsaw. There's a boardwalk that goes through there with a lot of signage that we even helped uh with here at the Lilly Center to put signage along there so people can learn about wetlands even as they're walking on that boardwalk through there. Uh one of our partner organizations, the Wawasee Area Conservancy Foundation, has lots of wetland properties that they've protected uh throughout the watershed of their lake there, Lake Wawasee. And so those can be some great sites people can visit as well.

SPEAKER_05:

So, Landon, what kind of project would you say has been your favorite project?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, brother, um, that's a difficult question because uh they're it's like asking your favorite child. Well, I know the answer to that question. Uh both of them. So uh just don't ask me my favorite parent. Uh both of them, okay. Um my favorite wife is my wife. So I don't know. Uh I guess it depends on the mood I'm in. Um, but I'll say that uh we we build a lot of wetlands, but we build them for different reasons and for people who have different interests. Okay. Um I I think we we we mentioned at the beginning, like wetlands are subject to government regulation. And there's uh it's it's re it's way more complicated than this, but the simple way I always say is if you remove a wetland from the landscape, you have to build twice as much somewhere else to make up for it. That's uh the shortest possible way to summarize what we do with wetlands. So we build those, and um, then we take care of them once they're built and spend five to ten years making sure that they're working the way they're supposed to, which is what you're required to do. And those wetlands are almost always amazing because they look they, you know, we we can build them to have all the good stuff and as little as possible of the bad or none of the bad stuff.

SPEAKER_04:

Um you're saying native species as opposed to non-native invasive species.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, I'm saying, I'm saying native species, and I'm also saying we we can control how much water they're gonna get so they get the exact right amount of water and that they're put in a place that's just perfect for for all everything that we can manage to to consider. I like those. Uh those are those are very beautiful, and it's it's fun uh to go out and do work in those and to build them and take care of them. So I'd say any one of those would be a can would be a fair answer for my personal favorite. Um we build those in central Indiana. I I did we did one once in in this county actually at a place called Lake Papukeechee.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. Um they I can't remember why it was a good, it was almost 10 years ago, but they had a need for a wetland. And so we uh I think we I can't remember if we designed it or someone else did, but we helped them take care of it once it was built. And they were they were super into it. Like they were, I think they they're putting up little interpretive signage like this is what this plant is, and they would bring people through and show them all the plants, and and not everyone who builds one of these things is that interested in it, right?

SPEAKER_04:

Um so so that was they have a very engaged lake association there, and the Papakichi flows into Lake Wawase, which is our largest natural lake in Indiana, which then flows into Syracuse and then eventually out to St. Joe and into Lake Michigan, just to help with people with the geography.

SPEAKER_05:

How smart to put signage up because most people, if they don't know, look at a wetland plant and think it's a weed.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. That's that one's a tricky one because uh, I mean, the the simple fact is there are such a thing as wetland weeds. And I think uh actually um your your previous guest from the Fish and Wildlife Service, what's his name again? Scott Fetters. Scott Fetters did uh talk about that quite a bit. Okay. Um just because a plant is in a wetland and has all this cool stuff that we've been talking about doesn't mean it's native to Indiana. Everything on the table here that we've been talking about is native to Indiana. These are wonderful plants, okay. Um we have some non-native weeds, they get out of control, and then if you don't, you know, under the wrong conditions, it can end up that uh within a few years that'll be the only plant in your wetland. And it could be a wetland of like 40 acres of just common reed. Common reed is public enemy number one. I guess the uh the the cruel irony is that that plant works. I mean, it's it's a hated enough plant that it's actually illegal in in some contexts to deal with it. Um and if you if you build a wetland and you have that plant in your wetland, then the government expects you to eradicate it utterly down to the last individual immediately. It's that bad. Um, it's a real monster. Cruel irony is in terms of this um its its impact upon cleaning up water, like we were talking about, it's a real powerhouse for cleaning up water. So I apologize for that. Um, if you want to get even more ironic, probably public enemy number two for wetlands, and as far as plants that that have parts. That are uh flowers and stuff that are above water is a really awful plant called Purple Loose Drife. And that one is a cruel plant. I mean, it's not as good for water quality. It's good, but not as good as Phragmites. But the cruel part of that plant is it's actually a really beautiful plant. Has this kind of uh like bright 1990s neon pink color to its flowers, but uh that's a horrible one. That'll really wipe out all these guys if you give it a chance.

SPEAKER_04:

I've had a lot of conversations with my wife about that plant because we'll be driving down the road and she'll be, oh, look at those beautiful flowers in that wetland. And then I then I go into this whole nerdy explanation of why it's not actually that actually. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

There's actually one of the ways, one of the weirder ways that people control that plant, apparently there's this literally a species of insect that only eats that plant, and you can release that insect uh into the wetland and it'll eat them all and kill them all, and then you're fine. That's like a normal thing.

SPEAKER_04:

There are coffee that's there's like a it's a loose strife weevil. Yes, yeah, it's a weevil. And we worked with some Boy Scout groups. This would have been early in the Lily Center's history, um, maybe 10 to 12 years ago, um, with raising these weevils. They they were raising these weevils indoors, kind of under nets in these little kiddie pools, and then releasing them then after they would kind of grow up. I forget exactly how their life cycle worked, but uh yeah, I I kept wondering though, the the environmental scientists in me wondered like if if these if these insects could live and eat the loose strife, then why weren't they just naturally occurring out there? Why were we having to kind of seed the environment with these weevils?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't know. I have no idea. I mean it's I always get nervous when we start bringing in animals to control some other organism, you know.

SPEAKER_05:

I think we got in trouble with that in the past, haven't we? To say the least number of times.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a thing. I I think um I don't know, when it comes to like wetlands and lakes, it just seems to me, and I have the immense fortune of working for people who do see things this way, like it's best, okay, like by bio- I'm not trying to downplay biology in any any way, but ecology is very important. What uh what I mean by this, like you you have to think um in terms of the the system, you have to think uh holistically, like that's not just some hippie frou-frou thing, like that's real, like you can actually fail to achieve your goals if you fail to think ecologically. And uh invasive species management, I mean it is invasive species is uh a real illustration of how important that can be because these things are not they don't exist in isolation, they're they're a part of the landscape, uh interacting with other things. But yeah, the the phragmites, common read, and um uh purple loose strife would be public enemies number one and two. So if you build a wetland and you have a single individual, um the the authorities do expect you to eradicate it utterly. And that's hard, it can be hard to do, especially once these things get entrenched.

SPEAKER_05:

And it's not just like one and done, it takes years sometimes to eradicate.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it it it can, um, depending on how bad the problem is. Uh on the one, you know what, for a minor problem, you might have one individual going out and applying an herbicide, and you need to use the right herbicide because these things are tough and uh they might not die if you use a weaker herbicide or the wrong one. If it's a really bad problem, then you say, Okay, we just need to. I'm trying to use non-violent language. I was gonna say bomb the wetland. Uh, but like in the industry, you know, the these guys that do this for a living, they sometimes say we need to nuke it.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh, but all so it's basically kill all the plants and start over.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, the these these invasive species can be so bad that you might be willing to lose your good plants too as collateral damage because it is the only way to move forward. Um, and then the real, real, real uh hard, like heavy duty way to remove them is not to use herbicides necessarily, but to actually excavate the soil that they're growing in. Because you see, they they're probably dropping seeds that are embedded in the soil. So if you were to kill every last one, the seeds are still there. And um, yeah, it's it's tough. But but there, I mean, we've gotten, I would dare to venture, we've gotten, we as a society have gotten pretty good at dealing with these invasive plants. It's a real problem, it's a huge problem, but I'm saying we we know how to fight back now. So now it's time to do the hard work, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

I think uh we've talked about monocultures in the past. Yeah. And um the plants that we have here are examples of do you call it multicultured? What do you call when they're a lot? Diversity. Diversity. Okay.

SPEAKER_04:

So we want a diverse ecological community, uh, lots of different species all kind of working together in their in their specific roles.

SPEAKER_05:

So why would that be important to me or humans?

SPEAKER_04:

Well, as we were talking about before, with wetlands and how they can clean up water, they also will allow water infiltration for groundwater, for irrigation, or for people's drinking water wells. So these are all services that these wetlands provide that we as human beings enjoy, right? We we all enjoy and um value clean water and wetlands are not just enjoy, Nate.

SPEAKER_05:

Like we kind of need it to live, right?

SPEAKER_04:

Exactly. So these wetlands are providing that. And so we're not certain these wetlands certainly are important in and of themselves, the with their beauty and how intricately they work together. Um, but they're also valuable because of what they provide for people living in communities around them.

SPEAKER_05:

In addition to the health benefits of a wetlands, what are the aesthetics? What besides beautiful, the th four beautiful plants that we see here before us, what else is there?

SPEAKER_00:

The thing about it is, um wetland plants are special. They're not like plants that live on dry land. So if you look at a wetland, if you pay attention, you will see things that you won't see anywhere else. So uh right from that reason alone, I think that there's an aesthetic value to them because they bring something unique. And if you just take the time to look, if you just turn your head, you will see some truly beautiful things. And we've got some striking beautiful flowers on the table right now, but I promise you, if you start paying attention to grasses, you will see how cool they are, despite being easy to overlook. I would I would add to that that uh you you don't need to go to one of these big uh pieces of public land or preserve to see this stuff. Any outdoor activity you do, you're likely to see a wetland somewhere unless you're really, really high up in the hills or something.

SPEAKER_05:

My backyard.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you yeah. I mean, many of us have wetlands in our own backyard. I mean, I have some friends with these amazing wetland plants growing in our front yard in Indianapolis, they don't know what they are. Um but they they become very intrigued once I explain, like, you know, this plant is not super common, right? Like, this is an obedient plant. It's uh you don't find too many of these in the city, you've got a bunch of it growing, beautiful flower. Um so if you are just going for a nature hike, hunting, fishing, bird watching, playing in the woods, whatever it might be, but you if you just turn your head and look at the wetland for a moment instead of running right by it, you're gonna start seeing things that you that are really interesting and beautiful. And it's gonna get cooler if you start to say to decide for yourself, what are your favorite wetland plants? You can be like, see that little uh that you know that grass with looks like this color, this shape. I kind of like that one. And then you go talk to someone or look it up on the internet or a book or something. There are wetland books galore. You could you could buy one, but there are also web pages galore, and you say, uh, I think my favorite sedge is a porcupine sedge. I just kind of like the way it looks, and you can you can have that conversation with someone and it just becomes really cool. Um so they add value to the time that you're spending outdoors. I mean, like the the shore of a lake probably has, I mean, if it has anything growing on it, they are likely to be wetland plants. Some lakes have tons of wetland plants growing.

SPEAKER_05:

So and we learned those are important because they help preserve the soil.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, those plants along the the margin of a lake, along the shoreline of the lake, that will help not only absorb nutrients um and cut down on erosion, um, but it can be habitat for uh organisms that can move into those wetland areas. And um, they they I agree with Landon. They're beautiful. I mean, you think about all the varieties of flower colors, all the variety of leaf shapes. Some of them are tall, some of them are short, some of them are brighter colored, some of them are less, uh, some of them are persistent through the whole year, others just come up at certain times of the year. Uh, some of them get densely packed in, others like to be more spread out. There's just so much variety, which I just uh love. And that's so common throughout God's creation is seeing variety, and it's really fun to see.

SPEAKER_05:

And a lot of interesting birds in those wetlands.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wetlands are really important spots for uh for many bird species.

SPEAKER_00:

Going back to when we were talking about invasive plants, okay? Um there is a sort of deep reason why you would take an interest in invasive plants. And I think it's um it's not a it's not an economic reason, and so it doesn't get as much airtime in the public conversation. But if we consider the by definition, an invasive plant is a plant that comes from somewhere else, somewhere that's not here. When you look at a plant like these four pickerel weed, arrowhead, ironweed, wingstem, these are plants that if you were to magically go to Indiana 500 years ago, you would see these plants. They are our plants. And so when if you were to take a wetland that had all these beautiful plants growing in it and convert it to a single species and an invasive species whose home is somewhere else, you are losing something of the character of our landscape. Um I think one real reason to love these plants is is just that, is because they are our own, they are a part of our home. And um uh especially in a place like Indiana, it's like, okay, well, we we may not have orcas or tigers or you know, these are really spectacular like postcard animals. Penguins. Yeah, penguins. I mean, um yeah, we if if you look closely at this pickerel weed, yeah, I think that it can compete with the intrigue of any of these truly spectacular creatures that you that are on your postcard or at the zoo. Um if if if invasive species come and and just uh really wipe them all out, then we not only lose the uh the economic benefits, I mean it's even deeper than that aesthetic sense of a beautiful, diverse wetland, we lose a part of what our landscape is because these plants are a part of that landscape.

SPEAKER_05:

This is gonna be a tough question for you, Landon. If you had a magic wand and you could do whatever you needed to do to the environment, what would be the first thing you'd do?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh I only get to pick one. Um if I had a if I had a magic wand, like a single wish for the wetlands of the world or the United States or of Indiana.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, um it's it's tempting. I could I could say I want to wave my wand and get rid of every last stem of invasive plants in Indiana, but I'm not gonna use my wish for that because I think other people would wish for that. And so I'll leave it to them. So give a wish to them too, please. Okay. Um I'm gonna I would I would I would put my wish for um people to try to work wetlands into what they're doing when they are building something, when they are repairing or restoring something, when they are trying to clean up water, to work with the wetland rather than uh regard the wetland as a sort of unfortunate obstacle on the site. There are some very clever, very beneficial ways of doing that. Uh some people it may not be feasible, uh, but some people I think aren't aware of just what's possible. Um consider, I'll go ahead.

SPEAKER_05:

How do we all educate them about that? What is possible?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I guess this podcast is a good start. Um so hey, everybody watching this podcast, now you know. Um, but I think uh the the people who are already doing this, everybody who's using a wetland, who's working a wetland into managing the drainage of of their site, like a a develop a development, say. Okay. Everybody who's leveraging a wetland to take care of the water in their lake. Everybody who is uh using a wetland for uh so I don't know, so they get more habitat for animals because they like to hunt. Um and so on and so forth. Those people need to, well, I I I would I would love to see those people make their efforts very public so that it we can see that it's done before it works. It it just seems to me that uh sometimes the biggest barrier to getting people to work with wetlands is that they're not sure it'll work because they haven't seen it and that it's been done before. But there are people doing it right at this and in in all sorts of ways, people are working with wetlands right at this very moment. So the more visible we can make those people, uh, the more other people will also start doing it.

SPEAKER_04:

Wow. That makes me think of we've been talking as the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams about a new effort for us, which is we're calling Lake Rx, which is developing prescriptions for individual lakes. Our research shows certain problems or threats in the lakes. How can we fix those problems? And one of our solutions that we want to implement is wetlands, new wetlands being constructed, revitalizing existing wetlands. And I think this is a perfect example of what you're just saying. If if we can draw attention to wetlands that are doing great work for our local lakes and streams, eating that pollution, as you were talking about earlier, that can that spotlight on those uh good examples of wetlands that we're working on with our partners can help others see sort of the the proof, if you will, that that these can be really, really great um assets on their property and not a hindrance on their property.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Uh yeah. I I and you know, I think that that um that medical analogy, Lake Rx, the Lake Doctor, okay, that that medical analogy is helpful. I mean, we we we bring it back to something we can all relate to, like the health of our bodies, you know. Um I guess a wetland would be somewhere between uh holistic like naturopathic medicine and just a healthy lifestyle, you know. Um we we we have problems in water. You can it you can do the the the equivalent of like, well, you take it, take a bunch of antibiotics, okay? That'll solve your problem. But maybe you need to uh stop eating this particular food or you need to be getting better sleep at night, or maybe, maybe instead of taking this uh antibiotic, you need to be just uh eating this uh this herb or something like that. That's gonna be it, it can there are things in medicine that can solve our problems, but are don't have these weird uh harsh effects on our body and that make our lives better at the same time and have all sorts of other benefits. Uh there may be a benefit to uh going jogging 30 minutes a day, you know, if your doctor tells you to. There may be benefits beyond just your health, right? But not so many benefits. I mean, if you if you're if you just take the pills, it's like, well, that the benefit stops with with your health, which is certainly the most important benefit. But the there's something like that where wetlands are concerned. Um there are people, I guess, like the three of us who just are happy to see wetland conservation and and want it, okay, it kind of works with uh showing people that there are all these benefits of wetlands. I think though, we what uh me and the people I work with, well we we really uh want to uh what what we want to announce is that like you don't have to be a tree hugger to get the benefits of this stuff. You can just not like nature and the wetland uh can be applied to solve your problems, regardless of all this tree hugging stuff.

SPEAKER_05:

Well, when you said that's really good, wetlands are like kidneys. Yes, they're a filtration system. Think about what happens to a body when the kidneys aren't working. You have to have dialysis.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_05:

We we don't want our lakes to be on dialysis.

SPEAKER_04:

That's a good way to describe it.

SPEAKER_00:

And we we have a lot of lakes in Indiana that are on that figurative dialysis, right?

SPEAKER_05:

You guys got your work cut out for you. I'm glad that there are people that are passionate about the work that's being done throughout Indiana, throughout the nation, preserving, recreating wetlands. Thank you. Thank you, Landon, for joining us as a guest today.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's been a delight to be here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05:

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Lake Doctor Podcast. You can share your thoughts or submit questions by leaving a comment or sending an email to lakes at grace.edu.

SPEAKER_04:

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

SPEAKER_05:

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