Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast

How to Improve Lake Health Using a Holistic Approach

• Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams • Season 2 • Episode 14

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In this unique episode of The Lake Doctor Podcast, Dr. Nate Bosch and co-host Suzie Light have a 'behind-the-scenes' conversation about a new way of thinking about lake care. Rather than focusing on single problems or quick fixes, they introduce a holistic approach to lake health—one that views a lake as a living system. Drawing from years of applied research and on-the-ground experience, Nate and Suzie explain why understanding the full picture of a lake’s data is essential to creating lasting, meaningful improvements to a lake's health.

This podcast episode centers around the launch of Lake Rx, the new phase of the Lilly Center's work designed to provide prescriptions for lakes based on their specific conditions and needs. Much like a health plan for a person, Lake Rx uses scientific data to diagnose challenges and recommend targeted, scientifically-backed solutions that support long-term lake health. Listeners will gain insight into how this approach empowers lake residents and communities to move from reactive management to proactive stewardship—helping lakes become clean, healthy, safe, and beautiful for generations to come.

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

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SPEAKER_01:

So, Nate, we're changing things up a bit too.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, we are.

SPEAKER_01:

We want to talk about the holistic health of lakes in our community.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So tell us why is that important?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I would compare it to our own health as people, right? So we don't want just a pill or some really quick fix that's not going to be sustainable when we have some sort of illness that's that's uh negatively impacting our health. We want something that's gonna be sustainable, that's going to to help our whole person be healthy going forward. And so when we look at lakes, we want to think about the same sorts of things. We want to think about looking at a lake and seeing certain challenges, and then what's the eventual state we want to see that lake in? Okay, how do we get from our current challenges to that eventual state in a holistic way that's then going to be sustainable from that point on?

SPEAKER_01:

So I know you you talked about like going to a doctor and uh assessing personal health. Right, right. You've kind of done that, you've assessed the lakes, you've been doing research. What are some of the threats that our lakes are facing?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so it's it's been wonderful, all of the research that we've been able to do and sort of establish sort of the current health of the lakes as you were just describing. But that then compels us towards okay, what's next? And how are we going to solve some of those challenges? So as far as what challenges we already see, we see symptoms first, but then we got to figure out what are the underlying underlying causes to those symptoms, right? So the symptoms that we see in our lakes are health threats like algae toxins, E. coli. Uh, we can also see uh more community level threats like people accessing the lakes at some of our beaches when it's not safe health-wise to be at those beaches. Um we can look at recreational threats like access, aquatic macrophytes, or also known as weeds, right? In the lakes. Um when we have some that we don't want there, then we we call them weeds. And those those things, and then the algae can also negatively impact recreation if the water is looking kind of green like pea soup. That's not really enticing for people to go in the water.

SPEAKER_01:

Or zebra mussels.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So zebra mussels kind of even though the water's clearer potentially, some of those uh toxins might be more prevalent because of the zebra mussels shifting towards those bad types of algae. So we have those symptoms, those things in our lakes that we don't like to see, or we don't like the results of those measurements. So then we start to think about okay, well, what are the underlying causes? And then all of those things that we just talked about, too much weeds growing, too much algae, maybe even the toxic algae types, people not being able to access our lakes through our public beaches because it's unsafe to do so. Uh, these are all coming from nutrients, too many nutrients. So a little bit of nutrients coming into our lakes is natural and it's beneficial because that makes up the food chain, as we've talked about on this podcast before. Nutrients, the phytoplankton, the zooplankton, the little fish, the big fish. And so the lake is healthy with a little bit of nutrients. But when we have too many nutrients, it causes too much of the weeds to grow, too much of the algae to grow. And that's really then where some of those symptoms start to show up. So if we're backing up from there, then we have these symptoms caused by too many nutrients. Well, then where are the nutrients coming from? Right.

SPEAKER_01:

So this reminds me of the episode we did about center lake and finding that there were geese droppings on the beach.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Yeah, so that relates it to uh E. coli, which was the specific study there looking at pike and center lakes, high E. coli levels, and a lot of the time, um, both of the lakes, you know, 30, 40% of the time, these beaches are closed to the public because of high E. coli levels. So that's the symptom. What's the cause of it, right? So then we start looking at where is this E. coli coming from? And you're right, we eventually found that the gulls were the predominant source of the E. coli there from the gull droppings, E. coli uh coming into the near shore area by those beaches, the pier, uh, the the piers that were there are kind of trapped. Kind of trapped that sort of stagnant triangle of water. And really excited in that case, City of Warsaw took on our recommendations and uh and through some some funding with K-21 Health Foundation, we were able to find the recommendations. Uh Warsaw then implemented some loosh solutions, and now we don't have those same those same problems that that we did.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, there's a community official who uh talks about all the different uh communities within Casciasco County, and he he likens it to ice cream. He says each community has its own flavor, its own unique culture. Are lakes that way?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, for sure. Uh certainly there's uh common characteristics amongst the lakes, but there's also individual peculiarities about the lakes as well. Some lakes are deeper, some lakes are more spring fed, other lakes are um stream-fed? Stream fed versus spring fed. Some are a great combination of both, some deep, some shallow. Lakes have different bottom substrate uh as well. Some have more of a sandy, gravelly sort of a bottom to the lake, others will have more of a muck bottom, kind of a silty sort of bottom, and then there's even marl bottom and and parts of lakes as well. And so those characteristics, as well as if the lake is large or small, um, are all gonna influence then if we see common problems, the solutions might not be common because of the individual uniqueness of those lakes.

SPEAKER_01:

So does a different lake bottom have a different weed culture? They're not weeds, I know, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So so you're gonna have different plant communities that are gonna grow in different lakes from a few different factors. One would be what the bottom substrate is. Some plants can grow well in that muck sort of bottom. Other plants are gonna have a hard time with that because it's kind of a uh a shifting sort of bottom. It's not super stable, whereas other plants are gonna be better more in a gravelly or a sandy bottom area of a lake. And so that will influence uh plants communities will also be influenced by uh how clear the water is. And so sometimes with greater clarity, you can get sunlight going down to deeper depths, and you can get certain plants that might grow better under those conditions, whereas other plants will grow better in a uh near shore area or a channel area where it's really shallow and they can sort of block out sunlight then from other sorts of plants they might be competing with.

SPEAKER_01:

So, do different lakes have different kinds of oxygen levels and how does that impact their health?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so a lot of the oxygen in a lake has to do with, again, those nutrients that are coming in. It's been said, and I agree, that if you were only to be able to take one measurement of a lake to try to assess its health, it would be oxygen. And that the reason for that is because when you look at what we call the profile of oxygen in a lake, if we see lots of oxygen up near the surface, but no oxygen at the bottom, or if we see oxygen all the way through the lake, or some lakes will see more oxygen at the bottom, less at the top. Even other lakes we can see kind of a small amount of oxygen, and then there's a layer a little ways down in the water column where suddenly we see lots of oxygen, and then back to very little oxygen. All of those indicate what's going on with both the plants and the animals in the lake. And so back to that food chain again, we've got the phytoplankton, those are plants, so it's producing oxygen, and then we go up to the upper layers, the zooplankton, the little fish, the big fish, they're all consuming oxygen. So seeing what oxygen levels are at different depths gives us a glimpse into how the biology of the lake is working and if there's things that are out of balance. So in most of our lakes here in Casciasco County, and this would be the case throughout northern Indiana and all of the Midwestern states, we have lakes that have little to no oxygen in the bottom. That indicates a very similar problem for all of those lakes, and it is too much nutrients. And the reason for that is you get nutrients coming into the lake. It could be coming in from the outside, or it could be recycling from within the lake itself. But either way, there's nutrients that's up in the water of the lake. And then with those extra nutrients, you're going to get more of the weeds and the algae to grow. Well, that's great when they're growing, they're producing oxygen. But when they decompose, when they die, they sink to the bottom, they decompose. The decomposers, those bacteria, are using up oxygen to break them down. And so that's why in the bottom of the lake we see very little oxygen where the decomposition is happening, and in the surface we see an overabundance of oxygen. Sometimes it'll be super saturated, meaning it's over 100% of what we would predict because there's so much photosynthesis going on with all of those plants that there's an overload of oxygen. And so by seeing that, we we know that it's because too much nutrients are causing that sort of imbalance of oxygen throughout the lake.

SPEAKER_01:

Nate, how did those nutrients get into lakes?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so there's a number of sources in our area here. Since the majority of our land is agricultural, that's one of the big sources of nutrients. And so part of the Lake IRAC strategy is to uh work with agricultural producers to implement certain practices that will keep those nutrients on the land rather than having them end up in water in one of our lakes and streams. And so we're excited to look through the different practices. We're doing some research right now with Notre Dame and Indiana University, Purdue University on quantifying what do different practices result in as far as reduced nutrients into a lake or stream downstream. We're also excited working with watershed groups, soil and water conservation district, natural resource conservation service because Lake property owners associations? Yeah, lake property owners associations as well, although they're probably helping us more in the lake itself with some of those solutions. And we'll get into those in a minute. But as far as the on-the-land solutions, we're going to be working with the these different uh these different partners. Then when we get into the lake, then we can look at things like what about how we manage some of those weeds? Are there alternatives to herbicide applications like weed harvesting potentially? Um, what about the balance of the ecosystem in the lake? We've talked about zebra mussels before on this podcast series and how they will shift algae communities towards the bad types of algae, which can produce toxins. Can we shift those communities back towards the better types of algae, maybe by adjusting zebra mussel populations? And so looking into that. And then we also want to look at solutions in the communities around these lakes. How do people interact with the lakes? Maybe it's how are they doing boating, how are they managing their own shoreline if they live on one of these lakes? And so all of these solutions then in the land around the lakes, in the lakes themselves, in the surrounding communities, this is that holistic approach to help uh make our lakes better for the future.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, Nate, that sounds like a whole lot of work. And is the Lily Center going to do all this by themselves?

SPEAKER_00:

No, no, no. That's why it's part of that collaboration part of what we do, right? So we are really excited to allocate some of our resources to help our partners do more of those sort of things that they're already doing in some cases around our lakes. And so when it comes to working on the land around our lakes, we have wonderful, wonderful watershed groups that are doing that work. We have Soil and Water Conservation District, Natural Resource Conservation Service who are working the latter two there more with agriculture and the watershed groups looking at land kind of as a whole around our lakes. And then when we get into the lakes themselves, we have those lake associations that are there and doing great work uh in those lakes when it comes to maybe changing behavior of how people are interacting with the lakes. Lake associations will be really helpful there as well. And so we see lots of partners and lots of opportunity for us to come alongside and help support some of the great work that that our partners are able to do and and are doing.

SPEAKER_01:

I think that's interesting that we want balance in our own bodies so that everything is functioning. We want the same kind of thing for a lake.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

How do we get there?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's why we're developing a new program at the Lily Center called Lake Rx. And what we're doing is we are developing custom prescriptions for each of our lakes. And these are holistic health sort of prescriptions where we're coming at it both from looking at the land around the lakes, in the water itself, and then in the community surrounding the lakes as well. And really coming at it with a multifaceted, sustainable approach, working with our partners to collaboration.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. So that's one of those pillars of the Lily Center. We we've been talking a lot and been doing great work with research and education and collaboration. We certainly have been working on, but I think this allows us to develop that pillar of the Lily Center, that work area of the Lily Center a little bit more than what it has been in the past. And so we're really excited to lean into that area, allocate more of our resources towards towards uh implementing um and activating solutions. Because the research and the education we've done definitely shows us the problems, shows us strategic solutions that are going to be sustainable. Uh, now we want to be about in sort of the next phase of our organization, we want to be more about the fixing of those of those problems then.

SPEAKER_01:

Unique to each individual, like yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So that just if we go back to the human health analogy, like where we started again, um, you're not gonna go to a medical professional that's gonna just give the same prescription to every patient she or he sees, right? That would be kind of pointless to go to that professional. Each person is treated as an individual with their own um statistics about you know where they're at with their health. Based on research, based on research, and then that professional is gonna prescribe certain things and usually a combination of things, maybe some common ones would be, you know, healthier food, exercise, more exercise. But then there's gonna be other things that are gonna be a little more unique to that individual person as well and their health. And so, in the same way, when we look at Lake Rx and developing these prescriptions for custom lakes, there's gonna be certain solutions that are gonna probably be common to most of our lakes, but there's gonna be other solutions that might be a little bit more unique to certain lakes and not to others.

SPEAKER_01:

So is there a way to pump more oxygen into a lake that needs it?

SPEAKER_00:

So there is. Uh there's aeration systems, those on the scale of really large lakes, like here in our county, you know, we have Lake Wawasee, our largest natural lake in Indiana. I haven't run the numbers to see how much that would cost on a lake that size, but I'm guessing it might be cross-prohibitive. But can we work with the area around that lake, for instance, to reduce the nutrients from coming in so we don't have the same oxygen deficit problems in the bottom waters because we've gone after the source of the of that problem? That's probably going to be a better, more holistic long-term sort of solution than pumping oxygen in there. But in certain locations of lakes or certain smaller lakes, that could be uh a solution, at least a sort of uh near-term solution, maybe until some of the longer-term uh solutions can be implemented.

SPEAKER_01:

So if if nutrients going into a lake deplete the oxygen, one of the things that we could do is prevent those nutrients from going into the lake by filtering it through wetlands, possibly.

SPEAKER_00:

That would be a great example. And we've talked a good deal about wetlands on this podcast, and that's certainly a solution that we see as one of the most promising ones for a variety of our lakes. So those wetlands, wetlands, as we've talked about, kidneys and lungs. Yes. Well, kidneys, you got right. The lungs part, I'm I'm not quite so sure. Okay. Kidneys and sponges, I think is what we talked about. So kidneys, they're filtering. And what are they filtering? They're filtering nutrients out of, they're filtering other things as well. But in this case, we're concerned mostly about those excess nutrients. And so the wetlands are filled with plants, and those plants are all actively growing. So they're taking in sunlight, but they're also needing nutrients to grow, just like any plant would need. And so as the water is is filtering through that wetland, those wetland plants are absorbing the nutrients out of the water. And so the water then comes into the wetland with more nutrients and hopefully then leaves the wetland with less nutrients. Now I said hopefully specifically because some wetlands, and we need to do a little more research on this to know for sure, but we have a suspicion that some wetlands have been so saturated by nutrients over the years because we've dwindled the number of wetlands down so much. So the few wetlands that we have are sort of overloaded, or they're overwhelmed by the nutrients.

SPEAKER_01:

And so promoting kidneys is bad for a body.

SPEAKER_00:

Right, exactly. So so we could actually have a lot of different things. Some of our wetlands that are so saturated that there's more nutrients leaving than are actually coming in in the first place. So they're not functioning anymore like a wetland should function in its natural state. So we've got kidneys, but then also wetlands are sponges. And so by sponges, they're absorbing water. And then they either allow that water then to percolate down into our groundwater, which is going to be important for our spring-fed lakes. But that groundwater is also a great purification mechanism then for uh for where it comes out again in a lake or maybe even a stream. Um, and so that's that's going to be important, but but it's also not only percolation down into the groundwater, but also the wetland absorbs a lot of that rainfall or snow melt runoff and then lets it out more slowly. Kind of like if you were to think of a sponge that you put under the tap in your kitchen, and then you were to set it out on the counter over time, some of that water is going to start leaking slowly out of that sponge, right? So the wetlands can pull in a lot of water and then they can slowly let it move out rather than uh then a big flood coming into a stream or a lake all at once. And by slowing that water down, we allow those nutrients to get taken up. And then also sediments as well. So a lot of times sediments, soil particles that have been eroded from the landscape will move into one of our water bodies and cause problems themselves, as well as sediments often have nutrients associated with them, and so it will pull pull nutrients into the aquatic ecosystem along with the sediment. So wetlands will will do that. So we've talked about how we may have existing wetlands that may not be working quite as well as they could. So we are looking into how best can we revitalize those wetlands? Is it as simple as changing the plant communities in those wetlands so that they're more efficient at pulling out those sediments and pulling out those nutrients?

SPEAKER_01:

And not a monoculture.

SPEAKER_00:

And not a monoculture of one plant.

SPEAKER_01:

Using native species that have deep roots.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, native species rather than some of the invasive exotic species. Right. Or it might be a little more complicated. Maybe we need to sort of change the hydrology, change how the water is moving around that wetland. Maybe, maybe we have a wetland here that has a stream going just adjacent to the edge of the wetland, but most of that water is not interacting with the entire wetland. Can we actually change where the stream goes so that it starts to meander through the wetland? So the wetland plants have an opportunity to start pulling out those nutrients and sediments from that. We also want to look at constructing brand new wetlands. So we've lost a lot of our wetlands. Yeah. And so let's not only potentially make the few we still have left do better work, but what about starting to add back to the number of wetlands in the wetland area that we have? And so uh our Lily Center team went out to Grand Lake St. Mary's uh recently and met with their head researcher there, Stephen Jackman. And um Dr. Jackman was showing us how wetlands have been used there around that lake to um to pull a lot of nutrients. And what they've done in many locations is they've constructed new wetlands. So they have chosen a piece of property that's not currently in as a wetland, right adjacent to a stream that's flowing into the lake. And we know Grand Lake St. Mary's has had lots of algae toxin issues over the years, right? Yes, yeah. And so so they will divert water then into that wetland. And that wetland then is specifically designed to pull out as much nutrient and sediment as possible out of that water. And so there's specific plants planted, there's a specific way that the water moves through that wetland, and uh, and then the water coming out of the wetland is measured just as the water going into the wetland is measured, and they actually will change the flow rate going through that wetland to optimize the most sediment and the most nutrient uh to come out of that water as it's filtering through that wetland. And so we can learn a lot from them and what they're doing and what their research is showing, and implement some of that knowledge uh and application here around our own lakes.

SPEAKER_01:

Now, I remember when that that lake made national news because of the blue-green algae infestation that it had and how property values plummeted around that lake. Right. You've done research here at the Lily Center about the economic impact of our lakes on our community. Uh how does the health of a lake impact the economy of our community?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, if you have a we've found in a f a few ways as we've done our research. One is it will help property values around the lake itself. So as that lake gets cleaner, the property values around the lake will start to go up, which is uh a large portion of those folks' uh wealth around that lake. And as property values go up, property taxes go up, which helps lots of services around our communities as well. A little bit more holistically, we've found that uh adjusted for current uh numbers here this year, we found that the lakes as a whole in our county bring in over$400 million every year.

SPEAKER_01:

Through tourism, through recreation.

SPEAKER_00:

We looked at lake-specific industries as well as lake-related industries, and we looked at the portions of sales due to the lakes. Uh, some industries it's more summer loaded. Like think of a grocery store, for example, in one of our lake communities. That grocery store is going to do a lot more business in the summer when there's a lot of people there visiting the lake than it would in December or January, for example.

SPEAKER_01:

So, what was that number again?

SPEAKER_00:

Over$400 million. And that's every single year. And that's just Casa County. So if we start scaling that up over northern Indiana, all of Indiana, all the Midwestern United States states, that number gets really large into probably the tens of billions of dollars that lakes are bringing into these economies. That is not a static number. Just like we talked about with Grand Lake St. Mary's in Ohio, they've seen property values go down by 50%, tourism dry up in the community, and that's starting to come back now with these wetlands that they're building, which are which are um cleaning up that water before it gets into the lake, and starting to bring some of those health concerns down in the lake. We don't have those same issues here in Casyasco County in northern Indiana. We don't have those same real negative sort of drivers, but our lake still could be better. We do have toxins in our lakes and at times high enough that people can't have their pets in the water and certain localized areas where people can't even be in the water. And so we want to be proactive here in our area to not let those sorts of things happen. And so that's why we're doing Lake RX. We want to not just understand and notify the public when there are health issues, but we want to fix those health issues.

SPEAKER_01:

Like any good doctor.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, and we want to see these lakes be healthy in the future and uh and do that in a way that's gonna be sustainable for the future. Um, these lakes are, I just I'm I'm so excited every time we get to to do our work here in the community. These lakes are so important. I mean, it's it's our identity as northern Indiana with these lakes, especially within our county here with over a hundred lakes. These these lakes are not just identity, but they are the things that allow families to continue to stay connected with each other, people coming back from all over. Just before we started recording today, we were talking about your family and how your siblings are scattered all around. But one of the common points of interest you have is the lake. Yeah. And so and that's the case for many families around our communities and throughout the Midwestern United States. So it can help with families. It also helps with our communities. Uh, these lakes are great recreational spots, great places that are accessible for all people in the community to come and enjoy these beautiful parts of God's creation, um, cooling off in the hot summer, being able to uh be active, skate in the winter, skate in the winter, yeah, and then and then all of the different sports in between all through the year. The lakes are really unique and wonderful places. So they help our economy, they help our families, they help our communities, and they're they're part of our identity that we have here in um what what we would call lakes country in in Indiana.

SPEAKER_01:

Cassias County, home of 101 lakes, but I think you counted more.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, we've we've counted a few more than that. It all depends on what you make your threshold for where you go from a pond to a lake, which can be uh a kind of an arbitrary threshold.

SPEAKER_01:

But our goal here is healthy lakes and good stewardship of this wonderful natural resource.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. People often ask me, hey, how how are the lakes? Are they good? Are they bad? And the way I would describe them after years of research and and really in-depth research is they are good, but they could be better.

SPEAKER_01:

And Lake RX is going to help you get there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, and help us get there faster as we implement these solutions with our partners. Uh, these lakes, we we have a path forward. We know how to make them cleaner, healthier, safer, and more beautiful in the future. And so we're really excited about uh taking that on kind of as the next phase of our organization's focus.

SPEAKER_01:

We're thankful that you're sharing the vision of what can happen. I'd invite our viewers and listeners to sign up for our e-newsletter. How do they do that, Nate?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so if you go to our website, lakes.grace.edu, you can see how to sign up there for our e-newsletter. And that comes out every month, and sometimes more often if there's extra exciting things to share. And that will keep you all informed about what's going on with Lake Rx, what partners we're working with, what um what uh improvements that we're already seeing in Lake Rx, and uh, and even how you can support that effort going forward as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Super. Thank you so much. I'm really excited about what's happening here.