How Wetlands Help Lakes Recover with Stephen Jacquemin

In Episode 17 of The Lake Doctor Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Stephen Jacquemin, professor at Wright State University’s Lake Campus, to explore the remarkable recovery of Grand Lake St. Marys, Ohio’s largest inland lake. Once a poster child for harmful algal blooms—fueled by shallow depths and heavy nutrient runoff from surrounding agriculture—the lake hit crisis levels with toxins in the 99th percentile, impacting public health, tourism, and property values.

Stephen traces the lake’s history as a 1830s canal reservoir and shares how community-wide action turned the tide: farmers adopting precision nutrient management, cover crops, tile controls, and riparian buffers, combined with the strategic restoration of engineered wetlands now covering over 2.5% of the watershed. These wetlands filter up to 15% of incoming water, significantly reducing nitrogen and phosphorus while boosting wildlife habitat and offering recreational trails. With ongoing monitoring ensuring long-term success, the episode highlights measurable progress in toxin reduction and provides an inspiring, practical blueprint for Kosciusko County and other lakes facing similar challenges.

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

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Transcript

Meet The Lake Doctors And Guest

SPEAKER_04 0:00

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

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Yes, that's right. I got my doctorate from the University of Michigan in limnology, which is the study of freshwater lakes. In today's episode, we're excited to have Dr. Stephen Jackman. He is a professor at the Lake Campus of Wright State University.

SPEAKER_04 0:22

And we're gonna learn the difference of Grand Lake St. Mary in Ohio and how that lake is different than the lakes in Casasco County. We're really excited about today's episode, The Doctor's. Tell us about your journey from the Midwest to Cuba and then back again to Grand Lake St. Mary's.

Cuba Coral Reefs To Midwest Lakes

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Well, first of all, thanks for uh for inviting me. Thanks for having me and showing me around this beautiful campus, and uh it's a pleasure to be here. But my uh my journey um has uh has taken me all over sort of the North American plate, um, always with a focus on uh better understanding aquatic resources. Uh I ended up uh in Cuba, as you uh as you brought up, as uh an environmental science student. I studied and worked at the uh University of Havana in the Centro de Investigaciones Marinas and looked at uh did a lot of coral reef uh surveys, did some work uh looking at uh not just uh basic coral reef surveys, but did a lot of work with uh trying to understand the trophy ecology of those systems, including uh some work with uh some of the big pelagic sharks that are out there.

SPEAKER_04 2:00

So, you know, I'm uh you may not know, but I'm not really a science nerd. I just get to like hang out with Dr. Nate. And um you used a word I didn't understand. Tropic. Trophic word.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Okay, it is a good word. Would you explain that? Uh trophic uh is uh an ecology term uh that refers to uh sort of a food web. So understanding, you know, the base of that food web with primary production and sort of algae and plant life, and then echoing that up in terms of something eats that, and then something eats the something that eats that, and then something that eats the something that eats the something. And then you go up far enough and uh and and and that's the green system. Yeah, people eat fish, or uh yeah, or sharks eat fish. Um so I yeah, traveled, uh traveled around Cuba, uh, mainly sort of staying around the Havana region, studied at the university there for a period of time, uh worked with the the center as a uh as sort of a uh uh a scientist, um, and then uh um when that period was up and I had sort of finished my environmental certificate, environmental management certificate from them, uh came back uh to Ohio uh with a sort of um you know renewed interest in freshwater resources, and so I moved from um studying freshwater resources initially in my career, then continued my studies and uh and developed some skills and studies in marine systems down there in the Caribbean, and then came back to the Great Lakes region, uh, my home.

Trophic Levels Explained Simply

SPEAKER_04 3:30

Super. So today we're gonna talk about a couple of really interesting things to me blue-green algae and wetlands. Yeah. Um so Dr. Nate. How did what's happening at Grand Lakes, St. Mary's um impact the work you're doing?

Why Grand Lake Became A Hotspot

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Yeah, so I can recall back, it's probably been over 10 years ago at this point, started to see in some research papers and even in some news broadcasts about what was going on in Grand Lakes St. Mary's, probably even further back than that, maybe more 15, 20 years ago. And um, so I've been out there visiting you three times now. So I I remember the first time also meeting with some DNR folks out there, and the echoing refrain that kept coming back was hey, you guys don't want to get to this point where we are. You need to be proactive rather than reactive, and that has really rung true and has really helped us at the Lily Center set our priorities and what we want to do. And so we've noticed some blue-green algae toxin issues in some of our lakes, but typically not to the same levels that have been seen on Grand Lake St. Mary's, and so we want to make sure we don't have that in the relatively smaller amounts of blue-green algae that we do have in our lakes. We want to minimize that so as to minimize the risk of those toxins for people and pets in our community.

SPEAKER_04 4:58

So, Stephen, how did uh Grand Lake St. Mary's become so unhealthy?

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Yeah, so it's a I mean it's a long history. Um and you know, we'll we'll we'll be here for hours discussing it, of course. But uh no, the the the Cliff Notes version is uh Grand Lake St. Mary's is uh is a remnant from the canal era going back to the 1830s. Um this was one of the first infrastructure projects in the state of Ohio, uh actually, but Grand Lake St. Mary's was constructed as a feeder canal or feeder reservoir to supply water uh for the middle parts of the canal. Middle is in the canal that we're talking about, the Miami-Eerie Canal, it ran north-south from Cincinnati to Toledo. In the middle of that canal is a sort of central portion of the state. Grand Lake St. Mary's, as well as Indian Lake, as well as Lake Larmie, were constructed as canal lakes to sort of provide water for that system.

SPEAKER_04 5:52

So they were man-made lakes, not natural lakes.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

That's right, that's right. And as a as a function of that, in addition to the fact that they were um sort of constructed in the 1830s, they were never dug very deep. None of these canal lakes were. So Grand Lake St. Mary's has an average depth of you know maybe five and a half, six feet. Um so incredibly shallow. But surface area wise, it's incredibly large. You can see it from space.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Um the largest inland lake in Ohio.

Shallow Design Meets Farm Runoff

SPEAKER_02 6:20

That's right. Yeah, it was. It was the largest, at one point it was the largest um human constructed reservoir um on Earth. Oh, wow. Not just Ohio. Wow. So it no longer has that uh title, but uh it's still uh it's a big system. But again, it's big in terms of surface area, not volume, which leads to your question about how did blue green algae become a problem? And it it has to do um a little bit with um you know, a little bit with the lake bathymetry, in other words, how the lake is shaped. It's incredibly large, but it's incredibly shallow, which means anything that goes into it doesn't really dilute very much. And so what could be going into it? Grand Lake St. Mary's is the other portion, the other piece of that story. Grand Lake St. Mary's is in a highly agricultural region. It's one of the most prolific and successful agricultural regions in the state of Ohio. You know, it ranks very highly uh in corn and soybeans as well as livestock, and particularly poultry, dairy, and uh and swine. And those important um sort of agronomic uh functions that you know we all need to survive and and uh yeah, um they also have nutrient runoff as a f as a product of those activities. And over the course of time, those nutrients from a heavily agricultural region um gradually run off the landscape and they accumulate somewhere. And in the case of Grand Lake, all sort of roads or streams, so to speak, lead to that system. And so over the course of over a century, those nutrients from these activities on the landscape that we all need to survive, those nutrients built up and they have to go somewhere. And blue-green uh algae are the things that pick those up.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

And also with that that shallow depth, you're gonna have uh sunlight that gets in a large portion of the water column as well, right? So if you have some of our deeper lakes here in Casciasco County, 80 feet deep, 120 feet deep, a large portion of that volume of the water, sunlight can't get down that deep. And so, whereas in Grand Lake St. Mary's, there's a large proportion of what we'd call the water column that is sunlit, which then provides both the sunlight, the nutrients that those algae need, and then they grow quite prolifically, and some of them then will produce toxin levels. And so to be unhealthy, then you've got lots of algae producing lots of toxins.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

Yep, yep. And not just, you know, certain algae are very healthy and very good and natural for lakes, but in this case, when you have systems that are, you know, um in climates like we have here in the Midwest that are enriched by excess nutrients through a process called eutrophication. Oh, we've talked about that word a hundred. Yes, good work bringing that up. Hey, I'm a long time listener, first time caller. But uh no, the uh that sort of creates this recipe for just excess blue-green algae growth. Um, cyanobacteria is another name for these. Um and Grand Lake St. Mary's is not the only um reservoir or freshwater system that suffers from eutrophication and and ultimately harmful algal blooms, but it has uh become almost one of the poster children for it, in part because it's such a large system. Um, in addition, because of how severe at one point in time the bloom and the nutrient levels were.

SPEAKER_04 9:54

So it was impacting human health because of the severity of the problem.

Human Health And Economic Fallout

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Yeah, so and depending on what metric you want to define with uh with human health, it was certainly impacting uh the region. Um when we look at the severity of that bloom or the severity of the problem at uh at Grand Lake St. Mary's, um at one point in time uh Grand Lake St. Mary's ranked in the 99th percentile for uh harmful albobloom toxins that uh that Nate you were just talking about. So the 99th percentile is in the complete opposite end of the spectrum you want to be at. At one point it ranked up there uh when you surveyed sort of um public water source intake lakes nationwide. At one point in time, the nutrient concentrations, that is to say, the nitrogen and phosphorus that runs off the landscape, goes into the streams, goes into the lake. At one point in time that was in close to the 75th percentile from a concentration standpoint in another uh federal nationwide survey. And so you had all of these sort of recipes and catalysts for um you know something big happening. And uh, you know, about uh 15, 20 years ago, uh everybody took notice. And we had um, you know, one of the larger harmful algal blooms that's that's been recorded.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

And that then leads, it's not only then uh human health concern, but then it starts to trickle into well, people don't want to buy a house around the lake, and tourists stop coming to the lake. And so I really strong economic impact. Yes, I remember first first uh visit there, kind of being around in the area and and you making the comment that at at times this these towns around the lake, it's so big, there's multiple towns around the lake, things would be booming and there'd be so many people here, but now it's a lot less than it once was because there's not as many tourists who want to come. And even home prices. I talked to some of the realtors around the lake, and some of them quoted things like 50% uh decrease in home values for some of those homes around the lake. So these environmental concerns lead to human health, which leads to the economics of these problems.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

And that's sort of going back to like you know, 2008 to 2010, 2015, right in there. So we're talking about this is the condition 10 years ago. Home prices had plummeted, the toxin and the bloom itself had reached such a level that it was, you know, impacting daily life, it was impacting the economy.

Turning The Tide With Nutrient Cuts

SPEAKER_04 12:31

Um and uh so that's the problem. Tell us what you're doing work-wise for the solutions.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Hey, no, this is the best part. This is yes, this is my favorite part. Put on your cape. You got a superman cape. My cape. No, so Grand Lake St. Mary's was again one of the poster children for the harmful effects of eutrophication and harmful algal blooms. You know, you can't get around that, you can't dance around that. Um, but the reality is since that point in time, um, the tide, so to speak, has really begun to turn. And it's been a really exciting last 10 years at Grand Lake St. Mary's because as awful as that period of time was and as big of an impact as we all saw uh occur, it served as a catalyst for a whole myriad of positive changes in the watershed. And you know, here we are ten years later, and we can look and we can start to see the progress and the impact of those uh positive changes around the watershed. And uh those statistics I I you know espoused a moment ago about being on the wrong end of the spectrum. Grand Lake St. Mary's is no longer there. It's no longer at the wrong end of the spectrum. It's not completely on the other end, but you're getting there slowly. We're getting there.

SPEAKER_04 13:52

So, what are the steps you're doing to get there?

SPEAKER_02 13:54

It's uh harmful algal blooms are not just at Grand Lake, they're all over the world. Um fortunately, they're not all that difficult to understand. Um, yes, there's a lot of mechanisms and there's a lot of things that go into what influences a bloom and what changes this and what changes that and what changes the rate at which toxins get released, et cetera, et cetera. But at the end of the day, it's nutrients. It's nitrogen, it's phosphorus, stimulating the bloom activity and the toxin production. And so when you're trying to solve this problem, that that's that's it. It's uh nutrient uh reductions. And that comes from just a lot of hard conservation work around the watershed that uh in the Grand Lake region uh a whole wealth of folks have been involved with over the last decade plus. Um and those efforts again have started to bear fruit and water quality has responded.

Building Trust With Farmers

SPEAKER_04 14:49

So some of the partners that you've been working with, I would imagine, are the ag community since Grand Lake St. Mary's was around is surrounded by agriculture. Um how is that how are you constructing the partnerships with your residents, your neighbors, your agriculture community?

SPEAKER_02 15:10

Yeah, it it takes a it takes a community to sort of do this. It takes everybody, lots of people all rowing in the same direction to you know begin to diagnose a problem like this and begin to affect positive change. And I'm fortunate because I get to be the one sitting here, but you know, by no means is it a one-person show. I mean there's hundreds of people involved, uh, many of which are extremely active in these conservation efforts. You mentioned the agricultural producers. Um since that period of time, um there have been a huge number of agricultural producers that have really uh stepped up in the watershed and and are leading the way, their models of modern environmentally more environmentally friendly uh agriculture. Some of the things that have been done on an agronomic scale by uh by some of our great producers, um all of our uh producers have to have uh nutrient management plans, which means they test their soils to see what nutrients are actually needed, and then they apply just that, not an excess of that, just that. They have also mitigated um nutrient application during particularly problematic times of runoff. So if it's raining a lot, not fertilizing a lot, or if it's uh snow or frozen ground, which in Grand Lake St. Mary's actually means you know between December 15th and March 1st, there's no application of nutrients. Um and so you've got manure management, you've got uh nutrient management. Um in addition, there's been a whole host of uh best management practices incorporated in the watershed. Um, lots of tile control structures in the fields to try and slow down how much subsurface runoff is coming from the tiles. There's also uh a whole bevy of cover crops, uh as well as riparian zones, as well as uh even some new and experimental conservation practices that we've been fortunate enough at the university where I'm at to uh been involved with testing their efficacies, but things like saturated buffers and uh some advanced waterways.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Yeah, and we've had some of those conversations already on this podcast series. We've uh I can remember talking to uh Ben, came on with precision agriculture, talking about some of the nutrient management and some of the technology then that can help some of the things that Stephen was just talking about. So I know some of those things are going on already in our area here as well.

SPEAKER_04 17:38

And what we've learned, and I'm sure that you've experienced this, that that agriculture wants to be good stewards of what they've been entrusted with when it comes to land. And so helping them understand how how they can save money, how they can do better.

The Missing Wetlands Story

SPEAKER_00 17:53

We've we've noticed that misconception uh in our community, and I wonder about if it's the same in Ohio. I would suspect it would be, where you have uh those are those uh from maybe a lake perspective or an environmental perspective, wanting to sort of point the finger of blame at the agricultural producer. And when you start to to dig through some of some of that, you see that the agricultural producer does not want to see good topsoil eroding from his or her farm or see expensive chemicals like fertilizers or pesticides running off his or her farm because that's wasted expense that was paid. Just like the lake property owner doesn't want to see those things come into his or her lake, right? So when we look at it, we we see we have the same goals. And so we've we've really enjoyed kind of creating partnerships and collaborative sort of interchanges rather than sort of you know pointing the finger and butting heads, and so I suspect you've you've seen that in your areas.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Oh absolutely, absolutely. Nobody wants to be part of the problem. Um, but it does take good communication to establish those relationships. And you mentioned um, you know, the potential for miscommunications and even at times fiery relationships. Um and there in the early days when the bloom really sort of exploded, um, there was a lot of uh it was almost like a town versus farm kind of dynamic. And that wasn't productive, that wasn't the way to sort of do things. Um and the agricultural community, again, to to their credit, they they really stepped up and began implementing these practices. Um and you know, to be clear, like these practices were were funded through uh different tax dollars and different grant programs and and and things like that, but they were participants in the process, part of the the solution. And it was those sorts of actions that sort of mended some fences, so to speak, and and got everybody to the same table. Whereas, you know, once that first happened, there was very much two tables.

SPEAKER_04 20:05

So I I imagine when you get ready to to build a man-made lake, you dig a hole, and you probably don't pay a lot of attention to what's happening between the hole with water and the land. And so you might be missing something called the wetlands.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

Well, maybe, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:28

Might you like talk about what you're doing at Grand Lake St. Mary's when it comes to my favorite topic, wetlands.

Restoring Wetlands At Scale

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Hey, your favorite too. That's great. No, so uh Grand Lake St. Mary's, you mentioned you know, it being dug. Uh funnily enough, it's not a word. Um, funnily enough, it wasn't really dug, right? So this is the 1830s, so you're not bringing in a lot of heavy modern equipment. It doesn't exist yet. And even if it did, you can't get it to that part of Ohio at the time. And so the lake wasn't dug so much as it was uh constructed by building embankments on the far east and far west side. And they built these embankments on an existing wetland, an existing depression, and then the streams that used to sort of flow out were now embanked. And so it wasn't like anybody went into the middle of the lake and and they trapped the water. It was just more like move some dirt to the some I'm minimizing, um, but move a lot of dirt to the sides, to the east and west sides, and that created that sort of finished off the natural uh basin. And uh there wasn't a lot of thought to the natural habitat in the rest of the watershed because you know, in the 1830s the focus was truly on that infrastructure project to try and connect a shipping route between Cincinnati and Toledo. That was an important part of Ohio's um and Indiana's not uh you know far off of the strategy. They're they're involved. You guys are you guys are in on this too. Uh Because there was a canal spur that connected from Indiana over to uh Erie Canal, right? That's right. So the goal was to sort of improve economies and allow the shipments of goods, especially from the interior of the state, which was isolated at that time, to the exterior, you know. And so wasn't a lot of thought to the uh the natural habitat. And so if we think about what was in Grand Lake, you know, we can go back, you know, before any of this happened. And if you look at the original land surveys of Grand Lake St. Mary's watershed, um, it was a mixture of uh forest, prairie, and wetland habitat. And about a third, maybe a little bit more, of the entire watershed was actually natural wetland habitat. Wow. And so when this lake was constructed, it wasn't like that destroyed the wetlands. Quite the contrary, Grand Lake is technically one big wetland. Um it's the sort of activities on the landscape that take place in the centuries after, in the century after. And uh Grand Lake St. Mary's watershed has incredibly rich soils that are perfect for you know agriculture, and so that's the predominant land use in the region. And so over time, forests were deforested, uh prairies were sort of farmed, and wetlands were drained.

SPEAKER_04 23:27

Sounds familiar.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Yeah, it was just that doesn't sound all too different from Casciasco County here in northern Indiana.

SPEAKER_04 23:36

We used to be oak savannas, we've learned. You did.

How Engineered Wetlands Work

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Yeah, and uh and a lot of wetlands as well, and and we've lost a lot, but Casciasco, as uh compared to other parts of the state of Indiana, still retains a lot of wetlands as well, but but we need more. So last time I mentioned earlier that I've been out to visit you three times there, and the last time we did some walking around some of the constructed wetlands that you guys have uh worked on, and that was really inspirational for me was seeing these areas that uh maybe used to be an agricultural field and lots and lots of dirt being moved around to create a wetland. And so talk a little bit about. I remember you telling us about how many acres of wetlands you guys have constructed, and then also how that's reduced uh nutrient inputs by certain percentages into Grand Lake St. Mary's. So tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

Yeah, I'd love to. It's uh so we talked about that historical land survey and you know how much of the watershed was wetland at one point in time. Um if you look at subsequent land surveys, uh especially the ones that took place in the late 1990s, the number of wetlands, you know, the watershed starts at say 33 to 35 percent wetland. By the late 90s, the number was l uh around 0.25 percent. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 25:10

Due to housing development.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Uh a little bit of a little bit of housing. Um, but for the most part it was draining of the wetlands. And in order to have productive, you know, farmland and crops, you have to drain the landscape. So you put in tiles, subsurface drainage.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

And as we've talked about uh for wetlands on this podcast, wetlands often have that mucky, dark, organic, rich soil, which is really good for agriculture if you can get the water out of the area.

Monitoring, Tuning, And Load Reduction

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Yeah. And the best way to get water out of a wetland is with subsurface, continuous subsurface drainage. And this area. That's a tile. That's a tile. Okay. That's right. And this area of Indiana, as well as northwest Ohio, you know, historically speaking, it was, you know, predominantly uh wetland. And uh if you look at tile and you look at the distribution of that uh around the Midwest, uh really around the United States, the highest concentration of subsurface tile per square mile is right in this uh neck of the woods. It's right in northwest Ohio, northeast Indiana. Like that's that's where it's at. Um and so we've been very fortunate uh over the last you know uh 15 years or so in response to this problem of excess nutrients. We've been very fortunate as a as a community and as a watershed to be able to restore a lot of that natural habitat. And so I mentioned by the late 90s the number of wetlands had gone down to 0.25 percent of the watershed. I'm very proud to say that today that number is around two and a half plus percent and climbing and growing. And these are intentional conservation efforts to restore natural habitats. Wetlands are you know a great long-term sustainable solution for uh improving water quality, one aspect of which happens to be nutrient loading that can fuel harmful algal blooms.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Yeah, and you had said as well, stated a little different way when we were there visiting, you were talking about how um I I I thought maybe it was 20 percent uh of all of the water that goes into Grand Lake St. Mary's now passes through a wet wetland or has the opportunity to pass through a wetland. Maybe it was 10 percent and you're going towards 20. I don't remember exactly the percentages. Yeah, but that was another percentage that I thought was quite important.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

No, it is, and and and you're close there. We uh the goal is to be able to filter all of the water that goes into Grand Lake St. Mary's. That's one of the sort of watershed conservation goals. Uh, and in order to filter water out of nature, you need you know nature's water filters, you need wetlands to do that. Um we're up to about two and a half percent wetlands, and and the goal is not to get back to pre-colonial 1700s estimates. That's not the goal, that's not a realistic goal. Um the goal would be to get somewhere in the ballpark of around seven to ten percent, probably closer to seven percent of the watershed uh as a wetland. So we are making measurable progress uh towards that. Um and the streams that do have wetlands in Grand Lake St. Mary's, of which there's a there's a whole bunch of them, um, many of these wetlands uh are able to process close to 15 percent of every gallon in that stream, or the equivalent of every gallon in that stream. Um being able to process this much water has been an incredible thing to see just because of what they're capable of doing. And uh and that's kind of where the the science and the the monitoring comes in. And we've been fortunate to uh to be able to keep an eye on these systems and be able to document not just how much water goes through these wetlands on its way to the lake, but what the wetlands are actually doing as they function towards nutrient mitigation.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

I want to make sure our our viewers and listeners catch that. So you've you've been throwing out some different percentages. One was the percentage of the land. So so uh you have a watershed area, a drainage area that drains into the lake. That's right. And of that land area, you want to have seven to ten percent of that land as wetland compared to other sort of upland sort of uh ecosystems.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

Or other yes, that's correct.

unknown 29:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

But then you also said that you want to have all of the water or a hundred percent of the water filtered. So you can filter a hundred percent of the water going into Grant and Lake St. Mary's by having maybe only ten percent of the land in wetland. Right? Okay, so you don't have to get to a hundred percent wetlands.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

No, no, no, no. You don't have to get to a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

It's where those wetlands are.

Students Power The Science

SPEAKER_02 29:51

It's about situations where they're located, and it's about how those wetlands process the actual water. Um again, we we kind of say like uh it's it's great when the water passes through it, but um just because the water passes through a wetland doesn't necessarily mean that it comes out perfect. You know, if water only spends a millisecond in the wetland, how could the wetland possibly do anything? So this is getting to your point, uh Nate, is about the design of the wetland matters, where that wetland is situated matters and and brings up a whole host of topics of uh we like wetlands, how do we how do we even go about it? How do we design it? How do we build one?

SPEAKER_04 30:32

Yeah, that's what I want to know. How did you build one? Yes, because Nate mentioned you were pushing dirt around, but I imagine oh, there's more to it than I know there is. So like designing it and then planning it and then planting it.

Multiple Benefits Beyond Nutrients

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Yeah. All the things. So turns out a wetland needs three things to be a wetland, right? It needs uh appropriate hydrology, it needs appropriate soils, and it needs appropriate plants. Um but when you really look at those three things that make a wetland a wetland plants, water, and dirt, when you look at those three things, uh it's really hydrology is the overriding thing. If you can get the water to an area and get it to hold, then the soils will become wetland soils. They'll become anoxic. They'll become, that means uh soil without oxygen. It's an important part of being a wetland. And uh they'll become increasingly organic as plant material grows, lives, dies, decompose, and sort of settles back in. And then the plants that are in a wetland are hydric plants. That's hydric is in those are plants that are um Love water. They love water, they can't get enough of it. And uh and they're specifically adapted for, you know, they have all these amazing adaptations that these lineages of plants have developed over time to roots. Oh my gosh. Just amazing root systems, the amazing ability to pull oxygen from uh places that a terrestrial plant would never be able to sort of pull water from, or pull water from, pull oxygen from, uh, and they propagate um successfully in these in these. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and so there's all these amazing things, but you gotta get the hydrology right first. That's kind of the master of the trifecta of things you need to make a wetland. And uh, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

I remember seeing uh one of the constructed wetlands where the water comes in from the stream, and there's first some sort of a settling area where the water slows down. So in a stream, as the water is rapidly flowing, it entrains sediment particles. That's why sometimes our streams can look like chocolate milk after a big rain, because flowing water can hold sediment as it's flowing downstream. Whereas when it comes into the wetland, there's a settling pool at the beginning, so the water slows down, which means it can't carry the sediment anymore, and so it drops out. So that's one of the first stages of the water being cleaned. And then after that settling pool area, there's a whole channel of uh plants where the water sort of meanders through the wetland, those plants are all absorbing more nutrients, and uh and then it exits back into the stream cleaner than when it when it came in.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

That's exactly right. That's you know, the wetlands that have been built over the last decade in Grand Lake are um restored wetlands. They're engineered wetlands, which means they are designed um specifically to uh remove nitrogen and phosphorus. Um and and again, I I get to be the fortunate one on this podcast today, but there's so many people that uh I work with, in particular, um professional engineer uh Teresa Dirksen has been phenomenal in helping design nearly you know every wetland in the watershed and and helping to sort of work out and suss out the details of what design elements make a wetland most effective for improving water quality. And as Nate said, our wetlands are really designed um no matter where they're at in the watershed, we design them so that uh water comes in, we settle out heavy particles first, and then the wetland becomes increasingly shallow and allow a combination of microbes and plants to do the things that they do, take up the phosphorus, denitrophage the nitrogen. And then the water comes out the other end with less N, less P and less TSS, less total suspended sediment. And uh from there we can gradually affect small amounts of change that over time build. When you echo that year after year, wetland after wetland, you get more and more progress.

Preventing Wetlands From Becoming Sources

SPEAKER_00 34:47

And it was really impressive to me also to see how you're doing monitoring where the water comes in and what where the water goes out. So you know how effective that wetland is at any time of the year, and you can actually tinker with how much flow is going through that wetland to optimize the most uptake of nitrogen and phosphorus. So it's a sort of hands-on approach where there's always adjustments being made to that wetland to maximize its effectiveness, which I think is really cool. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 35:21

I work with some great people at uh the Wright State Lake campus, the regional campus where I'm at, some phenomenal undergraduates that go out week after week, rain or shine, ice or otherwise, they're out there and they're grabbing samples, and uh we bring those samples back on a weekly basis to the lab and we get a sense of what the stream is looking like and then what the wetland outfall is looking like. And uh in some of these systems we can actually control how much water goes in. And so if we see that a wetland is, you know, removing 99% of all of the nutrients and all the sediment, that's a great thing, and we love to see it. Um but we'll often turn the pump rate up because you know it's almost maxed out, so we'll want to process more water. The more water you can process with a wetland, the greater load reduction. Load, of course, is the quantity of how much harmful substance. It could be nitrogen, could be phosphorus, could be dirt, could be anything. But uh the overall reduction of load is gonna be tied to how much water you're processing. It's great if a water or if a wetland cleans water, but if it only cleans a gallon a day, that's not necessarily gonna move the needle on a water quality problem. You need it to clean, you know, more than a gallon. You need, you know, millions of those gallons, depending on what system you're in. And so we try to optimize how much water goes through and balance our nutrient reduction efficiencies with quantity or volume of water to try and achieve the maximum amount of load reduction.

SPEAKER_04 36:55

So I hear something in common that you guys have. You're both working with students who are who are actually doing like some of the hands-on work that hopefully will become people like Teresa, your engineer who's constructing wetlands. Um Nate, tell us about the students that you're working with and how they're monitoring things.

Lessons For Lake RX And Beyond

SPEAKER_00 37:21

Yeah, so we're just moving into the wetlands space uh as an organization, which is part of the reason. On the podcast and part of our new Lake RX project, which we're working on. Uh we've, though, for years had students involved in lake sampling, uh, where they're out on uh volunteer boat captain boats throughout our county uh every week during the summertime, taking many of the same samples that we were just talking about for wetlands, the nitrogen and phosphorus, different forms of each of those, and then uh bringing those back to the laboratory and looking at algae and toxins and those sorts of things. But also, our students are out sampling stream locations. We have lots of stream sampling locations around our county that we do internally for our own research programs as well as for other partner groups that we have in the area as well. And so us adding in monitoring of wetlands would be a natural next step for us as an organization and something that we're really excited about. Because with that Lake RX program that we're doing, where we want to develop prescriptions for different lakes and how do we reduce those nutrients coming into the lake, we think wetlands are going to be a key part of reducing nutrients coming into our lakes. And so, in order to optimize that reduction, as Stephen's just been talking about, we need to know what's going into the wetland and what's leaving the wetlands so that we can change flow rates or or change the wetland design or change you know plants that are in the wetland. If we don't measure it, we don't know really what's going on and how they might be helping.

SPEAKER_04 39:03

So I want our listeners to really understand wetlands are important because they're filters.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

That's right. As you just said. So they're pulling nutrients out. The other thing that I was really impressed with when we were walking around the wetlands is they are amazing ecosystems in and of themselves.

SPEAKER_02 39:27

Oh, an incredible amount of wildlife.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

Yeah, so we're constructing them with this purpose in mind of reducing nutrients from going into our lakes and improve our lakes and the people who enjoy those lakes their lives. But the wetland has the wildlife, the birds and and the mammals and the amphibians and such that are coming into that space. And you guys have some amazing walking trails around your wetlands, which was really cool to experience. And so people from the community come and are able to walk those trails and be out in nature at the same time as this wetland is doing some really important work.

Progress, Caution, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_02 40:07

Yeah, and it's not just, as you said, it's not just the nitrogen and phosphorus. That's the you know, the engineered intent. Yeah. Right. But as a natural consequence of having a beautiful outdoor space, you've got an opportunity for public recreation, and we've leveraged these systems to have walking trails. Um, but they don't just do that, they also help to store floodwaters, preventing downstream property damage. They also help to recharge groundwater. And depending on where you are, um an aquifer can become taxed, or an aquifer as in the underground region where uh drinking water is sometimes pulled from, sometimes those can become taxed or or overpulled. So this can help recharge. Um, you know, and when we look at all of these different benefits of wetlands, um, you know, it's uh it's just an incredible asset to be able to restore them. And when we think about um, you know, wetlands being engineered for uh nutrient mitigation and for improving water quality, um one thing that sometimes comes up is you know, can that wetland ever become a source for nutrients? Like I understand that it takes in nutrients and okay, I get it. You just built this wetland and it's four or five years old or six years old and it's it's taking in nutrients, but is there ever a time when it could turn around and maybe spit out nutrients and become a water? Be a problem, yeah. Be a problem, yeah. Has anyone ever seen that? And the answer to that is yeah, people have seen that with wetlands. And so the question should become like well, what makes this wetland over here in Grand Lake different than other wetlands? What makes it sustainable, right? Because we want long-term sustainable natural solutions for nutrient mitigation. We don't want short-term pops of chemicals or or something that's not sustainable. We want this to be around for future generations and we want the problem to be solved for a very long time, not just in the immediate aftermath.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

We've talked about that as holistic stewardship on this podcast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:08

I'm gonna guess it's monitoring.

SPEAKER_02 42:10

Well, monitoring is gonna give you a sense of what the wetland's actually doing. Okay. And the monitoring, it informs decision making. It's so critical. Um unfortunately, it's also one of the things that, like week after week after week, it can be um, you know, tedious isn't the right word, but it can become routine. And sometimes routine things are viewed as less exciting. But it's actually quite exciting, you see. So it's that monitoring though.

SPEAKER_04 42:39

Another lake nerd. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

It's the most exciting. No, it it it helps us understand what the wetland is actually doing um and if it's becoming a source. Um and we've actually had uh one of our wetland systems, a couple of our wetland systems, that have been operational for close to 10 years now, we have seen there are periods of time when they've started to become a source. And so you wouldn't know that unless you had monitoring. Now the solution, and there might be a variety of solutions out there for this, but um, what we had found was that those initial settling pools that we described, they those fill up over time. And so what can you do? Well, I mean, we dug them to begin with, so we just redig them, and that's what we did. And we found through monitoring that it reset the system in a very positive, productive way.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

That's great.

SPEAKER_04 43:28

Nate, how is the work that's being done at Grand Lake St. Mary really informing the direction that the Lily Center's taking?

SPEAKER_00 43:38

Yeah, well, we see that there's the possibility for measurable change, which I think is really exciting, right? You guys not only have seen in these wetlands, as we've just been talking about, where what there's less nutrients leaving the wetland than what's coming in, but you're also seeing in the lake itself, you're seeing nutrient levels come. Down, you're seeing uh algae populations come down, you're seeing algae toxin levels come down, all as a result of all this work that's being done on the land. And with our Lake RX program, we have categorized solutions on the land, solutions in the water, solutions in the community. So the solutions on the land is what we're talking about right now in this episode. And so it's exciting for us to see uh the success you're having, and we want to build on that here in our own area and take some of the best practices that you guys have developed and you've learned, and the partnerships that you have uh established, and we want to uh transport those here and uh and get those same things set up here uh in our community to see that same sort of uh measurable change in our life.

SPEAKER_02 44:49

It'd be amazing to see that built here.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:51

Be able to you know come back in five, ten years and and and see the progress. You know, these wetlands are so so critical to long-term holistic sustainable solutions for environmental quality. And when we really look at them, uh one of the reasons that I find that they're so incredible is just how effective they are on such a small scale. You know, when you look out across a hundred-acre wetland, like it can seem enormous or expansive, but the reality is um you know, we've got a wetland that uh sits on uh 0.2 percent of the watershed. 0.2% of the watershed is wetland, and yet it processes 15% of every drop of water that drains across it.

unknown 45:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 45:36

Something sits on 0.2% and it's processing 15% of the water. Like we're talking about, I mean, talk about fighting outside of your wage.

SPEAKER_00 45:44

Two orders of magnets.

SPEAKER_02 45:47

It's amazing. So when and is every wetland capable of no, of course, every wetland's not gonna repeat that. Maybe there's a better one. Um, but not every wetland's gonna be gonna be perfect, not every wetland's gonna do that every single year. Um but the reality is it becomes a sort of case study or a lightning rod to say, hey, these can be part of the solution. And unfortunately, uh across the United States, like we've lost the majority of our wetlands. And states like Ohio, if you look at the historical land survey data, the state of Ohio has lost or had lost um you know close to 90 percent. Uh it's just an extraordinary amount of the sort of relative percentage of of wetland habitat. And uh, if these systems are acting as nature's kidneys, if they're acting as natural water filters, we need to put some of these back because we've got a problem on our hands, not just in Ohio, not just in Indiana, but throw dart at the globe. Like you we got a we got a problem with water quality, and these are not the panacea. You know, they're not they're not perfection in every single way, but they're part of long-term sustainable solutions.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

So we're really excited. Stevens agreed to uh serve on a wetland committee that we have here at the Lilly Center for our Lake IRX program, other um Lake Doctor podcast uh guests like Scott Fetters, uh, who talked about wetlands, Land and Vine as well. They've agreed to be on this committee. So we're developing this group of folks that know what it takes and knows know how to uh help wetlands be part of the solution for cleaner lakes in the future. So I'm so excited about what this is moving us into.

SPEAKER_04 47:34

I think the bottom line is data informs us.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

Right.

SPEAKER_04 47:40

And wetlands are important because they impact the environment, which has an effect on human health.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

Right.

SPEAKER_04 47:47

So it's all of us, right? Right? Like we always say, everybody lives on a watershed.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

Yes, and and and Stephen said it many times in this episode that it's sustainable and long term. You know, a lot of times in environmental circles there's different uh proposed solutions that are sort of short-term, nearsighted, maybe even have unintended consequences. Whereas wetlands are one of those things that is a long-term, sustainable, holistic solution to some of the problems. That wetland is going to be there. It might take some maintenance, as you said. Sure. But it's gonna be there and continue to help our our water uh for the future.

SPEAKER_04 48:27

I bet when they were changing the embankments of Grand Lake St. Mary's, you notice I didn't say digging a hole, that that they didn't realize the consequences of their action at the time. Because that was in the 1800s, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:44

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 48:44

So who would have known?

Listener Actions And Closing

SPEAKER_02 48:46

That's right. Yeah. And even more recently than that, like who who would have known? It takes a long time for nutrients to build up, but when they do, when a watershed reaches that critical moment, that tipping point, it can be drastic and it can be extraordinary in the negative sense. And that's what Grand Lake St. Mary's experienced. Um and that's what's been so amazing to see. Um not completely reversed, of course. Like it would be, you know, foolish to say that Grand Lake is fixed or Grand Lake is uh is perfect. Um you know it's not. But it's on the right trajectory and it can serve as a as an educational model for other lakes seeking to improve. It can serve as a warning for, you know, it don't don't get to this point. Um but uh that kind of stuff is again, it's just it's informed by the information and and the data. And you know, I can't imagine that every watershed sort of works out like uh like like Grand Lake has, but um certainly it gives a place to try, it gives a place to start. Um and I think everybody that uh that I work with uh in the local community uh and the great students that I work with at uh at Wright State Lake Campus, uh very proud of the progress that's been made and eager and excited for you know what's next?

SPEAKER_04 50:01

What's next?

SPEAKER_02 50:02

More wetlands. We're not quite there yet. I told you, we're but we're not there yet.

SPEAKER_04 50:07

Your dream for a thriving Grand Lake St.

SPEAKER_02 50:10

Mary's is we need some more natural habitat. We need more wetlands.

SPEAKER_04 50:16

Stephen, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your expertise and and helping us understand the importance of wetlands and um and thanks for agreeing to work with Nate on that committee.

SPEAKER_01 50:29

It's my pleasure.

SPEAKER_04 50:30

We really appreciate you being here today.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_04 50:34

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_00 50:47

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 you can make a difference on your lake.

SPEAKER_04 51:01

Please like and share this podcast. We'll see you next time. The Doctor is in