Wild About Wetlands: Nature's Amazing Water Filters

In Episode 20 of The Lake Doctor Podcast, hosts Suzie Light and Dr. Nate Bosch revisit the best moments from Season 2 episodes about wetlands. They explore how wetlands act as nature’s kidneys—filtering nutrients, reducing floodwaters, and protecting lakes from pollution—while explaining the differences between marshes, swamps, bogs, and fens.

Featuring insights from Landon Vine, Nathan Herbert, Nate Simons, Jacob Macke, and Stephen Jacquemin, the episode shows how restored wetlands filter significant amounts of water and help reduce harmful algal blooms. Nate and Suzie connect these ideas to Kosciusko County and the new Lake Rx program, highlighting why protecting and restoring wetlands is key to cleaner, healthier lakes. There will be some really big news about Lake Rx in the coming weeks, so make sure you're subscribed. You won't want to miss this announcement!

Check out the full conversations featured in this episode below:

02:31 - Ep. 10 - How to Eat Like a Wetland with Landon Vine, V3 Consulting

05:31 - Ep. 18 - Quaking Bogs & Old Forests: Extraordinary Ecosystems with Nathan Herbert, The Nature Conservancy 

08:07 - Ep. 4 - Why a Controlled Wildfire is Important for our Lakes with Nate Simons, Blue Heron Ministries

14:53 - Ep. 17 - How Wetlands Help Lakes Recover with Dr. Stephen Jacquemin, Wright State University

19:12 - Ep. 19 - Why Choose Native Plants for Your Lake Property with Jacob Macke, Chapman Lake Nursery

22:38 - Ep. 14 - How to Improve Lake Health Using a Holistic Approach

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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Transcript

Welcome And Wetlands Highlight Reel

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Welcome to this episode of the Lake Doctor Podcast. Joining me is my favorite Lake nerd, Dr. Nate Bosch.

SPEAKER_04 0:29

Yeah, and we've got kind of a different setup here today. It is actually in the conference room at the Lily Center. Our learning lab where we normally are is inundated with K-12 students this week for field trips. And so we got kicked out.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Well, you couldn't have like pulled some strings and said, hey, could have. No, that's okay. You know, that education center is there to help educate kids, and we're really excited that you're hosting K through 12 kids this week. Yeah. So I don't mind moving. No. The Lake Doctor's in. And today we've got some it's going to be a lot different, isn't it, Nate? We don't have one guest.

SPEAKER_04 1:05

Right. So we're going to kind of go through some highlights. So our topic is wetlands today. And we've had a number of guests over season two talking about wetlands on the podcast. And so we're going to show our viewers and allow our listeners to listen in on certain highlights of each of those guests talking about wetlands. And then you and I are going to provide a little commentary to each of those.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Oh, that's exciting. So today, the first one that we're going to do is going to be the one called How to Eat Like a Wetland with Landon Vine. And I loved this episode. Landon had some really good examples of wetlands being the filter or like the kidney of a lake system.

Wetlands As Natural Water Filters

SPEAKER_04 1:52

Yeah. So I love his description of wetlands as a kidney. And it he kind of flips its on its head. And so it'll be really fun for our listeners and viewers to think about what it would be like if you didn't have a kidney rather than how we often talk about it is what does it do, do what does it do when it is there? And then we'll talk a little bit about how wetlands interface with lakes and streams as well, which is why we're talking so much about wetlands on this season of the podcast. All right.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Let's listen to what Landon has to say.

SPEAKER_04 2:31

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 3:21

One of the most striking images that he referenced in that interview was that wetlands are like Mother Nature's kidneys. 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 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_04 4:36

Right.

SPEAKER_05 4:37

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?

Marshes Swamps Bogs And Fens

SPEAKER_01 5:05

So, Nate, now we're gonna hear from Nathan Herbert and you talking about the different types of wetlands.

SPEAKER_04 5:12

Yeah, so we've got four main types that we'll go through. And it's interesting to think about pH as a difference between a couple of those types of things. I know bogs on the phone.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Bogs have a different pH than a fen.

SPEAKER_04 5:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

And I wonder what a swamp has. Let's listen to what Dr. Nate has to say about those.

SPEAKER_04 5:31

Bogs are a specific type of wetland. So we've talked about wetlands. You could have a marsh, which is gonna be more herbaceous or green plants, you know, think cattails or those sorts of things. You can have um a swamp, which is usually more of a wooded wetland where you have um woody species like trees or uh buttonbush or something like that. Um, you can have a bog, which typically is gonna have that sphagnum mat on the top and some plants growing in it, sometimes even trees. Like, isn't there a spruce that can grow, like a black spruce?

SPEAKER_05 6:05

Oh, it's camarad, and there's some spruces that are good. Red maples will pop up in them, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:09

Yeah. Um, but that bog is is very different in that typically you'll have rainwater, which is slightly acidic, comes to a depression in the landscape. And since then with that acidity, then you've got the sphagnum, which reinforces the acidity. And so only certain plants and animals probably will live in the bog. We've talked about fens on this uh podcast as well. That's more where you have groundwater coming out, which is gonna have a higher pH. And so that would be a different sort of a wetland than a bog, which is gonna have a more acidic pH.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

One of the next highlights that we're gonna talk about, Nate, is the one with Nate Simons, and his episode I think was titled Controlled Burns. Um I love being part of these podcasts because I learned so much. The economic impact of our lakes in Casciasco County,$400 million per year is the estimate. Um and that alone is worth investing in keeping our lakes healthy through wetlands. Tell me more about that.

Wetlands Support Lakes And Economy

SPEAKER_04 7:18

Yeah. So what's interesting in in this next segment that we're gonna watch is we connect the economic value of the lake to the wetlands that the water flows from to get into the lake. And then Nate Simons goes a step further and talks about the upland ecosystem, even above the wetland that goes into the wetland that goes into the lake that has the big economic value. So it's a really cool segment that brings all of these different things together.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Aaron Ross Powell And he talks about the disadvantage of having monocultures around those environments.

SPEAKER_04 7:52

Right. Without the diversity, we lose some of the function of the system, which is cleaning up that water before it gets to the lake.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Aaron Ross Powell Like good kidneys.

SPEAKER_04 8:02

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Aaron Ross Powell Well, let's listen to what Nate has to say.

Uplands Shape Wetland Health

SPEAKER_04 8:06

So we found that over$300 million comes into just our county each year because of the lakes that we have here in this area. And if adjusted for inflation, it's been a few years ago, it's well over$400 million today. And so when we think about the lakes, the lakes are worthy to be protected and cared for. Okay, how do we do that? And we think about what is protecting our lakes. Wetlands are one of those uh systems that helps protect our lakes. So the healthier wetlands we have, the healthier lakes we're gonna have, which means the healthier economy we're gonna have. So, how do those wetlands do that? Well, one, wetlands can help hold back a lot of water. So we know that oftentimes big flooding events can happen in our communities, cause property damage. Um, and those floods can be reduced by having healthy functioning wetlands. Those wetlands can absorb that water, hold on to it, and then and then let it either recharge recharge groundwater, the aquifers down below, or it can let that water start to leak out more slowly over time than after a big rain event or a big snowmelt event. Those wetlands also can help our economy by holding back nutrients. So wetlands are great filters. They pull in water, and all of those plants in the wetlands are hungry for nutrients and can pull nutrients out so that then the nutrients don't get passed on into a stream and then maybe a lake where those nutrients can cause weeds or algae to grow, which can uh reduce property values and reduce some of the recreational value on our lakes. So wetlands are really an important part of our local economy.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

And they can be groundwater wetlands or storm-driven wetlands.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Right. Yeah. So um the interesting thing about that point um is that um, you know, the focus is on the wetlands as doing the work. Um, but if if you look upslope from there, if you allow that stormwater to go into the wetlands, and the wetlands is performing its its uh work, its function, right? Right, but it gets degraded by the stormwater. So you start upslope from that, and if you have healthy uplands, that the you know, the water is um the flow is reduced before it even gets into the wetlands, then the wetlands themselves can function better as the filter if they don't get clogged, right, as much. And they also have there are better habitat. Um many times you know, the the wetlands that are receiving storm water um are filled with these nutrients that to which you refer in the sediment, and you end up with uh a plant community that is a monoculture. It's just nothing but cattails or reed canary grass or phragmites, common reed. Um so it starts even higher up than than wetlands. And we put you know, the idea is to have we gotta save these wetlands because they they actually have services that help us out, but in reality, we got to take care of it even higher up than that.

Wetland Restoration Versus Construction

SPEAKER_04 11:24

And some of because of that history, some of those wetlands that we have maybe aren't functioning like they once did. Correct. And so there's even uh importance of being able to manage and restore, revitalize some of these wetlands to perform those functions. But if we didn't do anything with the upland, we're just gonna be right back to the same problems we have uh now with the wetlands. So both need to be worked on simultaneously.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

So restoring fens, restoring prairies, restoring oak woodlands. Nate, we're talking about wetlands. How is the wetlands restored or constructed?

SPEAKER_04 12:01

Yeah, well, that's two different things. So a restoration of a wetland could be taking a wetland that's already there and it has been saturated with excess sediments and nutrients over the years. Maybe the upland areas have have uh leaked a lot of sediments and nutrients so that the wetland is overwhelmed and it's no longer holding on to those sediments and nutrients. It's just passing them right along to a stream or a lake down the slope. So we could rehabilitate or restore, revitalize a wetland, which could be changing the plants, maybe moving the hydrology, kind of how the water flows through the wetland so that the wetland again starts to function as a wetland should, where it's absorbing those nutrients and sediments rather than just passing them through. Constructing a wetland is starting with kind of a blank canvas, right? Maybe it's an agricultural field or it's an uh a brown field that was used for industry or something, and it's now being built, it's being optimized as a wetland, and that's often where you can get the highest amounts of nutrients and sediments being reduced as the water goes through that wetland. Usually what you'll do is you'll start with um moving uh the dirt around with excavation, you'll have some sort of a settling pond initially, so the water comes from the stream, starts to settle out sediment, and then there'll be some sort of a stream channel that's vegetated with lots of great wetland plant species, and then there'll be a spot where the water then goes back into that original stream again, cleaner than when it had entered the top of the wetland. And the reason you have that settling pond at the beginning is um you get sediment, you get nutrients falling out, and then that's your maintenance location. So in the future, maybe a couple years down the road, you can scoop out some of that excess sediment that has started to fill up that sediment uh settling area, but the rest of the wetland is still functioning just fine. And so you're as you go along, you're making sure that that wetland is retaining optimal amounts of sediments and nutrients.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

And we had some examples of things that are happening like that.

Grand Lake St Marys Progress

SPEAKER_04 14:15

Yeah, Grand Lake St. Mary's in Ohio. That's their largest inland lake in Ohio. And uh several of our uh Lily Scene Lily Center team members went over there to visit uh Steve and Jackman and uh learn about what they're doing to improve Grand Lake St. Mary's, and we have them as one of our podcast guests.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

That was a most interesting podcast.

SPEAKER_04 14:40

Yes, they are doing some really effective work there in Ohio, and uh we're borrowing the expertise that they've learned here in Indiana now.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Super. Let's listen to what Stephen had to say.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

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. 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_04 15:33

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 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.

Plants Pull Nutrients From Water

SPEAKER_00 16:01

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 7 to 10 percent, probably closer to 7 percent of the watershed uh as a wetland. So we are making measurable progress uh towards that. Um 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 monitoring comes in, and uh. 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 um as they function towards nutrient mitigation.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Nate, you mentioned uh plants in using plants in a restoration of a wetland. Right. How does that work?

SPEAKER_04 17:35

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, so these plants are going to be sort of the workhorse of the wetland. The plants are actively growing, so they're doing photosynthesis, they're pulling in the sun's energy, but they're also needing to pull nutrients into their roots to grow the structures of the plants.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

And they have very long roots, don't they?

SPEAKER_04 17:56

And they and our native wetland plants have very long roots, so they're pulling from a large area. And what is it that we don't want in our lakes? I'm asking you, Seuss.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Oh my golly. Well, we don't want nutrients that grow.

SPEAKER_04 18:10

The algae and the excess weeds and those sort of things. So if we can have wetland plants absorbing nutrients as water is flowing through our wetlands, then we keep those nutrients out of our lakes and we keep our lakes cleaner and healthier than for the future. So in this next segment, we're gonna be seeing Jacob Mackey, and he's gonna be talking about a really cool project that he and his wife are doing on their own personal property. And he's in this clip, he's gonna talk about when he first realized the initial plans might be changing a little bit for their area that they're restoring.

A Landowner Discovers Wetland Soils

SPEAKER_01 18:49

You know, I say it about every one of them, but uh that really was one of my favorite episodes. And that you go into something with an idea of how it's supposed to be, and then you learn and you've got to shift gears. And Jacob is doing that wonderfully well.

SPEAKER_04 19:02

Yes, and science, that's what we always do. We follow the science and uh find the most efficient solutions for the problems that we find.

SPEAKER_03 19:12

Background is mechanical engineering. I didn't know, I've heard wetlands, and I've heard, you know, restoring wetlands is good, but I was looking at a cornfield and so I thought, okay, that'll probably be a good prairie, you know, it's dirt, cover it with plants, like sure. But what I didn't know, and people started telling me is I started looking to what resources are out there, and I'm talking to like soil and water conservation and the NRCS in different groups, and they're like, well, you may have the soils you need for wetlands. Like, well, I don't know what soil types there are. Do you know what soil types like I forget the names of them?

SPEAKER_04 19:51

But hot and muck would be a common one that we'd have in our area, which is which is usually under a lot of our wetlands.

Why Wetlands Matter To Lake Work

SPEAKER_03 19:58

But they they've surveyed the soil types, and that's in the records they have available, and they looked and they said, Yeah, you have four or five acres worth of wetlands, qualified soils, and so you might want to look at doing a wetlands restoration. That's exciting. It was very exciting because that brings a whole nother set of plants. It's not just these drier prairie species. Now you need all the wetland species and a lot of wildlife that you could bring in with that. And and I think I'm equally excited about the potential of the wildlife coming in.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Nate, Lily Center is working on lakes and streams. So why are we focusing on wetlands?

SPEAKER_04 20:41

Well, as you probably recall from a number of the episodes that we have heard, wetlands are connected with lakes and streams. And so if we want to understand our lakes and streams better and make them cleaner and healthier and safer and more beautiful, which is our mission at the Lily Center for Lakes and Streams, we need to think about where is that water coming from and what does that water connect to as it's going through our streams and our lakes. And wetlands are a big part of that. Wetlands are kind of that transition zone between the upland terrestrial ecosystems and the lowland aquatic ecosystems. And so we need to understand that transitional ecosystem if we want to understand our lakes and streams. And if we want to make our lakes and streams better, which is the focus of Lake RX, we need to make our wetlands better. So that's why we're talking a lot about wetlands.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

And that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 21:43

It is a good thing. And the added benefit of wetlands is they're beautiful places, aesthetically pleasing places where you can go for a walk or you can sit and just ponder for a little bit. And we've lost so many of those wetland areas. areas in the state of Indiana and across the United States and really across the world that taking care of those remaining wetland areas or even creating new wetland areas is really important for the future.

Making Wetlands Work Better

SPEAKER_01 22:14

So restoration and revitalization and creation? And a good place to go watch birds.

SPEAKER_04 22:23

Yes. Yes, you would know that.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

And everyone that everyone lives on a watershed so whatever you do on your property is going to affect water downstream somewhere.

SPEAKER_04 22:34

Right. So let's give a listen to the next 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 22:52

And not a monoculture.

SPEAKER_04 22:53

And not a monoculture of one plant.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Using native species that have deep roots.

SPEAKER_04 22:59

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 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?

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Yes.

Lake Rx And The Next Step

SPEAKER_04 24:37

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 to 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 and application here around our own ways.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

So Nate this has been a little bit different episode for like Doctor um tell us what we learned.

SPEAKER_04 25:35

Yeah so we started with talking about why wetlands are important. We talked about different types of wetlands and the sort of plants and critters that you might see in those wetlands we talked about economic impact of wetlands we talked about how the upland ecosystems around wetlands influence the wetlands which influence the lakes which influence that economic value we talked about working with friends in Ohio to learn from some of the interesting wetland work they've been doing around Grand Lake St. Mary's and how that's influencing our current work here in Indiana. We've talked about wetland restoration good examples of that here locally and how we hope to do more of that here locally as well going forward.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

So speaking of doing more and going forward tell us what the next step is.

Links To Full Episodes And Subscribe

SPEAKER_04 26:26

Yeah so the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams has been known for doing great research and education over the last 15 plus years closing in on about 20 years. And so as we have identified challenges in our lakes and streams have found what the most strategic solutions to those challenges are, we want to be more and more about actually putting those solutions into practice, implementing those solutions. And so we're calling it Lake Rx. We're developing custom prescriptions for our local lakes that involve categories of solutions. So we have solutions on the land which we've talked about in some of these highlighted segments here we talk about solutions in the water itself and then also solutions in the community the community of users around those lakes and so as we develop these prescriptions and we work alongside our partners to implement these solutions we will then see our lakes get healthier quicker because of that coordinated effort under this Lake RX program. And in an upcoming episode we're going to share some really big news about a big step forward in the Lake RX program here at the Lily Center.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

You've sworn me to secrecy but it is really big news.

SPEAKER_04 27:52

Well don't give it away I won't give it away people need to wait a few more episodes for that big announcement. What people can do right now though, one of the things they can do right now is if if they're interested in this and they want to look back at one of those full episodes that we showed a clip or or they listen to a clip of in the description of this current episode that we're doing right now there's links to all of those individual episodes that we referenced here in the current episode.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Or they could just go back and listen to all of them because they're pretty all darn good.

SPEAKER_04 28:23

They are pretty good yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

So if you enjoyed this episode please share it and share it again. And if you'd like to visit our website it's lakes.grace.edu please subscribe that way you won't miss the upcoming episode with the really really big news join us next time the doctor is in