Floating Trees and Ephemeral Wetlands with Jason Kissel

In Episode 21 of The Lake Doctor Podcast, Jason Kissel, Executive Director of ACRES Land Trust, joins us for a fascinating conversation about forested wetlands and ephemeral wetlands. Jason's lifelong passion for trees was sparked at age five while standing on a mountaintop with his U.S. Forest Service father. Jason also shares why northeast Indiana is special as a crossroads of prairie, forest, wetland, and boreal systems.

The discussion dives into forested wetlands—places where trees thrive in seasonally flooded soils—along with rare bogs like Glenwood Bog, where trees grow atop floating sphagnum mats. Jason describes ephemeral (temporary) pools that appear briefly each spring, serving as critical breeding grounds for amphibians like spring peepers because they lack predators. He also covers ACRES Land Trust’s work protecting nearly 9,000 acres, restoring wetlands, managing invasives, and using mitigation projects to create larger, connected natural areas.

Practical and inspiring, this episode highlights how protecting trees and wetlands improves water quality, supports biodiversity, and benefits the lakes and streams we all enjoy in Kosciusko County and beyond.

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.

Help us improve the podcast by filling out this short survey: https://forms.gle/MzGSXHcnkEQC8T74A.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Preview

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to this episode of the Leg Doctor Podcast. I'm Susie Light and my co-host Dr.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Nate Bosch. Welcome. It's going to be a good episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

It's going to be a good episode. You know, we are really excited that we're going to be welcoming Jason Kissle.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

He is the director of Acres Land Trust.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

And Jason's going to introduce a new type of wetlands to me. You probably already know about them.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

We've t I've heard of them before, but we've talked a lot about wetlands on this podcast, but this is one we have not talked about at all on this podcast. Something about wetlands that disappear at certain times of the year.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Can you can you believe it? And trees.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

And trees as well.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Not disappearing trees.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

No, they stay around.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

All right, good. So as you're watching this episode, if you've got any questions or comments, drop them in and we will respond to you. We value your feedback. And we also value you sharing this with others because it's important stuff we're talking about, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:58

And people can subscribe to it as well, and then that can always be in their feed.

A Childhood That Made A Forester

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Super. Welcome to this episode, The Doctor is in. That I share with love of trees. And I remember when you were newly at Acres, we went to lunch and I got to show you the Chicago boys' club area. And you your comment about those are not old growth trees. Tell us about trees. Why are you fascinated by trees?

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Well, it started early. So grew up in Boise, near Boise. My dad worked for the U.S. Forest Service.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Ah.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

And I was just under five. And he took me to one of these sites that they've done. And out there, the uh harvesting method is clear-cut. And so when you do a clearing, you do a clearing. And so we were on top of this mountain and could see what I thought was forever. And so I was looking over this just forests that look like the whole world. And dad mentioned in passing, he's like, hey, Jace, part of what I do is take care of everything you see. And at that moment, I thought two things. One, my dad is God because he takes care of the whole world. And two, it never clicked that, you know, people can manage land or people can care for land. And so I point on as a five-year-old that my mission in life was going to be to take care of God's trees. And so I've always loved them. They've always made sense to me. Um, some people can read people really well, but from the young age, I've always been able to read trees really well. I could under, I understood like why the branch angle was that way or why that tree grew there and the other ones didn't. And so for me, that's always been my connection to nature, my connection to God. Um, and so in high school, I never went to the guidance counselor. I knew I was gonna go get a degree in forestry, and I lived in Indiana, so I was gonna go to Purdue. Yeah. Um, and so just I've always all my careers have been spent caring for trees. Um, so I've worked for um the state of North Carolina, the city of Indianapolis taking care of their trees. And then for the past 20 years, I've been taking care of acres trees. Um, and so for me, that's just always been the draw.

What Acres Land Trust Protects

SPEAKER_00 3:45

And acres is a land trust.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

And since we are in Casciasco County, we want to talk about a few of your acres properties here.

unknown 3:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Yeah, so we own almost 9,000 acres of land now, and that's um natural areas that we want to preserve for some reason. It's normally a forest and something else or a wetland and something else, because when we guarantee to own that land, we guarantee to keep it forever. And so it's a big commitment. Uh, it's not just land that we're gonna own for the next generation. And so we really look for those special places that are remaining or that could be restored in our service area and acquire them and then just really care for them really well. Um and so most of our properties are forest. We have a lot of wetlands, uh, some native grasslands. Um, yeah, staying true to caring for forest because that's the largest component of what we own, um, including some forested wetlands, and then here in Casyasco County, some really cool bogs, and then the uh wildwood property down there on 14 really has a nice continuum of young forest to old forest from open water wetlands to uh shallow water wetlands. And uh it's a really great spot to see a lot of the systems that are available to us in northeast Indiana and a relatively small property of a couple hundred acres.

Walking On A Living Bog

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah, I love teaching my students here at Grace and bringing community members as well out into the different ecosystems. Throughout Indiana, we have sort of five sort of major ecosystems of prairie, forest, wetland, stream, and lake. And uh on that property, you've got several of those. Another one of your properties, which is one of my favorites that I get to take students out to, it's not open to the public, uh, but is open by by appointment and and permit special from you guys is Glenwood Bog. Um, and that bog is sort of an otherworldly experience, is how I would describe it, where you've got this phagnum mat and you walk out on it. And as some students are uh walking, you can sort of feel the ripples and waves under your feet standing, you know, 10 or 20 feet away, uh sort of floating on the surface of what was an ancient lake. Um, and and over time then the sphagnum started coming over the top through rainwater moving in and then staying there. And it's uh a circumneutral bog, which makes it even more rare, right? Most bogs are more acidic because rainwater is uh slightly acidic naturally as it falls. But this this bog, because we've got a lot of limestone and stuff in our geology, uh, is more closer to neutral and uh just a fascinating you've got to get through some of the uh poison sumac around the exterior. But once you get um out there, it's really with um some what what are the there's some evergreen trees out there. Is it black spruce?

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Is that yeah, and there's some larches out there, some tamaracks, some existing tamaracks. And um, so yeah, again, those are the type of places that we look for. You know, bogs in themselves are just amazing because they're really the oldest vegetation community that we have in our service area. You know, everything else has kind of been stripped off or changed, you know, in the past 400 years at least, if not further. So the soils have this ancient history and the bedrock even more beneath them. But from a vegetation standpoint, we know that those bogs have been in place and intact for thousands of years, you know, kind of after the last glaciers left, they started to form. And so everything else on the landscape is uh much more temporary and much more young. And so we get really excited about bogs in particular. And again, that one's circumneutral, so that's unique. And so that's the reason why acres pursued that. It's a fairly small property, but because it's so unique, uh, all of our other bogs are acidic. Yeah, and that one's got a completely different plant life because it's right at uh the neutral point.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

So, how does a tree grow on a bog? Yeah, that's so crazy to me to see trees out. I mean, they're basically growing over top open water down beneath them.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

Yeah, it's really strange. It's a it's a unique situation because you have trees that uh typically grow in soil, um, like the poison sumac that you mentioned. Uh, but they found that when their seeds drop on here, that again, there's an accumulation of several feet on that property, yeah, probably four to six feet of mat. Um and so it's working as soil at this point. Some nice peat and sphagnum moss there, it's getting the nutrients that it needs. Water's always available. Um, stability's obviously an issue. It's got to be strange to be a tree on top of this floating mat. I mean, that's just not normal for a tree, not that it can recognize that. Right. Um, but it does have access to everything it needs. There's no canopy above it. So it's got the light requirements, it's got the nutrient requirements, and it's got plenty of water. Um, and so their root masses are different. Um, but yeah, they just find a place to thrive.

The Ecological Crossroads Of Indiana

SPEAKER_01 8:52

And we we as as a class several times going out there with with one of your staff members, we'll try to uh sample the water beneath the mat on the top. And it's just this comedy of errors, and we never really because of the the the sphagnum keeps coming into the middle, even when we try to sort of push it away, and we have tried putting pipes down and get samples down. And I always joke with the students maybe there's this mystical civilization under here that we just can't get to and see what's down there. Um, but it's almost like the bog is sort of like working against us, protecting the secrets of what might lie beneath. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

One thing you mentioned before that I want to grasp before we leave is you're mentioning these five big systems that come together here. And that is really what makes northeast Indiana special. So I grew up in southern Indiana, south of Bloomington, and uh there's a quantity of natural areas there. Uh, but you go an hour in any direction and you're still an eastern deciduous forest. Great karst features and all this wonderful, really cool stuff. But you go an hour in any direction and you're the same system. And that's what I love about northeast Indiana is you go an hour north and you're starting to touch the southern edge of the boreal forest, the northern forest. And then you start heading east and you hit the great black swamp, whole different system. And then from here south, you're going through the eastern deciduous forest. And then from here west, you're starting the great prairies that go all the way out to the Rocky Mountains. And so Indiana is truly the crossroads of America, but it's not at Indianapolis with all the interstates, it's here. Wow. Because you got these four major systems bumping into each other. And where they're bumping into each other, they're doing things that they normally don't do on the interior. And so you got forest interacting with trees. And normally grasses and trees are going to be like this, but they found a way to coexist.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

And these great things called oak savannas or these great little sedge meadows that have trees popping up through them. And the same thing with our northern tree species and our southern tree species, they meet here. Um, so northeast Indiana has got the the best variety of plants of anywhere in Indiana because all those systems are converging. Right. And then we got the Great Lakes forcing all the animals and the birds down and around us. So it truly is something that we forget about is that we're at this intersection of all these things and we can look in any direction an hour away, and we're in starting to be in a different system.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

That is really cool.

Trees That Thrive In Wetlands

SPEAKER_00 11:28

So, what kind of trees grow in a wetland system?

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Yeah, you know, when you mention wetlands, people don't think of trees often. Uh, you think of open water or you think of water with, you know, cattails or you know, maybe some degraded wetlands sometimes pop to mind quickly. Uh, but we have a lot of forested wetland systems. And so they really do vary. Some of them are like the ones I just mentioned, where you have a really cool sedge meadow that's groundwater fed, and all these sedges are growing out there. And and that's the whole mat of the uh vegetation. And then at the edge, as you start to go up the slope, maybe where those springs are starting to come into the water, you got different trees. So you got some really cool um swamp, swamp-wide oak working with sedges in a lot of cases. You'll see those two together. Um, and then you have more of like a flat woods where there's uh a hard pan underneath, a clay layer, and then you got soil on top that can hold water, but it's only holding water like this time of the year. And so often when you go by some ag fields and you see a little pocket of forest in the back, maybe a 10 or 20 acre, that's because they couldn't get it to drain. It's one of those flat woods. Okay. And so they started to push water to it, and so now they even have more water in them. And so what you're seeing is this time of year, they'll be eight inches, maybe a foot of water. And so you're seeing trees that can tolerate periodic flooding uh this time of year, and then it dries out enough where their roots get oxygen later. So you see a lot of, again, maybe some swamp white oak, but a lot of pin oak, uh, red maples. Um, and then what's really interesting, you kind of know when you come up on one because there'll be all these great big mature trees, and then hardly any understory because it's so wet uh that really the vegetation doesn't grow there.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

So, Susie, do you know how to tell a northern pinoak from other trees?

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Well, I know a northern pinoak is pyramidal in shape, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 13:23

So the way I describe it to my college students is it's I call it the jumping jack tree. Because the branches up high are are going up, the branches in the middle kind of go out horizontally, and then the branches down near the ground kind of hang down. Other oak trees as they grow will what I think is called self-prune. Whereas the and so those bottom branches were start to fall off naturally, whereas the pin oak holds on to those bottom branches, and so it looks like the tree's doing jumping jacks, which and then the ends of the leaves come to a real fine bristle point, which is probably part of the pin name in it.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

What about cherry trees? Not not the fruiting cherry trees, but the wild black cherry.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

Yeah, they typically like a little drier, so you'll see them kind of on the uh banks as you're coming out of a wetland or near the top. So they don't prefer their feet to be too wet. Um, so they're not ones that you're gonna see right in those forested wetlands, but they're they're around the edges.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Sycamore trees?

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

Yep. And so some of them too, you know. I mean, you know, if we're considering riparian zones and these flood zones too, in this, then yes, then you're really getting to a lot of the sycamore and the cottonwood. Um, you get a whole lot more there. But these flatwoods, um, they're kind of used to being undulated underwater for a little bit longer. Um, and so you're really seeing very few species who can tolerate that to be underwater for several months.

Ephemeral Wetlands And Amphibian Nurseries

SPEAKER_01 14:51

With those flatwoods, is that the same thing as like a vernal pool? Or is that slightly different?

SPEAKER_02 14:57

So you can have these like ephemeral ponds or these ephemeral wetlands within a typical forest, and they're just a small area. In fact, it may have just been where a big tree blew over and the root ball came up, and you got a 20-foot circular area that just holds water. Uh, so that could even be like an ephemeral wetland within a forest.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Okay, wait a minute. We've been talking about wetlands a lot on this podcast, and I think that's the first time I've heard the word ephemeral wetland.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Define that.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

Yeah. Maybe Nate can give a better scientific explanation or his definition, but to me, it's something that's temporary. And so we refer to ephemeral, like ephemeral wildflowers right now. Uh they're things that live out their life cycle in a shorter amount of time than the growing season. And so when I talk about ephemeral wetlands, they're wetlands that are here now, and then by June, they're pretty much dried up, and they will only be holding water if we just happen to have a two or three inch rain in the middle of August. Um, and then they fill back up again in the winter.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

So the word ephemeral means temporary, and the opposite would be perennial. So we have in streams, we have ephemeral streams, which means they just flow after a rain event or snow melt, versus a perennial stream, is always flowing water all the time. So in the same way, we could have a perennial or ephemeral wetland or a permanently flooded or seasonally flooded wetland.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Okay. That's good to know. Um, especially since we've had a lot of rain recently and and seeing that a lot of the trees, even big old trees that you'd think have deep roots, are suddenly toppling over. Does that create more wetlands? Is that a good thing, a bad thing? What's happening?

SPEAKER_02 16:46

Sure. So when you see large trees like that that have obviously grown in this place for decades, you know, sometimes centuries, and then they're toppling over, uh, typically that's because the ground became so saturated for so long. Uh it's more physics than anything else. And so the soil starts to shift underneath it. And so the root structure that's supported well all its life, all of a sudden, if the soil is too moist, it'll just shift from underneath it. And that's why you see these huge root balls just kind of turn up in the air. And all of a sudden you see 20 feet of the root crown um from that tree. And so most trees have uh roots that go out to about their drip line. And so, but some of those big structural roots are the ones that you see in those. Um so yeah, I mean, the forests are always changing. You know, you can't preserve a forest as it is today. You don't want it to be because it's always changing. Species are coming and going and species diversity changes. And so if you start with an oak hickory forest and you look underneath it, there's not oak and hickories growing underneath it because they need a lot of light. And so when you have a big windfall event like this, all of a sudden there is enough light for oak and hickory to regenerate underneath it. Um if that light doesn't reach the forest floor, then you've got beech and maple trees growing up which can tolerate that shade. So, no, it's great. Uh, nature's used to disturbances. And so it's part of the system, it's part of that renewal process. And right now, again, since we've had so much rain, all these ephemeral wetlands are functioning like crazy. And what I say functioning is not only are they serving the trees, but they serve a really unique uh role for amphibian breeding. Um, it's great because you got this body of water that doesn't have water in it year-round. So you don't have fish. So the fish aren't eating all your eggs. And then the wading birds who love to go around and get the salamander eggs and the frog eggs, they're kind of scared because they don't know if an owl or a hawk is sitting in the tree above them. So those waiting birds stay away. And so all of a sudden, you've got this protected wetland within this forest with very few predators. And so you see amphibian populations actually just converge on these. This time of year, they breed, lay their eggs, and then right now it's just out at one, two days ago, and there's just literally thousands of baby salamanders that are this big just going back out. And so these ephemeral wetlands, uh, amphibians come to them, uh, they breed, and then they go back out. And so they're the breeding areas and uh nurseries for typically hundreds of acres around it. And so not only is it just a functional part of the forest, but it's a really big part of the life cycle, a lot of aquatic species. Uh, and fairy shrimp and all kinds of stuff live in these. You're like, okay, where do they go? And they just kind of hang out in the mud the rest of the year. And so their life cycles are, you know, pretty amazing. You got these aquatic species hanging out in the forest, and in the summertime it just it's all cracked earth, you know. Um, so they're they're just it's amazing the adaptability.

Drip Lines Roots And Water Quality

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Yeah, I love thinking of the example of spring peepers as little frogs and then bullfrogs, and the spring peepers will breed and lay their eggs and tadpoles in these vernal pools or these ephemeral wetlands. And their life cycle has to be really sped up because they've only got weeks before it dries up and it becomes cracked dirt, as you said. Whereas bullfrogs they can go on months or even a couple years before they develop into an adult frog, um, because bullfrogs are in those more permanently uh aquatic environments, whereas the spring peepers uh just have a shorter period of time. Jason, you mentioned a word before called drip line. Um can you explain that a little bit? That's from what I understand, kind of the edge of the trees, but then that takes us into roots and maybe even how trees interface with aquatic ecosystems. But talk a little bit about drip line.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Yeah, and you're correct. It's the very extent of the canopy of the tree. So the tree's branches can stretch all the way out. And the drip line is if you happen to be under a tree during a rain, it's the last part that's you dripping from the trees. Um, so that's how it's got its name. But yeah, it's it's kind of a good guide for a lot of trees. Now, in a forest, when you have a tree that are, you know, really compact and tight against each other, their roots extend much further. But if you've got like an open-grown tree in your yard, you know that the roots are going at least that far and uh often further. And so, yeah, that's one thing that people don't, you know, appreciate about trees is that there's uh typically more material underground than above ground. You know, we look at these huge trees and they may be three foot in diameter and a hundred foot spread and eighty foot tall. It's like, man, that's a lot of material we're looking at, and all the leaves. But if you look underground, there's even more. And you know, some of them are the big roots that you run into trying to dig in your yard. But most of them are just these really fibrous tiny hairs uh that are doing everything the tree needs them to do collecting water, collecting nutrients, collecting oxygen. And so these trees' lungs are underneath the ground. Um, and then what they're doing above ground is uh giving us the oxygen.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

So And that's often where we interface with aquatic environments, right? So as we have rainfall or snow melt and it's coming through the canopy of the trees and it's and it's starting to interact with that soil. If there's not a tree there and it's bare soil, we can get erosion and surface runoff and moving nutrients and sediments into one of our aquatic systems, which our aquatic systems already have way too much of those things. So we don't want to see anymore. Uh, but trees can help intercept some of that energy of the rainfall. The roots hold on to the soil and even allow that percolation into the soil. Uh, and then the roots, as you said, are absorbing those nutrients and some of that excess water.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

Yeah, that phosphorus that we don't want in the waters, they can use. Yeah. And I had thought about that before, but yeah, not only do we love wetlands because they store and slow down water, but forested wetlands, you can basically view the tree as a huge straw that's sucking up that water too. So not only is it slowing it down and holding it, but it's utilizing that and then releasing it through evaporation rather than all that water going downstream quickly, hundreds of gallons a day.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Yeah.

Protecting Hydrology Through Stewardship

SPEAKER_02 23:18

And so those forested wetlands slow water down in a different way because they have these big straws sucking up hundreds of gallons of water each day. Um so yeah, that's that's that's a really I hadn't really thought about that part of the forested wetlands uh slowing water down even more. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

So what can we do to help protect forested wetlands, forests in general, trees specifically?

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Sure. Well, the forested wetlands, there's not a whole lot of examples. That's why we don't we don't think about it quickly, but they used to be almost everywhere. Uh it's really easy to get rid of one, you know, because again, they're only wet certain times of the year. So you put one good ditch through the middle of a hundred-acre forest and you no longer have a forested wetland. You've got a forest that's trying to adapt to uh drier conditions. And so that's why we don't see them. Um, but if you look at most fields that we keep tiling and tiling and tiling, those were likely forested wetlands when you're uh from this part south. Um so they were there. Um and so when we find them, we get pretty excited about them. And uh you just have to protect the hydrology coming into them and and coming out of them. Um, and again, at this point, um a lot of them have had uh decades of that use. And so again, it's often the back 40 that was just too wet to farm. Um, just couldn't get the water away from it just from the topography. And so uh some of those are thriving flatwoods back there and and thriving forested wetlands. And so we look for those and try to connect them to other forested wetlands that may be near them. Um, and so that's what we do a lot of is really look for those special areas and grow them because they become islands. And so we want this island to not just be a hundred acres, but maybe a thousand acres over time, following a riparian area and just uh bringing back where they where they were. And the soils will tell you that the soils are great because again, they don't change much over a couple of 10,000 years, thousands of years. And so we go and just pull the soil, and the soil will say, this was obviously a wetland system uh that it developed under, or this one's a little bit mixed, and so you're starting to see some dry components and some wet components, or oh man, this one was definitely a remnant of a grassland. And so all those are very distinctive, and uh, the agronomists are great because they can just hone in and um tell you what was there before, um, at least for the past couple thousand years.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

You know, I I I love learning about this stuff from and the partners that you're bringing to the table, much like the Lily Center bringing partners to the table. The idea that this year, 2026, Acres is celebrating what?

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Yeah, we're calling it the year of the water, the year of water for us, because it's in our name, Land Trust, Acres Land Trust. And so when people think of us, and rightfully so, they think about land and we talk about land a lot. Uh, but there's all kinds of stuff over the land, under the land, on the land that we're protecting all the time. And so this year's going to be at water about water. We may do air next time, we may do animals, we may do plants, you know, um, but it's just a reminder that when you protect one piece of nature, you can't separate it from the rest of nature. Yeah. And so land is obviously a huge component of how water exists, um, where it is, uh, the quality of it. Um, and so land is a huge part of this water cycle that we're involved with. And so we're just reminding people that, you know, again, uh people know us for land for sure. And so we're trying to just jog their memory of, oh yeah, you know, nature's a lot more than land, because I can get fixated on trees, you know, and there's a lot more than trees. Yeah. And so, like you were saying before, you know, I can go out to a property that we're looking to acquire, and I know enough to know that something's different. And so I'll go out there and say, that's some sedges. I know it's a sedge, but I don't know much else other than that. And so we'll bring in a sedge expert. And so we've got this natural area, is such a collegial environment where we can just call in theologists and say, we need help here. Call in theologist. Because again, we have a geologist who can just read the land and explain it. And then you bring in a zoologist, an ethyologist, and a mycologist, and all of them. A limologist? Yeah, a limologist even. All of a sudden you get a better picture because if you only know one part of it, you only know one part of it. And they all influence each other.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

And so I love thinking about that because um the natural world around us is filled with interrelated parts, right? And we've talked about that on this podcast. And when when we doing our various uh environmental roles in these different organizations, start to put habitat back in a more natural sense, it allows these relationships to start to be restored. And so there's organisms that can now get to that um ephemeral wetland that once couldn't, because there was a whole matrix of agricultural land around that wetland, or now we can allow uh infiltration of water and keeping it from running off uh into one of our lakes and streams without any filtering. And so I just I love that thought of this interconnected um matrix of uh of ecosystems and how they're all working together. And what a privilege we have to do our work. Our our job is to piece these things back together again, which is just an amazing uh privilege to be able to work in that and then start to see these interconnections start to develop again.

SPEAKER_02 29:21

It is. And again, when we're looking for, like I said, land plus something, uh, we rely on our partners like you to tell us what this plus is. Because if we're working in a particular watershed and you're like, this one's really key to this particular stream or river, that bumps it up in our priority too. If we have a choice of protecting a stream or reforesting a stream here versus over here, all of a sudden your priority of that area affects our priority of that area. And uh, if we can help reduce the temperature of that water through our forest that we're trying to establish, all of a sudden that meets some of your water water quality goal or the aquatic goals of maybe that red-sided dace that needs to needs a stream to be two degrees cooler. And we're like, oh, well, acres may be part of that solution. If we go upstream and start to shade the creek for two miles, all of a sudden, when it gets closer to the Wabash River, it may be two degrees cooler. And so we've done that work. And so that's what I love is like nobody grabs a piece and says, This is my piece of nature, and you stay out of it. It's like this is a piece that we're shepherding and stewarding. Stewardship. Yes, and you are too. And so, what can we learn from you? How can we help you? And I've just loved that in this field, like uh, whether it's the DNR, the nature conservancy, or county parks, or private landowners that we work with a lot, or other land trusts, it's all this come look what we're doing. We want to know what you're doing, how can we work together? Um, and that's just been really nice to see uh that the organizations that are supporting nature are starting to mimic nature's behavior. Like we're better together, we're better when we're more diverse, we're better when we can start to see all those intersections, and we get the really cool stuff when we bump into each other. Um, so yeah, again, if we could take our cues from nature, we'd all be just like crazy successful.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

One of the things that we've been learning, many things we've been learning on this podcast, um, but the dangers of invasive species creating monocultures. How is Acres addressing that kind of um any kind of invasive species, whether it's on the land or in the water?

SPEAKER_02 31:39

Sure. Like everybody else, we're trying to tackle them and we spend a lot of resources, whether it's staff time or volunteer time. We got a great army of volunteers who help us do a lot of the invasive control. Um, but you're never done. And so again, it's it's working collectively. Um, so we have to identify of all that 9,000 acres of land, a lot of them, most of them are gonna have some invasives on them. And so, how do you prioritize those? And again, that's where our partners help is like, okay, this is an area that we've had our partners doing really well on. Uh, if we can keep that up, we've got a bigger buffer. Um, and so we've prioritized really our intact natural systems where invasives are just starting to come in. We have some properties that it's a lot of invasives, and we're like, you know what, it can't get much worse. So we're gonna let that one stay and really look at where's our most unique vegetation within our service area, where are those rare threatened endangered plants that would be highly impacted by invasives? And so our priority has been kind of it's uh not exactly intuitive. It's like we want to go where there's fewer rather than where there's more in most cases, because we want to protect those pristine areas that are still pristine. And so we're kind of fighting the edges of those. Um yeah, it's uh you're never done, uh, but it is rewarding because if you do go into an area that's been highly invasive and you've got nothing but autumn olive or bush honeysuckle in the understory, um, and you've been successful for the past five years of reducing that and removing that, uh, within that five-year time period, you'll go from three or four species back to a hundred species. And so the rhizomes are still there, the seed is still there, um, birds and animals are always bringing in the native seeds too. And so it is rewarding. Um, it's uh it's challenging, but I tell people, well, you mow your lawn every five days. So if you go into the woods and start to manage that, you only have to manage it a few times a year. And they're like, Oh, it takes so much effort. Like, yeah, but look at your lawn. Look how much time you spend on the lawn. Surely we can do natural stuff. No, it's not. Like, you know, the people, oh yeah, you know what? I do. And so that helps people put in perspective like we can be good stewards of nature and not have to be rabid environmentalists and know the scientific name of every plant we go uh see. Right. But if you've got 20 acres of woods, there's all kinds of great programs and education about invasive removals, and there's great government programs that'll actually help you do that. Um, so it's encouraging to know that uh it can be done. It just takes a lot of collective effort and uh uh it's just uh something you're not done with, just like your lawn, you're gonna have to mow it again next week.

Wetland Restoration And Mitigation Deals

SPEAKER_00 34:23

So, Jason, how does acres approach land or wetlands restoration? And are you doing anything different now?

SPEAKER_02 34:32

Yeah, you know, we've done restoration for quite a while. Um, probably kind of a couple hundred acres a year. We got this big 300-acre wetland restoration going on in Ohio next year. And so before, we would often, you know, um enroll in there's some government subsidy programs that, you know, help put wetlands back where wetlands used to be. And those are great. They would basically pay for the cost of installing those. Um, we've been working now a lot with um the state's in lieu of program. Basically, if someone destroys a wetland somewhere else, you have to mitigate that. And uh so the state is facilitating a lot of those. So we've been enrolling in a lot of those and working with private companies who need to do that mitigation. So what work I'm gonna explain that more.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

So a developer's coming in and he wants to build a building somewhere, but there are wetlands on that area.

SPEAKER_02 35:23

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

So what does he have to do?

SPEAKER_02 35:25

So if they're gonna destroy those wetlands as part of their construction, then they have to mitigate that. Sometimes it's one for one. If you destroy five acres, you have to restore five acres somewhere else. Or sometimes it's one to three or one to five. Um, and so when they have those needs, um, they could go to an individual private landowner and put it on their property, but they love to come to acres, and the core of engineer has to approve these. And so they love to go to acres because they know if they put it on our property, they could lump several of them together and have maybe a hundred-acre wetland. And they know that acres is going to be a really good steward of that property moving forward. So it's not just gonna become a degraded wetland five years after the project. Um, and so that works really well. It creates some income for acres. Uh, it gets all installed to our specifications and the cortex um specifications, and we end up with a great wetland. And then we can place it within a complex of our other wetlands. And so when we talked before about islands of forest, we don't want islands of wetlands either. Right. And so we're always promoting, hey, we have a hundred acres next door to an acre's already existing wetland. We would love to see that happen there. Or if we can work with somebody working on a watershed plan and say, you know, this stream used to be an undulating stream and now it's a straight ditch. Uh, we would love to re-re reestablish that, slow the water down, re-establish that filtration and holding. Um, and then it helps not only our creating this big complex, uh, but the watershed goals too. So that's been a really uh newer tool. It used to be that every company had to find their own person to do mitigation. Now the state has stepped in to say, you can just pay us, and then we'll find that partner for you. Okay. And that's worked really good because they're working with people like Acres and other land holding organizations who uh are looking at it at a much longer time frame than we just need five acres here to meet this uh to meet this requirement, and then you know, it's just gonna go away after that. So it's been a good program.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

That's pretty exciting. It is from somebody who loves wetlands and trees. Thank you, Jason.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

You're quite welcome.

Lake RX Plans And Final Thanks

SPEAKER_00 37:39

So restoration of of spaces. And one of the things that that you're gonna be working on, that we're gonna be working on at the LA Center, restoration of wetlands.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Yeah, so with our uh new Lake RX uh direction, um, we've been doing a lot of the research, a lot of the education work, and the third area that we work in is in collaboration, like you were just talking about, Jason. And so we want to allocate even more of our resources in that area with prescriptions uh customized for certain lakes and implementing solutions with our partners. And one of those solutions we see a lot of benefit to is wetlands, both revitalizing existing wetlands that have maybe gotten saturated and uh sort of filled in with sediments and nutrients over time, maybe a lot of invasive species in those, and um start to move then uh towards a more natural wetland and creating new wetlands. Maybe they used to be there. We can see the history from the soil, like you were saying before. And we want to bring those wetlands back again because they're gonna be important for the critters we've been talking about, important for the water quality downstream for a lake or a stream, um, and um, and better for our communities as well. Because a lot of these times, and you've seen with a lot of your properties that are open to the public, these can be wonderful places for people to go and relax and be refreshed and see the um amazing diversity and design of nature is pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

Jason, we're so excited that you were here today to share this great news about the work that Acres is doing. Do you have any final words to wrap up our podcast today?

SPEAKER_02 39:27

No, I just appreciate the conversation. And these conversations are important because sometimes there's just these natural systems that we forget about. Like I said, forested wetlands. Who knew? Sometimes people don't know, and sometimes they're only there for a month and we just we're not out in the woods that month. So I appreciate what you guys do. Appreciate the opportunity to talk through this. And uh it's just again, like I said before, it's just such a collegial space to work in, and uh just appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Well, just make sure you share our podcast information with all your Acres fans.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

That sounds good.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

Jason, thanks again for joining us. Please stay tuned. We have a really exciting episode coming up now.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

There's a big announcement coming up.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

There's a big announcement. Yeah, with lots of this was an exciting episode, not to yes.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Yes, okay about Lake RX and lots of zeros.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

Oh my golly, it is really exciting. So stay tuned. Thanks for joining us today for the Lake Doctor podcast. The doctor is in