Ep. 77 - Studying Plants Where They Fight To Grow with Dr. Jordan Marshall

This week on Busted Knees and Pretty Trees, we’re throwing on the boots and heading straight into the undergrowth.
Dr. Jordan Marshall takes us beyond the classroom and into the field! We talk educating generations of biologists, the future of forests after disruptions, invasive pressures, and why understanding plants is critical to protecting the places we love to hike, camp, and explore! 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:10

Hello, welcome to Busted Knees and Pretty Trees, where we throw ourselves into the wilderness week after week, one way or another, and we always hope to inspire others to do the same. Thank you all for listening. I'm Travis White, and I only have one of the other two fellows here with me today because Brad is away spending all of his podcast money in Costa Rica.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

All of that money that we make, that Cheddar just took him all the way down to Costa Rica, the birding capital of the world, guys.

SPEAKER_04 0:40

Is it really?

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 0:42

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 0:43

So he's there's no chance anybody's gonna catch him in terms of his life birding list at this point.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Not not not anybody that he knows.

SPEAKER_04 0:54

Well, although Brad is not here, Patty and I have brought a guest with us. And uh I'm pretty excited because I think we're gonna have some of our questions answered by the experts that are out in the field.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

I was talking to Jordan before we started recording, and I I was looking through a lot of his journals, his scholarly writings. I I is that what yeah, they're scholarly writings. And it was uh quite impress impressive from the invasive species work after the Derecho to to some of the other things. Uh that it was just it was extremely impressive. So I am I am uh I am honored and humbled to have you on and to see your face in in real life.

SPEAKER_04 1:39

Well, you kind of spilled the beans there. Our guest today is a plant ecologist with specific interest in disturbance and invasion biology. He currently is a professor of biology at Purdue University Fort Wayne, and he has a class difficulty of 2.7 and a 74% of would take again on rate my professor. Please welcome Dr. Jordan Marshall. Hello.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Hi, guys. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Dude, thank you for staying on with us while we had those tactical difficulties earlier.

SPEAKER_04 2:17

This is take two, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

A 2.7 class difficulty. You say you don't give a hoot about that. I'm just I I to me, I feel like that's out of 2.5 that you got an extra point two rating there that you should just go ahead and hang that big ass hat at yourself.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah, like I said, I have no idea what the scale is for that rating. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

Yeah, and I was thinking it's like uh the people that are the maddest are the ones that are gonna go on there, and the people that just are just love you are gonna go on there and make sure. So you're not gonna get a balanced opinion.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

74% of uh of your class has chosen to take it over again or would take it over again. So I feel like that's that there's the number.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

I definitely have a lot of students that that'll take my first class and then stick around for the next one and take several of my classes during in the department.

SPEAKER_04 3:09

Awesome. Awesome. There were some good comments, but if you're not worried about it, I wouldn't worry about it. I was wondering, so you're kind of your your focus is more in plant and insect biology, especially around here in the north uh or in the Midwest. Spring's starting to really pop off. Is this exciting time of year for you?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Yeah, it's it's a it's fun because um the new stuff is coming out. Uh, I was just out on Monday for a short hike and got uh saw some uh Dutchman's breeches and blood root, and those are like kind of early spring ephemerals coming up in the Midwest. So it's always nice to see those because it means we're we're moving up in temperature, we're we're getting closer and closer to summer.

SPEAKER_04 3:55

Uh so when do you think would be the prime time for morels?

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Is that I have no idea because I don't I don't do any morel hunting. I I'm just not a morel guy.

SPEAKER_04 4:04

Me neither. Gosh darn it. For the birds. What are you talking about? I don't know. You're out doing what we talk about.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

What the fuck are you doing? Okay, that's true. That's true. It is very fun. You guys, everybody should morel hunt, but I I am with uh Jordan. I do not either.

SPEAKER_04 4:20

That's okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah, it's fine. Jordan, how long have you been uh teaching at the the college level, or did you start a little bit before that?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Or so I've been at Purdue Fort Wayne for 16 years now. I started in 2010. Um I came there after doing a postdoc in Michigan after my PhD. So I was in Michigan for three years after that. So um I taught a little bit when I was there because I I taught uh in my my supervisor's lab. I taught one of his classes. Um but in terms of full-time teaching, I came to PFW in 2010, and this has been my my place to be for teaching and research.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Did you choose that's awesome by the way? 16 years is fantastic. That's that's a great great. You're doing great. Obviously, you know that. But is there a did the university is that what started your kind of focus in the Midwest? Or did you have a focus in the Midwest that brought you to a university?

SPEAKER_01 5:21

I yeah, I grew up in southern Indiana. I grew up uh all over um from over near Crawfordsville down to Owensboro, Kentucky, and over to New Albany. So I've I've it's been southern Indiana most of my life, and then ended up at Ball State for my undergrad, and then uh Michigan Tech for my master's and then University of Tennessee for my PhD. And so it was just kind of one of those I just went north and south. I didn't go east-west at all in that kind of movement. Um, and then uh went back to Michigan for uh postdoc. And when I was applying for faculty jobs, it's one of those things that most of the time you don't get to choose where you go. It's it's kind of where is there an open position that fits with what you do? And so I was applying for stuff all over the country, and the position in Fort Wayne opened up and I applied, and it's it's where I felt like I fit the best in the interview process, and obviously they thought I felt I fit in well. Uh, so it just became a good fit, and and I just enjoy doing research in Indiana and Michigan. So uh, like I said, my master's, my postdoc was all in Michigan. So I I kind of have am happy to be in this this space because I have been able to keep going on on some research that I started many years ago.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Right.

SPEAKER_04 6:42

Yeah, and we've uh that's kind of been our focus over the podcast. It's just yeah, we love we do love our national parks, and we want people to explore those too. But if you want a little bit easier option, right outside your back door and here around Fort Wayne and Indiana and Michigan, there's just so many places to go, and now you can see beautiful things. And so, yeah, you're right down on our alley because that this is our stomping ground.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Do you enjoy like being a professor for 16 years? I imagine you spent quite a bit of time uh grading homework, preparing for class, that kind of stuff. But it also sounds like and looks like when I read your portfolio that you spend a lot of time in the field. Where is like, I guess what what would be the right question? Like, where do you prefer spending your time or where do you wish you could be spending more of your time?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

There was an ongoing joke with one of the other grad students when I was doing my master's is that we if we were in the office, we couldn't wait to get out in the field. And then when we're out in the field dealing with mosquitoes and the heat and mud and all that, we can't wait to get back into the office. So it's it's one of those things that's biologists. Yeah, exactly. It's one of those things too that like my research is nice in the way that um I have a set season that I can do my work, and it really is from spring to fall. And once we get into the winter, I can't do any of my research outside. So I have to do the indoor office stuff, write the papers, do the analyses, crunch the do all those things. Yeah, yeah. So it's it's it is nice in that sense that I can't just always do my research. I have a very limited window of time that I can do that work.

SPEAKER_04 8:34

Now, as a uh professor, do you have to constantly have some sort of research that you're into? So you stop one project, you start the next one, or right.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Yeah, it depends on on the university. But right now, I have at Purdue Floor Wayne, I have a uh 25% research release, meaning that 75% of my time is supposed to be on teaching and 25% can be on research. And so I should be doing things that produce products, so produce publications, presentations, those type of things in that time period. So the fact that I have that release frees me up to do uh the research stuff that I want to do uh without then also being overwhelmed with time on the teaching side. So it makes it balance things a little easier. Um if I was at a smaller institution, I would have much more teaching responsibility and not I would have no release for research. And if I was at a much bigger university, I'd have so much research uh expectations that uh I would be overwhelmed with that. So I think that's that's the nice thing about a school like PFW is that it's it's it's balanced between those those two extremes.

SPEAKER_04 9:50

And you're it seems like your research is kind of time sensitive because it's our invasive species and um what you call disturbances. Um I read about the Duracio that we had that just a huge wind gust that just tears everything down. But what are some other uh disturbances that you that would be along with that?

SPEAKER_01 10:13

The the classic example of a disturbance usually when when talking about um this type of ecology is is fire. So fires burn through and really a disturbance, all a disturbance is yeah, it's an event that has a start and a finish. It's got an area that it covers, and so there's an area that was impacted by the disturbance, there's an area unimpacted, there's a time before, time after, those type of things. And it's just a change in the plant community and structure. So, what is the physical manifestation of the plants? And when a disturbance comes through, it alters that in some way. So the Doratio that hit Fort Wayne uh uh uh 40 years ago uh was a big disturbance, especially at some of the local nature preserves, uh that took out a lot of trees. Oh gosh, that worms yeah. Fire is also yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's there's that, and then um, I mean, some of our local land trusts will will burn um parts of their property to promote the plant growth by removing some of that, and so that's a disturbance. Um, if we go in and cut down trees, um that's a disturbance. Um, even a single tree dies in the forest, it's a very localized disturbance, but it still is a disturbance. It's changed the structure and the composition of the forest in some way, and it may just be one tree falling out of the canopy, but it's still a disturbance because it alters that structure.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Well, I want to get into a hell of a lot more uh because I got a follow-up for that one. We'll take a break and uh we'll come right back to it with Dr. Jordan Marshall. Sounds good, Patty. All right, all right, we're back with Dr. Jordan Marshall or Jordan, as he'd like to be called for today. Uh, you were getting into Derechos, and uh uh when I was uh learning a little bit about that and what you did, I think our listeners would be mightily impressed. So could you just just explain what a Derecho is and then kind of where you come into the fold at the end there?

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah, so I mean, really a Dorecho is just a rain and wind event that has both um a high amount of rain, but also hurricane force winds. Uh so uh when the derecho came through Fort Wayne uh out at the airport, they measured uh almost 98, 99 miles an hour winds. Uh so there were some really big gusts that blew through. And the interesting thing about derecho's is we've had them in the Midwest for forever. Uh there was one in Fort Wayne just a few years ago. There was another one uh in 2012. I remember I don't know if you if you guys were here when the power went out, and basically the whole city just had no power for several uh couple days because that was another Duracio that came through. So whenever um one of those storms hits, there's gonna be some sort of change to the plant community. And so I've established a long-term project with a collaborator here at Purdue Fort Wayne, uh Scott Burgess, and he does mostly animals, and we've we've decided to just start monitoring and see how does such a big storm alter the forest as it moves through time, and how do wildlife respond to it, how the trees respond to it.

SPEAKER_04 13:50

I've always wondered like what are the animals and bugs and what are they doing when this is hell is breaking loose?

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Yeah, yeah. I I it's one of those things that it would be amazing to have been at Fox Island when the storm hit. But it would also be absolutely terrifying to have been in there because it just would have been trees breaking all around you as those winds blew through.

SPEAKER_04 14:11

That story stick or that event sticks in my mind because when it happened, I was out on the family farm, and we you could kind of see across the field, and there was nothing planted, and it was just dirt, and you could just see that wave of dirt just coming far off in the distance, and then you're just like, Whoa, that thing's kind of coming faster. And then my dad's like, Go shut the garage door, and he jumps in his truck, and I just barely got that garage door shut and it just boom hit it. Yeah. Uh it was scary.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Yeah, and I had a I had a student doing a project, started her project out at Fox Island before the storm, and then she wasn't out there when it happened, obviously, but uh we had to completely because the park closed, we had to completely redesign a new project for her thesis because there was just no way we could get in there.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

It was so a major kink into that project.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Yeah, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

They still, I mean, I I was just out there not that long ago, and they're it's it got demolished.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yeah, there was, I mean, there were thousands of trees that went down, and then because of so much damage, there's a real cost to cleaning up and getting the park back open. Yeah, and so the county didn't really have the the amount of money necessary to do that because it's a county park, and that's why they did the harvest. They went in and did a salvage harvest after the storm to sell trees to basically have the money to do the management needed to clear trails to open the park, make it safe again so people could come in and actually experience uh the the park.

SPEAKER_04 15:53

So, what was the reason uh you believe that it that got hit so hard? Is it just the soil or is it the just the way it hit there?

SPEAKER_01 16:03

It's just I think it's just the the random nature of weather. Um, like I said, Fort Wayne's been hit with Derechos before, um, and it just happened that that uh blew down. Uh one of the interesting things I think uh because I I do a lot of talks with about Fox Island because it was such a big event and trying to remind people that it was a forest, it got hit, but it's still a forest, and then it's gonna be a forest forever. Um, but one of the interesting things is if you look at the aerial photos from the 1930s, not the entire property was forested, a lot of it was pasture. And if you draw a boundary around what was forest in the 1930s, when the storm came through, the boundaries of where trees fell kind of matched those forest boundaries from before. So the parts that really got hit were actually younger parts of the forest. And some of the older sections didn't get hit as hard just because it could just be the trees were bigger, um, it could be some of the soil characteristics, it could be just about anything that that really altered how those trees fell.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

And I um that kind of would put a thought in that this has happened plenty of times before, to your point, throughout millennia. And if that is the case, then what is left before they replanted and did what they did, uh that is just what's has withstood the test of time and all the Derechos prior. Like why that form withstood everything.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Yeah, and you have to keep in mind that that none of that is stagnant, it's always changing. Right. So what we see in the 1930 aerial photos obviously changed to what we saw in spring of of 2022 before the storm, yeah. And what we see now has changed, and what's gonna we're gonna see in another 60 years is gonna be different, and so it always is kind of moving forward through time in a way that it's not going to ever stay the same. And so to to what you said, yeah, yeah, there's stuff that that was there probably from previous storms, but there's also been turnover, there's been gaps opening up. Uh the project we were working on before the storm was looking at um how the mid-story shrubs were kind of colonizing and where they were at, and how that was kind of affecting the future forest because it always is moving through time, and so the seedlings that are coming up out of the seeds, out of the soil, that's gonna be the forest in 60, 70 years. So are and we were just kind of looking at how the shrubs were were interacting with that.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Are you still out there doing research like from that Derecho? Because we've had a few guests on what I've what I've kind of come to realize is that your guys' projects and the science that goes on behind the scenes, that's not like a finite thing. It's not we're gonna start and then we're gonna end within a short amount of time. Science takes years to conclude. So I imagine that are so I guess my question is just are you still out there? And then what have is there benefits of this to Ratio coming through?

SPEAKER_04 19:22

That's what I always wonder. Like conclusions. Where there's always a silver lining, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

It's to me, I think the the silver lining is the reset, the ability for the forest to take that hit, even us coming in and cutting down trees as humans, removing stuff, it takes the hit, but it's going to be resilient enough to continue. So I always argue that there's ecological inertia within forests, especially in the Midwest, where we can do a lot of stuff that maybe breaks some parts of it, but it still wants to be a forest.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Fox Island after the storm still wants to be a forest. Um, bringing up the the that they did go in and plant some seedlings everywhere that I was in the park where I found seedlings that they had planted because they had little tags on them. I also saw native trees that were established already waiting for their chance to move up uh into the the canopy. And now that there was this big gap open because the storm opened things up, now they can get released and we get this kind of turnover of the forest moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

So that's awesome. I feel like that's the that's life just no matter what what happens, life just keeps on going in every which way, and that is uh that's brilliant.

SPEAKER_04 20:42

And it's sort of the same thing with uh forest fire, natural ones where they you know they burn up all the leaves so the underbrush can thrive.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Exactly. And so, yeah, so local nature preserves they they do burn uh certain areas of their properties for that reason to basically burn off the litter layer so that the un the seeds that are just sitting and waiting in the soil have some of the move.

SPEAKER_04 21:08

Trevor Edmondson from Kankakee Sands at the Nature Conservancy on the podcast, and he was telling us about uh controlled burns and stuff like that out there.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

We were talking off air, Jordan and I were about Eagle Marsh, how they burned quite a substantial portion of the front end of the park, or I guess the east end, which which it would be the main park. And what I I just because I'm sure you've looked into it plenty of times, what is the turnaround? I'm a birder. I my uh the other co-host that I have and I we've got really big into birding in the last few years. And uh yeah. What a now that they've burned it and it just it looks like it it looks, what's the turnaround time there from when we start seeing the species come back, both flora and front?

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Immediate. I I mean you you'll I bet if you go about back out there this this week, next week, you'll start seeing green popping up. And there'll be uh an immediate carpet over the next uh month or so of green just coming up because there's there's millions of seeds that are out there that were just waiting in the soil. Waiting for that release. Yep, waiting for that release. And then the temperature. There are some species that respond just to smoke. There's some that that respond to the temperature change that responds to. Because it's now a black surface, so it heats up more, and that's the signal. Or they may get exposed to sunlight, and that's the signal. But there's there's a lot of different responses, and it'll just be a green carpet immediately. Um, and most of the the songbirds they don't really care, they'll be back. Um there's enough other stuff going on around there that they're they're not gone for very long.

SPEAKER_04 23:03

Yeah, yeah. Sweet. We've had a guest, our friend Andrew Birch, yeah. Kemp, he he started the Detroit Arboretum or Arboretum Detroit, where he he buys up vacant lots in the old neighborhoods, and he just starts planting trees and makes parks, and we went and visited him. And right when you said uh it wants to be a forest, I thought that made me think about that. Like those vacant lots want to be forests. And the bad is coming, and the animals are coming.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Yeah, and if you drive through anywhere in the Midwest, you find an old field that's no longer in row crop agriculture. The first thing that's gonna start coming in are red cedars, and you'll just get a smathering of red cedars in there, and that just starts this shrub layer that's going to eventually build up into an actual forest. It's gonna take decades, but it's a short period of time in the life of a tree. It's it's our lifetime, and and I think sometimes we forget about the stuff that happened before we were born and the stuff that's gonna happen after we die when it comes to a forest, because it's it's just we're just a blip in the life of that forest and the time that it exists.

SPEAKER_04 24:21

You you you mentioned time a lot, and I noticed that you uh you mentioned one of your interests is uh is it geo geobiology or uh uh biogeography. Biogeography, yeah. I mean, I could think of a sense of how it is, but I I would like for you to explain it so I don't sound like an idiot.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

So biogeography is just understanding where species occur and kind of trying to understand why they're in certain areas. Um, and so I do a fair bit of research up in Michigan and um Pictured Rocks, National Lakeshore. And there are some Yeah, there's some very specialized plants within the sand dunes that are only going to be found there, but then there's a lot of plants that are found in lots of other places around there and still are in the dunes. And so it's just kind of trying to understand the spatial distribution of species and why they're where they are. Um, and then also kind of tied to that is is the idea of succession and adding time into that. So we have why are they there in this geographic area, but then why are they there in this time frame?

SPEAKER_04 25:37

What did I say? Biogeology? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Is that even a a field of the city? Yeah, there's there's there's there's geobiology, I'm sure. Man. A little bit more focused on the the the geology side of the.

SPEAKER_04 25:51

I was thinking you were you were talking about time, like just the the turnover of forest and land and water and all this stuff over time. It's and Travis's rock.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

He's he's more specifically talking about the rocks underneath the plants.

SPEAKER_04 26:07

These guys are burgers. I'm love a rock.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Let me take a step back though, really quick, because I I do just I am curious as to kind of what pulled you into this uh this space. Uh and I don't think one thing we haven't really mentioned is that you're not just into plant biology or invasive plant biology, you're also into invasive insect biology. And I I guess just where what first got you into this, in into the space? Was there like a moment as a kid in the outdoors? Uh, because I've certainly had these thoughts before as I'm walking down the trail. I'm thinking, man, that tree is there. What's why is it there? And you know, it bent over a little bit, but still ain't deaf. All those questions I had, but never jumped into the space that you're in. So I guess that was just, yeah. What what what first pulled you into it?

SPEAKER_01 27:01

So there's there's the the family lore uh stories that that I think we all have about where where we got, how we got to where we are. And the the one story that my parents always like to tell is the fact that in elementary school, when I was in like first or second grade playing soccer, I spent more time watching the bumblebees on the little clovers in the field than actually playing soccer. Um, and so that was kind of like maybe there's something there. And then uh when I got to high school, uh, I took an honors biology class, uh, mainly because we got to dissect a shark. Oh, and I was like, That sounded like the greatest thing. And so I did absolutely poor, failed almost every animal part of the class. But as soon as we switched to plants, I aced everything. And so I that was uh that other kind of like, oh, maybe there's something there. Um, and then like I said, I I went to Ball State and at Ball State I I kind of moved into environmental and natural resources area, and I got a job working for the biology department on the properties that Ball State owns doing um invasive species management, and that really set me off. And that was it was kind of like I had this stuff building, but as an undergrad, getting that experience to do that kind of work was what really set me over the edge and pushed me towards um a career this direction.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Brad. Do you that it I just so it just kind of seemed like from a young child everything just kind of landed in a place where you kind of just kept getting pushed and pushed closer to, and then now you're at ball state, you learn about invasive species, you dive into that world, and now that's now you're a professor for 16 years at PFW.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Yeah. And so when I after when I was when I was at Ball State, I did my internship uh through the Student Conservation Association at Isle Royal National Park. Oh and so I spent uh I spent a whole summer there, and that was where I learned about Michigan Tech because they had research vehicles there that had boats with a Michigan Tech logo. And so I learned about this university, and then that's where I was like, I gotta apply to this school for my master's.

SPEAKER_04 29:24

We want to get to Isle Royale without just bending over backwards.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Yeah, I think that's the the special thing about Isle Royal is that you have to bend over backwards to get there. Um it's not like you can just like drive up and go. Like you have to really plan out how you're gonna get there.

SPEAKER_04 29:45

That makes it harder.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

The seaplane is gonna be the fastest, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:47

Yeah, does that make it harder to get to get up there though? You could probably get more more boat options, right? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Uh so there, yeah, there's there's several different boats that go out of uh Houghton and out of Copper Harbor, and then the ho the boat that goes out of Duluth. Yeah, um, but the seaplane out of Houghton is probably is the fastest. I mean you it's an hour flight, and you're so is it worth it? Yeah. I I I haven't been back. I haven't been back in 25 years, but I have some great memories of being out there of moose running up the river uh up the ridge and scaring the the bejesus out of me and my hiking partner, and we're just like all of a sudden this moose comes crashing through the forest and it scared us to to death. And uh and hearing wolves just in the middle of the night, just calling um and northern lights that are so intense that you can't even imagine what it looks like up there. So yeah, if you get a chance, I highly recommend going.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

Do you do you do any uh any backpacking? Any hiking? Backpacking?

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Mostly hiking. I I've done a little bit of backpacking, but nothing really long distance or anything like that. But um, but yeah, I I'm always ready to go on a on a day hike or even just an hour hike doing something um locally because I'd I just rather go do that than um a lot of other things.

SPEAKER_04 31:12

Yeah, well that kind of leads me to the your one question, Patty, where for someone who walks into a forest or the dunes and just sees a bunch of trees or sandpiles, you know, what what are they actually missing? What are you and what are you seeing when you walk in there? Yeah, I think every Patrick and I were talking earlier, and I think everybody sees something different when they walk into the forest.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, the idiom failing to see the forest for the trees exists for a reason. And it's because you can get focused on what is creating that physical structure. So the trees are the big things there, they're creating the shade, they're doing everything, they're actually altering the temperature because of that and changing what can live there. But the forest exists beyond just the trees. The fungi in the soil, the bacteria in the soil are basically creating a soil environment that allows the plants to grow. The wildlife are involved with just uh dispersing seeds and moving the plants around that way. Uh, if we go in and cut down some trees or a tree falls down in the wind, it doesn't stop being a forest. It just has changed its status, changed its state. And like I said, I'm a firm believer that there is ecological inertia. So I argue that Fox Island, where that big storm hit, it's and they cut down a bunch of trees, it's still a forest. It's a different forest than what we see, but it's still a forest, even though the trees may be small or they may be gone, they're gonna come back. And so the layering of shrubs and wildflowers, the canopy above, the songbirds, the raptors, the um the small mammals running through and scurrying through the forest, and white-tailed deer, and all that are all part of the forest because it's it's so much interconnected interactions that create the existence of all of these plants together and animals together to create a forest.

SPEAKER_04 33:15

Yeah. Man, the the complexity of it is just on this podcast, go down these rabbits, just any rabbit hole, and there are an infinite number of them. So we'll have plenty of podcasting to do.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

I uh I just spent some time down in South Carolina and spent a day at Congaree National Park. And they're big, you know, the reason they're a park is because of the old cypress trees and the the lob lolly pine. That's what I saw a lot of. But that's what really got me excited while I was down there. I was thinking about this interview and got me excited because it seemed like our family was talking as we were leaving. Like, if you're into trees, if you will, that place has got to be exciting for somebody in that area. Where I was going to take pictures of birds and go just on a normal hike for a day. I could just imagine, like, I imagine going hiking with Jordan is like going backpacking with you guys. Like it just like every because if you're so aware like Jordan is, oh, we wouldn't get anywhere.

SPEAKER_04 34:22

Yeah, you have to be like, what's that?

SPEAKER_00 34:24

All right, Jordan, let's get let's get going. We gotta make it to camp. I know we'll talk about it later. Take a photo for Christ's sake. But I uh that's gotta be like so exciting, too. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Yeah, and and it's like every place is different. So even though we may think like we're in northeast Indiana and it's flat and everything's the same, you go into Fox Island, you're gonna see something different. You go to Fogwell, which is nature preserved just a couple miles down the road, and it's gonna have a very different forest because it has a completely different um slope to the soil, which means then everything else is different. And so it's one of those things that that even though we may think that our area of the Midwest is is non-descript, it's nothing exciting, there's always something different because again, it changes, um, they're all different, they're all at different stages because there's a lot of forests around us that are in kind of secondary growth because they they were cut down at one point and they're coming back. And you can you can really see those because you go in, you can see straight through all the way to the edge of the forest. Yeah, you're on the trail and there's nothing blocking your view, there's just tall trees, and that's just in a stage where the the mid-story is just not there yet. But as the trees start to age and gaps start to open, then you're gonna get shrubs coming in, and just being able to see that happen as it progresses through time is I think what is the most exciting thing about it is because it's gonna keep going, and it's uh reassuring that in whatever 30 years or so, 40 years, when I die, that forest is still gonna keep going.

SPEAKER_04 36:06

Yeah, yeah. You uh mentioned just like you don't have to go far away to see two different kinds of forest. And Patrick and I just did a Manistee River hike uh this last fall. And on this side of you know, the hill, it's just it's all one kind of tree. And then on this side, right the trail splits in both two, and it's just I'm guessing because it's on the cool side of the the mountain or the hill.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

And yeah, yeah, it's just a matter of moisture and temperature and where the seeds could fall and all that. Yeah, there's a there's a lot of interactions there.

SPEAKER_04 36:45

It's black and white, like they do not grow beyond this point. Yeah, it was pretty cool to s to notice that.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

Just keeping in the backpacking realm or the hiking realm because that is kind of where where we lie. Uh what's something let's say like let's say I'm going down to Fox Island or I'm going to Salamony? I'm sure you've been to Salamony and going backpacking down there or up to um Bokhagan. What just what's something that like I might miss right on the trail that you just you're enthralled by, that you're enthused by, that excites you?

SPEAKER_01 37:21

This was a tough question to answer. As I was reading through the questions, I'm like, I don't how do I it's it's a tough one to identify what you might miss? Yeah. I I think uh it's always interesting to see what um what the next little wildflower is. Um there's so so many that are not even that showy, they're just little bitty white flowers, and you're just like, oh, that's something neat.

SPEAKER_04 37:48

Wasn't there some news about some recently that was it's been several years and they just bloomed this year?

SPEAKER_00 37:55

That was down in Nevada or at Death Valley. Oh, Death Valley.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

That would make sense that there's a there's probably a water trigger, and then you all of a sudden you get these these flowers. Um, but here, yeah, it's just that and and the next little mushroom that you see, because with mushrooms, the what you see above the ground is just the fruiting body. There's this giant mat of fungus underground into every log that that's going through it. So I think I think those little things that that you do sometimes stop to look down at, um, those are the things I like to stop and take a picture of and see behind that.

SPEAKER_04 38:31

That pops a question for me. During the winter time here in the Midwest, does all the the fungus that was alive die and then the spores take over? Or how does that work?

SPEAKER_01 38:44

No, the so the mycelium is the the part that's growing underground and into the logs. It survives through the winter and then just continues growing, and then it would pop up a mushroom as a as the fruiting body. So the morels, they're not actually mushrooms, but they're the fruiting body for that fungus. And that's just that's the spread. Yeah, so they can germinate and kind of grow. So they they're they act almost like seeds, like you would get a new plant growing from a seed, you get new fungus growing from a spore.

SPEAKER_04 39:13

A morel mushroom is not a mushroom?

unknown 39:15

No.

SPEAKER_04 39:15

No, it's a fruiting.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

Well, it's not even yeah, it's not even a mushroom species. Is it an animal? No, it's a fungus. Of the morel fungus. Of the morel fungus. Yeah. But it's not a mushroom.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

That's why we're talking to Jordan. Is that because of the shape?

SPEAKER_01 39:36

It's the shape, it's how spores are produced, it's like where they're at. This is so like a lot of mushrooms will be have gills underneath that that's where the spores are.

SPEAKER_04 39:48

Yeah, no, you didn't. Poor morels. I'm gonna stop hunting them.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Yeah, he's good. They're not even mushrooms. That's why Jordan doesn't hunt them. Stop morel hunting. Okay, so I have one more question, but I do kind of want to revise this back to the invasive species and kind of just do after the disruptions. But if I were to go hit the trail tomorrow, uh, and I do I do just want to use Eagle Marsh as an example because I go there, I mean, I'm probably there three, four times a week for the last two years, most likely. And so, and they have just had a dis a large disruption right there where I generally park and walk in out on the east side. So, as I'm walking through there, kind of what are three signs uh that you would be looking for to know that there is a healthy ecosystem coming back in that area?

SPEAKER_01 40:44

So um the difficult thing about that question is snapshots and time are they're they're really difficult to interpret as to what the next thing is. So being able to see it change and see it being able to respond to disturbance, that's gonna be a better picture of a healthy ecosystem, is one that's able to respond and continue. If it just kind of starts to fall apart and doesn't kind of do ecosystem things, then that's that's a good sign that there's something wrong. But because of the fact that they're not stagnant and they're out, they are constantly changing, uh, a grassland, a wetland, a forest, whatever, it's it's really hard to gauge health by just a snapshot picture. It takes a lot of time to kind of observe what are the changes happening. And you can do that. There are ways to kind of get an idea of what the past was and what the future is. Uh, some of my research looking at future forest, I'm looking down at the seedlings and looking at okay, what are the trees that are currently sitting and waiting? And then when a gap opens up, what's going to be the tree that moves in? That's gonna give an idea of what what the change potentially could be.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

Can you um you said you can kind of look into the future a little bit, but so can you prior to a control burn, something along those lines, could you could you kind of get a decent guess or an estimation as to what the future state of that forest would look like prior to a disruption?

SPEAKER_01 42:23

It uh it depends on what that uh disturbance is, but yeah, I I think you can you can look at what plants are there um now to gauge what the future is going to be. Um that's one of the the big areas of of succession and understanding successional change in an ecosystem. Is we have a good idea of what we can predict. It's not perfect, um, it's not as good as we used to think it was, but we can make predictions about what the future is going to be and what could potentially move in because of our understanding of the type of soil and where we're at geographically and all those things. So so there is some prediction to that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:05

How does that bud up with conservation effort, with allowing change or change that might seem could look destructive in some ways?

SPEAKER_01 43:16

So you have to think about if we if we really dig down into the definitions of things, um, preservation is where you're trying to keep it from being influenced by people, and conservation is where we're trying to use it in some way and still maintain the use for the future. So most of conservation, especially through most of the 1900s, was hunting and fishing. The hunters and fishermen wanted to be able to continue using that resource, so managing it in a way that that allows for the disturbances, creating disturbances, altering the ecosystem so that the wildlife are there, the fish are there, whatever they're wanting to use. But I think some. Sometimes we get caught in when we really think about, okay, we've got a nature preserve that we want to make sure we protect. And sometimes we forget that it's going to change. It wants to move forward. There's going to be natural disturbances that we can't even control. But those changes are necessary for it to be what we want it to be. So trying to keep it held in place and not allowing the change is how we end up with this will be a kind of controversial uh statement, but the reason why we have the giant fires out west is because we spent a hundred years stopping every single little fire. And so by not allowing those changes, not allowing those disturbances to occur, basically we ended up creating ladders that can now burn up into the canopy, and we get these massive crown fires that kill everything, sterilize the soil. And then it's really difficult for that to be. Yeah. So I I that's that's one of the things whenever I do a presentation or I talk with the public is reminding them that those things are supposed to happen. We're supposed to have these storms that do take out trees and reset stuff in the forest, and we can then watch that change um come through as uh as observers of this kind of natural system.

SPEAKER_00 45:31

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:32

We need more people to go back and re-watch Lion King.

SPEAKER_00 45:35

Yeah, the circle, I every this whole episode so far. I just keep singing that circle of life song. I I wasn't gonna bring it up because I don't want to sound like a giant turd.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

But it's the circle of life. My I think my my better the way I think about it more is the um Jurassic Park uh when um it's life finds a way. And I was just teaching last uh Thursday I was teaching and we were talking about um uh uh sex switching in fish as kind of this response to how if there's no males, there needs to be a male in the fish chain. And I pop up the meme of of of Malcolm saying life uh finds a way.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

You son of a bitch. You actually did it. That's the other quote. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 46:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

So I guess where my mind is going right now is just to the invasive species side of this. We know we've done a couple episodes on other invasive species.

SPEAKER_04 46:40

Can we talk a little bit about the uh the insects that have gotten to the ash population of trees? Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Yeah. So emerald ash borer, yeah, was introduced from from Asia accidentally um and into kind of metro Detroit area. Um and has the Great Lakes. Uh it came probably in uh uh pallets as packing material from uh shipping machine parts and like engines and like other things, big large machinery uh on pallets. They ship the pallets, it was cut down ash trees, and then the beetles emerged from that. Um and so uh it's it's a it's a crazy situation that if you really dig down into why we lost so many trees, you have to like go back to why did we plant so many ash trees? And if you go back post-World War II, we had this massive suburban uh boom that happened when soldiers came back. We got this mush, this push to move out of the cities into the sur into suburbia, and we've got all of these neighborhoods being built with really compacted soil, which acts like wetland soils because it has really low oxygen. So we got to plant trees that look nice that are wetland trees, and so we planted thousands of elm trees because elm trees have a really nice round crown, they do well in wetland soils, and so they were the perfect tree to plant in here. Is it more like a clay then the soil? Yeah, yeah, it's it's not so much that it's clay, it's just that it's really compacted. Okay, so to build a suburban neighborhood really quickly, yeah, you grade everything out, you pack it down, you build a house, and now there's no trees at all. And so you want to plant trees, and so you end up planting wetland trees, which are elms. And then we have a wave of Dutch elm disease that comes through and wipes out all the elm trees. We need to plant a tree really quickly because now we have all these suburban homes and urban homes that now no longer have these elm trees, and so we plant ash. White and green ash do really well in wetland soils, those really compacted street tree environments, because they're adapted to wet wetter soils, low oxygen, they grow pretty quickly, they have a decent shape that people like. So we then replaced thousands of elm trees that died with thousands of ash trees. Okay, and then emerald ash bore shows up in the mid-90s and starts spreading before we even know it is there. We didn't know it was there until the early 2000s. So it had like seven or eight years. Seven or eight years, yeah, that that we didn't even know it existed here. And then it's moving very quickly because all these trees are stressed, they're close together, they're at that large size that the beetle needs. They just became the perfect host. And so as it spread from Detroit out, all of the major cities then just got hammered because the ash trees were perfect hosts for the beetle.

SPEAKER_00 49:53

Yeah. So what do you do? Like, what's the you ring the siren or you you press the red button? Holy shit, there's there's the ash bore, it's destroying everything, or holy shit, there's a zebra mussel, or whatever it might be. What what where do you kind of like where do you come in? What's the what's the play here?

SPEAKER_01 50:13

So a lot of my research is trying to understand um what the real impacts are. So if we have a new species gets introduced, we don't usually know much about it because as I tell my students, we know a lot about a few species, but we don't know much about a lot of species because we just don't know. We don't care, we don't look at it. Um we really pay attention to those threatened and endangered species, and we know a lot about them. But when it comes to an everyday wildflower, we may not know basic information about that species. And so I try a lot of my research in invasion biology is more looking at what are the real impacts? Um, what can we actually measure as a change to insect community, plant community? Um, is it really as bad as we think it is? Is this species moving in gonna cause the problems we assume? Um, because our assumption oftentimes is this is the worst thing ever, it's gonna destroy everything. But what happened with the ash and emerald ash borer is a rare occurrence. Yeah, we have examples like Dutch Elm disease and um beech bark disease and emerald ash borer, and now spotted lantern fly, where we we can say, well, look at all these big things that happened, but that's a really small number of species that get introduced are actually causing that big change.

SPEAKER_04 51:39

What made it different? Was it that they could just populate so quickly, or in the tree? I think it was so big.

SPEAKER_01 51:47

Yeah, it was a combination of suitable habitat, so trees that were of the right size, um, in dense populations of trees. Uh ash is a really common um genus in lots of forests in the Midwest. So I think something like 40 different forest types have some sort of ash component. Um, where ash may not be the the actual forest defining species, but it's part of a lot of different forests because it's green ash and white ash and even black ash are are pretty hardy trees that have wide ranges geographically but also environmentally.

SPEAKER_04 52:25

Was it widely harvested wood?

SPEAKER_01 52:29

Yeah, I mean it's used in uh so one of the the stories I like to tell is so when I was in Michigan for my postdoc, I worked in a USDA lab. Um, and in that lab was the main communications person for basically trying that uh uh don't move firewood movement uh in the campaign where all the billboards and bumper stickers and stuff. And she was trying really hard to get major league baseball involved, and they would be like, no, we're not involved, no, we're not gonna be involved with advertising or any of this, until there were ash forests in Pennsylvania that started getting attacked. And then Louisville Slugger was like, those are our forests that are getting attacked in Pennsylvania. Now Major League Baseball wants to be involved. And it's kind of one of those things that that um We need your help now. We need your help now, yeah. And that's what a lot of it is is um unless you have some invested interest, it's really hard to get people interested and really wanting to be involved and trying to stop those things. So that going back to the question, yeah, my research oftentimes is what really is the problem? What is it causing? What changes is it causing? With Emerald Ashbore, it was a really big, obvious change. Um, some of my other research, it's not as big and obvious, it's not this massive change, but there's enough happening that we might want to keep an eye on it. And I've been doing some work with uh white snake root, which is a native plant here in Indiana that's really common. We don't know a whole lot about it, but in Korea, it's an invasive species because it got picked up somehow and moved and ended up being um moved there. So it's it's one of those things that we didn't really pay attention to it. We didn't know much about it until it started causing a problem, and now we want to know more about it.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

It's amazing how fast action happens when problems start knocking on somebody's back door. That seems to kind of be like a a recurring trend of nobody really gives a shit until it's right there, and then sometimes it's too late, they weren't listening, and now it's now it's really causing a major effect. What I do hear you kind of alluding to is that some of the invasive species, although most of the public, or if not some of the public, know those larger names, the ash bor, the zebra mussels, like what I've alluded to, that some of those invasive species are not near as detrimental to the ecology to our surrounding areas. But so we tend to think of invasive species as kind of like the villains of the natural world, that they come in, they just destroy everything. Is that like too harsh of a way to think about invasive species? Because then I guess the more I started learning a little bit about this, there are a lot of species of a lot of different animals and insects. Sorry. Sorry. In in this country where they like we now know them as just like a normal species, they're not invited they're not destroying anything. But you know, so is it fair to call an invasive species the villain of the natural world, or can we kind of timid down there depending on the actual issue?

SPEAKER_01 55:55

Yeah, and uh there are a couple of of terms that I like to use. Um, and thinking about this idea of what's really the problem that we're dealing with, um, is that we have non-native species, so things that evolved elsewhere, that we like. We pick them up, we move them around, they look pretty, um, they smell nice. There are some that look pretty and don't smell nice, uh, but we move them around because we like what we see. Not every one of those is going to cause a problem. And so then the the next step up from that is the invasive, where there's some sort of ecological change, there's some sort of economic change, and it's one of those things we can't separate economics because it's a human-created construct. And so because it's involving us, economics plays a role in that. Um, and so yes, sometimes it's easy to say, well, if you see spotted lantern fly, squish it because it's bad. Yeah, and and use that as a way to get people to realize that, oh, maybe picking up things and moving. The the burning text thread. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a billboard, it's it's everywhere, and that idea. But um in reality, if you really think about it, all those species are trying to do is survive and reproduce. They're trying to do their job as a living organism, which is continue the population. And it just happens that what that change is, what that um interaction is, maybe counter to the survival of something that should be there because that's where it evolved. And um, so that project that was at Fox Island that my student was working on, what we ended up finding was that actually before the Doratio, there was honeysuckle everywhere in Fox Island. It's an invasive shrub that that just takes over that mid layer of the forest. But what we found were that the tree seedlings underneath there were no different in the areas with honeysuckle versus the areas with spice bush versus the areas with neither shrub. And so we have this idea that that honeysuckle is this villain, it is this bad thing in the forest. It looks kind of ugly because we don't want it there, but how much is it really changing the ecosystem? How much is it really changing and altering um what's supposed to be happening there? And that's that's a really tough question to answer because there's so many interactions that um we don't know for sure what the real impacts are. And so my my master's research was looking at spotted knapweed, which is a uh common invasive species out west, but then I was also in Michigan, especially in sandy soils. Um my PhD research was on Japanese stiltgrass, which is another just an invasive species in forests, um, that we don't know a lot about the basic biology and what it really is doing. We jump to that, it's bad, we need to control it. But how much time do we really need to put into that control? Um, because there may be something over here in a threatened and endangered species we should be spending more time on trying to protect and and get its numbers up. So it's it's a tough, it's a tough, um, a tough question to answer. Are they villains? It's like, well, no, not really, because biologically they're not. But should they be there? Probably not, because we're we we brought them there. But then that brings up the whole philosophy of are we as humans separate from the environment or are we part of the environment?

SPEAKER_00 59:47

Yeah, and if we're part of the yeah, I wonder how often we look at ourselves as invasive species.

SPEAKER_01 59:52

Is that just plowing down forests just right? Yeah. I mean, but if you look at beaver, that's what a beaver is gonna do. It's gonna create a pond, it's gonna feed, it's gonna do that kind of manipulation of the environment.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:04

We tend to leave pavement in dry dirt.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

Yeah, but the thing is, uh there was a there was definitely a a a lot of early 2000s documentaries of kind of like what's gonna happen when humans are gone and what's the how the city's gonna recover and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:23

And the idea is that once we're gone, it's there's the inertia, it's gonna go back to what it wants to be. It wants to be a bad thing, it's gonna just go away. I mean, yeah, we have pavement, but it stays pavement because we maintain it. Your yard stays turf grass because we maintain it to do that. As soon as we stop, stuff's gonna move in and take over and be what it wants to be.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:44

Yeah, tell me about it. My freaking driveway. Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:48

Do you work with uh a lot of like other regional or local conservation groups as you're doing your projects?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:56

I I do a lot of work with Acres Land Trust. Oh, yeah. Um, I do some work with uh Little River Wetlands Project. Um and then I also a lot of my student research does happen in Acres Land Trust properties. So we do I have a really good relationship with them. I'm on their board of directors and on the stewardship committee. So I I I have a lot of interaction with with folks there. I've got former students that that work there, and so it's it's a a really good relationship I have with Acres that allows me to have uh basically a bunch of labs for my students and places I can just do a project if I want to do some research and try and answer a question about what the next forest is gonna be.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:37

Did Akres answer our email? No, they didn't answer our emails. No, we have a couple of things.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:44

Gotcha, Akers. Gotcha. Uh is farmland considered a disruption?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:49

Oh, yeah. So it's completely changed what it was. Right. So 85% or so of Indiana would have been forest before European settlement. And so we basically, um, over the matter of 70 years from 1800 to 1870, we cut down um most of the forests. They were cutting at like 705 acres a day uh of forest during that 70-year period. Wow. Um and converting it to agriculture. I mean, I if you look at the state seal, that's what it's a picture of. There's a buffalo running or a bison running through, there's a guy cutting down a tree, there's a field behind him. It's all about what we did in this state was converted forest to farmland basically.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:32

I grew up on a family farm in northern Wells County. I know with that patchwork of flat farmland.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

Yeah, you know, and it's interesting that our our forests now are these little pockets in northeast Indiana. Um, I had a student a few years ago looking at trying to understand how big that need to be. Um, and what we found was that that even in the small little woodlot on somebody's property, um, there's still things happening. There's regeneration happening. The truth the forest is doing forest things even in that matrix of agriculture surrounding that.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:09

Yeah, I've always wondered like what that can sustain.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

And yeah, we published that a few years ago in uh uh Great Lakes Botanist. Um so that paper is out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:18

Oh, okay. Is that on the on your uh PFPage?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:23

Biography.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:24

Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:25

Check that one out. Um so uh at because you Acres Land Trust, as far as I understand it, uh for my little understanding, is that a a lot of their land or some of their land was farmland that they either trusted out or got from a family member or something along those lines. So when you say you work on projects with acres, do you are you somebody that goes into that site and kind of educates as to what the future state of that new land could look like or might look like?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:59

Uh no, because I uh that's uh the job of the staff. So the staff do that kind of communication and working with the landowners and all that. But yeah, a large amount is is uh donated from families that that this was the forest of their grandfather, and they they want to make sure it stays a forest for the future. Um so they will donate it. There's also purchasing of land by acres, acres buys property. Um, if there's a landowner who wants it to go to acres, but they they can't afford maybe to just donate it outright, there's a purchase process there as well. Um, there's several different ways that, and then working with the state, working with DNR, because there are times where DNR wants to acquire a property, and because of the slow wheels of bureaucracy and getting uh money from the state, it's sometimes easier for a private uh nonprofit like Acres to come in and purchase and then transfer that back to the state, and the state pays them back. And there's a whole all these different ways that that land can move around to protect it in some way, uh to to keep it for us, to keep it wetland, to keep it the few grasslands we have around here in those states. But again, it's it's it's a snapshot right now, and time progresses. The good thing about something like acres is that it's it's structured in a way that gives perpetual into the future protection. Um, there's there there are uh uh safety mechanisms built into the organization that basically, if if people stopped giving money and stopped donating to acres, how could they manage the 8,000 acres that they have and keep it still protected? Oh wow and there's there basically are mechanisms in place that if if there was just absolutely no money coming in anymore, nobody wanted to give or donate or do anything like that, um, basically going down to a single staff member and holding that land. As an organization for into the future. So lots of really smart people thinking about the future well before I got there, um, thinking about how do we set this up in a way that that allows it to always exist.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:14

Well, that kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier is that this your research, the this kind of stuff isn't finite. There's it's time, it's a lot of time in a lot of different ways to where you actually reach a conclusion. Do you ever find that you come to conclusions that you can, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:34

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we have to come to conclusions to get something published. So there is there is that kind of like win is a good stopping point to say this is this project's kind of completion. Um, but it kind of going back to the question about my involvement with acres uh in the properties is I like to look at the I do like to look at the snapshots because if we look at the snapshots now, when somebody comes back, they can have something to compare back to. Right. And with then we can see that time change into the future. Um, and so I had my student projects doing uh floristic surveys, looking at the plant communities. Uh, I've had students do insect community surveys again, just to kind of look at, okay, here's where we're at now. We can come back to it in 10 years and see what has changed and how it has changed into the future.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:23

Nice. So you're kind of the building, you understand what's going to be what somebody might be looking at, needing to understand in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, whatever years from now. So you're giving them through your research, you're setting them up with as much data, as much information as you can to build on to the knowledge in the future.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:46

Yeah, that's that's my goal is that that what I'm producing as a as a researcher is hopefully usable to understand those big time changes. And and that's one of the things with the Fox Island project with Scott Burgesson, is our intention is that that every couple of years we're gonna do survey work at Fox Island until we retire. I'm gonna retire before him, he's gonna retire in 30 years or so, and at some point we're gonna have to hand it off to the next person. And our hope is that we can just take 30 years of data, hand it to somebody else, and they can then build another 30 years of data and we can half century to century of data to understand what the real changes are after something like a giant windstorm.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:34

Nice and inspire the next generation to continue that. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:39

Well, I imagine you must feel inspired by the next generation, considering you've been teaching for so long, that there's there's a level in not just doing your own research, but teaching the next generation how to do research, what to be looking at, and knowing that every graduate you have in your program is as trained up as they can to be able to carry on field work and data collecting and and research.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:05

Yeah, exactly. And I it it it it is that kind of proud parent when the student graduates and they get a job and they get to move forward in the the industry, or they they get a job and and start pursuing another degree or do something like that. Um and it is it is nice to to have students that that do all the different things. And I've I've got a former master's student that teaches in Fort Wayne at Snyder High School. I've got a former student that's um in Maine right now and working for nature preserves in in Maine. I've got a student working at Acres, a former student that works at Acres as as uh doing conservation work. So I have I have students everywhere, and I've got a student out in California working with a uh land trust out there that that it's always nice to know that that I did have some little bit of help getting them there. Um what I taught them, what I trained them in, what I showed them in the forest, um is is it it makes it worthwhile um to know that that they can go and do those things. And that's that's kind of the one of the fun things too about being faculty is that every year there's another group of students coming in that want to learn. There's always students that don't really want to be there, they don't want to learn, but when you find those students that that really want to be involved, they're the ones that make it worthwhile.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:25

Yeah, I imagine because I went through the art department. There's a lot of wishful thinkers going into the art department. And I imagine there's a lot of wishful thinkers going into the biology department that think they love animals and all this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:40

That think they're gonna go to med school. Yeah. It's it's there are there are definitely a lot of students that come into biology that think, I'm going to med school, I'm gonna become a physician. Um, and then they they struggle through anatomy or or pig dissections or something like that, where where it's just they realize that's not what they want to do. Their parents were pushing them that direction, and it wasn't exactly where they wanted to be. There's a lot of things that people can do. If they graduate with biology, they can they can go to med school, they can go to dental school, they can end up going um doing a master's and and working in a forest. They could work for the state doing water quality measurements. There's a there's a lot of different things. They could teach high school. I mean, there's a lot of different things that our students end up doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:25

Nice. Well, uh, since we're talking about the future, uh uh I'm gonna skip that question seven, go straight to just what's something in ecology conservation, invasive species work that you do that genuine genuinely kind of gives you hope. Uh I I think that I always kind of want to leave the guest because sometimes these conversations can be a little bit grim as to what's going on in the environment of the world today. So, what's something that just gives you hope? What's something that you're working on, what you've seen, something that's just exciting for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:02

I think the one thing it's not even something that I work on, but I think the the the thing that that excites me about uh what's going on in the world is kind of this realization about pollinators and the realization about the importance of little bitty metallic wasps and solitary bees and bumblebees. It's not even uh honey bees that that we're concerned about. It's it's really just the the native pollinators, and there's definitely more interest in pollinator gardens, in the whole idea of that. I mean, I I learned about there's a just like there's a tree city and tree campus, USA, there's a B City and B campus program to basically increase the number of wildflowers for pollinators. Damn, it's awesome. Um so it's I think that that's something that's that's exciting. And then just the little things you can do around the house too, of like maybe just wait a little bit longer to mow your lawn because um right now that's where all the pollinators are. Yeah. That's where all the pollinators are. They're there's they're in the leaves, they're in the the the yard, um, just coming back from the winter. And um, I think there's there is an excitement there that people are actually doing things um to try and protect pollinators that that I think is is exciting.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:26

There's uh there's a guy here in Fort Wayne, him and his wife Roselle landscaping. Uh my brother used him, and then I used him, and he does a lot of work around Fort Wayne, but he's all natural, uses all natural pesticides, all natural fertilizers, and then we plant and grow a lot of food in our backyard, uh, just in vegetable gardens and gardens, but he took our all of our landscaping and made it all edible. So edible for us and then edible for birds and insect species that are growing. And as I was talking to him during our initial consultation, he was uh he said that it was really growing exponentially around here, so much so that he was originally just doing like your old school landscaping. Uh what do you call it? Um not manicure landscaping, but something like visual landscaping where everybody wants their yard to look green and their hibiscus flowers to bloom and those sorts of things. And him and his wife made the constant decision to cut that business off, call their customers and say, we're gonna start getting into this less abrasive landscaping. And he was, he, him and his wife thought that they would end up having to close the business when they made this call. And in fact, it was the other way around that most every one of his old customers stayed on, and that because they were doing something kind of different back then and now becoming more popular, they grew in popularity and have a larger, more thriving business. So you're entirely correct. I think that for me, it's like uh I remember going to like farmers markets as a kid and thinking, oh my lord, these are all like 60, 70-year-old farmers. I don't want to spend my Saturday morning doing this, whatever. And now if you go down to the farmers, I mean, there's five, six farmers markets in Fort Wayne alone, and it's younger people trying to do things that are sustainable, uh, whether or not it's soaps or foods or or whatever it might be. Fort Wayne's all about it. Well, that's everywhere, is what I'm saying. And it's it's gotta be uh to what you're saying, it's gotta be, it's gotta be nice for you to see that kind of growth thing because you are so entwined into this kind of understanding and process.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:48

Yeah, and and then also the push for uh urban agriculture. Yeah. And the uh using, like you were saying, using uh old lots and planting trees and growing things and doing that with with uh food production is a is another thing that's that's uh I think hopeful that that we can kind of use the land we have that is just vacant and do something productive with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:15

Jordan, this guy uh uh Birch is his name. He goes by Birch up in up in the Detroit area that Travis was alluded to. It's if you ever have a chance to get up into that area again, you gotta go visit. I mean, he's taken it's uh I can't remember the name of the town that he's in, but it's on the other side of Detroit, uh the city, downtown, so right across 74, I think. And it's very much, you know, what most people would classify it as the hood or or or whatever. And this guy's taken just all these lots and planted these amazing forests, and to where when we were there taking a tour, we were walking around for two solid hours and never left the forest.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:56

Yeah, it was supposed to be a five minute, and then he just turned it into we were we walked through the whole everything he had done. Awesome and it was just massive, and it was sequoisious so surprising and beautiful, and some parts of it were so lush, and then there would be the you know, that contrast with an old abandoned brick building behind it. It was beautiful, it really was. It was a gorgeous day. They were planting trees that day.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:22

He was uh he was an English teacher for high school, and he would just find plants or whatever and take them around and just plant them in random places around Detroit. And his goal is he believes that Detroit could be the greenest city on earth because of all the vacant land that the city just essentially, I mean, he knew he knows that we met him, a guy that has a hay farm downtown Detroit because the city just doesn't even know that he's there. And he lives in like a tent.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:52

We asked him, what did there any rules and regulations? And he just laughed.

unknown 1:17:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:57

What a cool thing looking into the future and the amount of people we we were there during uh while they were cleaning up the property, which is quite the chore, and and trying to get it back to a habitable uh soil for a tree or plants to grow. And I mean, we were there and there was probably five or six kids, the the the dads or the moms out there helping move this stuff. So it's a community effort in downtown Detroit. It's it was it was remarkable. And I have to imagine that somebody like you, if you ever have a chance to go up there, let us know and we'll get you in contact with Birch. And it is it is quite remarkable.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:34

Very cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:34

Um, to kind of end this, I do have I uh I want to start. You're the first person that I want to do this with, but I thought kind of a crash course way to give our guests a little bit more insight of you into you and to maybe identify with some of the things that you are. I just kind of want to go through five rapid fire questions. Uh you can answer them. It doesn't have to be one or two words. I'm not putting stipulations on it. You can answer as long as you'd like, but I'm gonna come back with the question super fast. Whatever feels sufficient, you can answer that.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:05

But I just thought it'd be fun and then and then we'll we'll start to wrap it up. Yeah. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:10

Okay, I'm ready. Question A favorite plant of all time. So I'm a fan of plants with uh funny names. Uh so Kanikinik, which is uh bearberry, is a fun one. Um I like uh Tamarack, which is uh Eastern Eastern Larch. I that one's cool just because it's a deciduous conifer, so it's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:34

Um so you like plants by the way they sound. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:39

I like when my wife picks her NCAA Final Four bracket. She just likes the names.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:44

Yeah, that's how I picked mine. I didn't have any clue. Uh so and then uh there's there's this smell uh being in Pictured Rocks of Jack Pine and Balsam Poplar. And that smell, whenever if I'm ever near balsam poplar, that smell is just like immediately transports me back to Pictured Rocks. So that's one of those things that I really love. But but yeah, I I like the fun names. B most unexpected thing you've seen in the field. Um, I don't know if I've really ever seen something unexpected other than a random car in the middle of the forest um that just got abandoned there um decades ago. Uh in Pictured Rocks, I had a bear run out of the woods at us. Holy smokes! But as soon as it saw us, it turned and ran away because we were scaring it more than it it scared us. Um so yeah, I don't, other than that, I haven't really seen much unexpected in the woods.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:43

Prepare. You're a well-prepared man, that's why.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:46

Patty. One word to describe Indiana ecology.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:51

I would say transition. All right. Um, because we have really cool forests in Indiana, because we are a transition zone between central hardwood forests and getting into the northern hardwood forests. And so we get some weird things happening. So in like New Haven, um, there's a park that has a uh elm-ash uh hackberry forest, and you would expect to see elm-ash sugarberry in like southern Indiana, but we've got this kind of transition where hackberry's there and this kind of weird forest that you wouldn't expect to find in New Haven. Um, so yeah, we get some really cool things in that transitional zone. Plus, I think going from the fact that we cut down almost every forest in Indiana, there's this transition that we're going through of like recovery of the forest and it kind of moving through time. So I think I think transition is the way I would describe it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:45

That's wonderful. On the trail, do you prefer being in the bubble with other hikers or outside of the bubble in total solitude? This is a big discussion amongst this podcast podcast group.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:58

Yeah. I would say out of the bubble and in solitude. You're with these guys. I I regularly when I go for a hike or could do a photo walk or something like that, it's it's by myself. Um, if I do any bike riding or running, it's almost always by myself. Um, and the main reason is here I'm I'm in professor mode. And if I'm in front of a class of 200 people, I'm in professor mode, and I have no trouble talking and being in front of people like that. But put me one-on-one with someone, and it's just awkward conversation. I can't have that kind of talk. It just doesn't work. Um, and so yeah, so I can I can I can talk if I'm in a group with no problem, but one-on-one, I I just would rather be alone.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:48

That's how these guys are. They want to be out of the bubble, solitary, just doing their own thing, where I I I like bring the bubble on. Uh, because I I guess for me, like, and I guess I understand what you're saying, but for me, it's like if I'm experiencing something on a trail, whether or not it's a neat tree or a bear runs under the trail or whatever, if I tell that story when I get home, then it's it, you know, most often the the answer or the response I get is like, cool, okay. And then but if I'm with somebody, that'll be a memory that I uh that lives on in our conversations because it'll just keep coming up. Uh go ahead, last one.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:28

Yeah, you gotta be pretty crazy for me to avoid you. I'm not that big of a hermit. Uh okay. Outside, I would say outside of the Midwest, if you could study any ecosystem in the world tomorrow, where are you going?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:44

Uh I've had the opportunity to do some research in a lot of the eastern US. So I think I would probably go west. I would think uh forests in Pacific Northwest would be fascinating. Um, because I mean that there it's it's essentially a rainforest, and you're in a rainforest in the temperate zone, and it'd just be a very different kind of experience. I've done some work in California. Um one of my uh advisors did work at uh Pebble Beach, and so I got a chance to do some some some Monterey pine research there, and that was cool, but I think maybe even further north would be would be exciting.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:22

My wife and I wanted to move to Seattle after we got married and took our honeymoon there. We didn't end up moving there, obviously, for some other reasons, but it was it's like the whole vibe, the whole feeling of the Pacific Northwest is geared to the outdoors. Did you see the new bill that passed in Oregon? Uh we did a News Panther did a spot on it, I think it was last episode or before, but they're taking the uh taxes from hotels, Airbnbs. I can't remember uh what he called it, but they're taking those taxes and directly using them for conservation efforts. So it's it goes on in a lot of other states apparently, but this is their first go at it. And I think it would be like a dollar or one percent very minor. I would be happy to pay that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:10

Yeah. A little bit more money outside of hunting and fishing and you know, backpacking outdoor gear, you know, went to conservation. I'd be okay with that totally.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:21

Well, thank you very much, uh, Dr. Jordan Marshall. We absolutely appreciate your time. Before we leave and before we start the end credit uh sounds, I want to just read you a quote that I uh I found while we were uh researching for our la one of our last episodes about love in the Midwest. And the quote is the mid too soon. No, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:45

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:48

The Midwest doesn't try to impress you, it just waits for you to notice. And I thought that that'd be a nice way to get out of here. Thank you again very much, Dr. Jordan Marshall. We absolutely appreciate your time. Hoping you can come back and uh and talk to us more about everything ecology and invasive species and plant insects.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:08

I enjoyed that conversation so much. And Brad wasn't here, and I know that he was interested in a lot of that. So maybe we'll see you again. A wonderful time. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:19

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:20

Keep on listening, everybody. Wait, keep on sauntering, everybody. Bye. That was a pain in the ass, Patrick.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:31

Yeah, that was awesome.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:33

I can't wait till Brad gets back.