(upbeat music) (graphic pops) - Hello and welcome to The Journ I'm Steve Kendall.

The BGSU Center for Great Lakes and Watershed Studies is in its spring phase of its ongoing research of Northwest Ohio's watershed.

Joining us first segment are Sarah Emery, Alexis Ostrowski, and Kevin McCluney.

I wanna thank you all for being here, Kevin, talk a little bit about the origin of the center, what its purpose is, why it was put together to begin with, what's the reason for its existence?

- Sure, thank you, yeah.

So back in about 2018, there was a group of faculty at BGSU that was interested in questions surrounding Lake Erie water quality and other sort of threats to Lake Erie and other Great Lakes watersheds.

And we sort of started getting together and discussing, could we work together more conclusively or more integratedly.

And so we started working together, putting in grant proposals together, doing research together.

And that sort of began things.

And then we sort of went from there to start discussing what would a center look like.

And that's sort of the beginning stages.

And that sort of came together with the hiring of Dr. Sarah Emery here, just this past year.

- [Steve] Yeah, now, Alexis, in terms of the disciplines involved, you're probably, and some of you're chemistry people, but there are other entities involved as well.

You're obviously from chemistry.

- [Alexis] Yes.

- [Steve] So talk a little about what your role is in this and how you got interested in it and why you think it's important.

- Yeah, so actually there were multiple faculty, mostly from the biological sciences department on campus that started, but a couple of them reached out to me to say, you know, some of the research you're doing has some relevance to water quality issues and would you be interested in talking with us about some of these interdisciplinary issues?

So it's not just a biological sciences problem, right?

There's chemistry.

There's also some social sciences involved.

And I really liked that idea of, you know, an interdisciplinary group where you can learn from people in other disciplines, so.

- Yeah, and, and Sarah, it pulls together the expertise from all these areas.

And of course, one of the things the university exists for is to assist in public issues, public good, that sort of thing.

And this pulls in all the people from these other areas to direct it to hopefully a better outcome than we've seen in the past with the Great Lakes watershed.

- [Sarah] Right, and that was, so I actually started January of 2025 here, and I was coming from the University of Louisville in Kentucky, where I was a faculty member for 17 years.

And one of the things that really attracted me to the center and BGSU was this collaborative integrative approach to research, especially focused on the Great Lakes.

So I worked in Great Lake Systems for 20 years, but I was kind of alone in Kentucky.

And so to be able to come here and work with people in biology and chemistry and geosciences, has been just a really exciting opportunity for me.

And then I also am really passionate about interdisciplinary collaborations, especially between the arts and the sciences.

And I see some potential there as well for kind of thinking about Great Lakes issues.

- Sure, and you know, one of you mentioned the social sciences because it's one thing to be able to get all of this information, go out and say, hey, here's what's going on.

Then there's the perception that the public has of what's going on and what the impact is, how they feel, because it does affect people's lives, hopefully, from a positive perspective.

Kevin, your area, like specifically, what do you look at?

What's your main goal as you go through this?

- [Kevin] Yeah, my background is as an ecologist.

And so I study the interactions between organisms and their environment.

I have a background really studying aquatic and linked terrestrial food webs, streamside food webs.

But I've moved from there to looking at questions of how plants and animals influence nutrient cycling and how that influences water quality.

How we have introduced contaminants that come in from wastewater treatment plants that might influence those food webs.

So a variety of things as well as sort of looking at what are the sources of phosphate coming into the watershed and how do agricultural management practices influence the nutrients and what goes from the fields themselves into the water.

So, many different things.

- [Steve] Yeah, and Alexis your area.

- [Alexis] Yeah, so I'm a materials chemist, so I'm a chemistry faculty member, but primarily focused on materials.

And not only the materials, but what happens to the materials with light.

So when light is shining on these materials, what happens?

And I got really interested in this because we have a project where we have these materials that can actually uptake phosphate phosphorus from their environment.

And then once you have those, you know, in light, so just with sunlight, they can degrade slowly and release the phosphate slowly.

So we are interested in using these to basically recycle wastewater, right?

You have all this wastewater, you can put these materials in the wastewater, they absorb all the phosphate, you can take those out.

And then now you have wastewater that's clean from phosphorus.

And so that's sort of one of the projects I'm working on.

- [Steve] Yeah, because one of the things that we always hear about is the phosphorus load into the lake.

- [Alexis] Right.

- [Steve] And the measures, all of that.

So anything that could be done to help mitigate that, to lower.

- [Alexis] Right.

- [Steve] To make it, or as you said, release it over a much longer period, so it isn't jut causing all the issues that we've have seen in the last 20 years on the lake.

And of course some of the inland lakes too as well.

Those watersheds have been affected by that kinda stuff too.

Sarah, when you look at the scope of what you guys do, it must be must be pretty daunting because you're covering, not even just a large geographic area, but a large, all these different areas that touch all kinds of industries and people in their daily lives, that kinda thing.

So how do you balance all of that to make sure people are getting getting good information and information that then can be used to move things forward?

- [Sarah] Right.

So one of things we talk about is taking this like watershed scale approach to watershed scale problems.

And that's really thinking about how the land, what we are doing on the land influences our lakes, and then how all of that interacts to affect our lives, the public good, right?

And so I think that's one thing that sets our center apart from some other, there's several centers focused on Great Lakes issues, but I feel like our center here at BGSU is really taking this holistic approach to, you know, working with farmers, working with, you know, green spaces in urban areas, working with water quality in streams, at, you know, all the way to coastal managements for erosion control.

And you know, how to creatively use dredge materials from the Toledo Harbor in a sustainable way.

So like really this whole system approach to the Great Lakes.

And then also we have people working in other big lake systems, especially in Africa.

- [Steve] Sure.

- And so trying to understand, you know, trying to apply what we learn in Lake Erie to the entire Great Lakes, and then more globally as well.

- [Steve] Yeah, because I know, I just got a second here, but I know some of your other colleagues, we go to Lake Victoria every summer, because strangely enough, were seeing, even though we're, you know, half a world away, similarities and that other things like, oh, we didn't expect to see that there.

And conversely things that we find here.

When we come back and we're done with this segment, we'll talk more with folks from the BGSU Center for Great Lakes and Watershed studies here on The Journal, back in a moment.

Thank you for staying with us on The Journal.

We're joined by members of the BGSU Center for Great Lakes and Watershed studies.

We have Sarah Emery, Kevin McCluney, we're joined by Bob Midden.

Sarah, when we left that last segment, we're talking about the fact that BGSU researchers travel the world because this is not just a Great Lakes US regional issue.

This is a global issue.

And studying the globe, the issues that are going on, algae blooms, all over this country and all over the world, does provide us insight into what we do here.

- [Sarah] Yeah, and I think, you know, when people think about the problems in the Great Lakes, I think these harmful algal blooms are probably the most noticeable aspect of problems, especially in the Western basin of Lake Erie, though now Lake Superior is starting to have some algal bloom issues and trying to learn some lessons from what we know in Lake Erie.

And we also know that the algal blooms in Lake Erie and globally have a lot of contributing factors.

So nutrient runoff from agricultural fields, but also nutrient runoff from other kinds of land.

And then climate change is also contributing to algal blooms.

So, for example, harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie are lasting about a month longer now than they did in the 1990s because of increases in temperature, increases in heavy rain events that lead to storm runoff.

And so we have faculty here who are doing some really great research trying to understand and try to mitigate some of these contributing factors to these harmful algal blooms.

- Well, and you mentioned the temperatures because for years I've grown up here my entire life, Lake Erie always froze in the wintertime.

I mean, they'd have to break the ice to keep the shipping going, and there were years where there was hardly any ice on the lake.

And that obviously is a indication of the warming of the temperatures and the different change in the way the weather patterns roll through here, that sort of thing.

Which we don't necessarily link that initially to what goes on in the biology of the lake and what's going on in it under it, that kind of thing.

But that's a huge impact.

- [Sarah] Right, yeah.

So I mean, this past year was kind of an exception in that Lake Erie.

- [Steve] Did froze.

It actually froze for the first time in a while, yeah.

- [Sarah] But that freeze process is really important for the kind of beneficial algae that we need early in this season.

And then, so over time though, we are seeing a reduce in ice cover, increased temperatures and all that is making it more difficult to manage.

So even if we are able to reduce our nutrient inputs, and we have been successful in a lot of different ways in reducing nutrient inputs to Lake Erie, there are these other things that are working against us - [Steve] That we don't have as much control or really can't control.

And Bob, you're dealing with H2Ohio, which Sarah mentioned.

Talk about that, because it's a huge project.

The state's investing hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in this to deal with some of the issues that you guys have talked about.

So talk about H2Ohio and your portion of that, because it's a large widespread program, but talk about your focus in that area.

- Sure, so in fact, we have four faculty at BGSU who are involved in the H2Ohio program.

Kevin McCluney, Helen Michaels, and Ming Lou, in addition to me.

And that's an, I think, an important aspect of this program.

So H2Ohio was created by the state of Ohio to try to reduce the problem of harmful algal blooms.

- [Steve] Right.

- Because it does pose such a huge economic threat.

It's estimated maybe a threat to $2.4 billion in sales and income tax alone in the eight counties along the shore of the Western Lake Erie.

And also, of course, a huge environmental risk as well as the public health risk, because of the toxins that are produced.

So the state has been willing to invest a considerable amount of money to try three different approaches, major approaches to reducing this problem.

They've devoted some money to the Ohio EPA and money to the Ohio Department of Agriculture to encourage farmers to adopt certain agricultural practices.

Prior research has shown it can reduce the loss of phosphorus and nitrogen from their fields, which is driving the blooms.

But the part that we're involved with is money devoted to the high Department of Natural Resources to create and restore a large number of wetlands.

Because wetlands.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- Are kind of like the kidneys of the landscape.

- [Steve] The filter of the, yeah.

- The filter of the environment.

And they're capable of removing or reducing the amount of fossils and nitrogen that gets into the destination water bodies where the problems arise.

But they can vary enormously in their effectiveness, can even be counterproductive at times.

So ODNR, the Ohio Department of Natural resources has wisely decided to devote a significant amount of money, a small but significant amount to a team of 10 lead scientists, six universities to each with different areas of disciplinary expertise to work very collaboratively and cooperatively to try to determine, first of all, how effective these wetlands are, but also to learn more about all the factors that influence their effectiveness, so that wetlands can be used in the most cost effective way in the future as a means of reducing this problem to a tolerable level.

- [Steve] Yeah, and Kevin, obviously your area of wetlands are a huge part of what you look at as well as other parts of the watershed.

- [Kevin] Yeah, and our role in the larger monitoring program is to look at vegetation and how vegetation can influence the amount of nutrients that are captured by the wetlands.

And we're finding that some particular species play a larger role.

So we can give advice to managers that if you want to increase the nutrient retention in this wetland, plant more of these particular plant species and you'll maximize that, yeah.

- [Steve] Now, are there species that are counterproductive to this process that are, that do more damage than good that we see?

Because I know there are invasive species in terms of plants that especially around water, you'll see almost anything grow.

- [Kevin] Yeah.

- Are there some that we should say, let's get rid of that?

Because it's actually making it worse rather than better.

- [Kevin] Right, yeah, so there's, we're still looking at that question.

- [Steve] Okay.

- But cattails are very common.

Are very competitive.

And they can take over wetlands.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- But they do take up a lot of nutrients.

- [Steve] Okay.

- However they have sort of negative effects on the larger biodiversity of the wetlands.

So what we're finding is there's some other species that can sort of take up equal amount of nutrients, help filter out those nutrients, but are not negative for biodiversity.

- They aren't gonna knock, they're gonna keep other plants and other things from.

- [Kevin] That's right.

- From being affected there.

- Because yeah, I mean, you drive by any farm pond that isn't being, you know, heavily treated.

- [Kevin] Yeah.

- And cattails, once you have to go out there.

- [Kevin] That's right.

- Almost eradicate them on a daily basis.

- [Kevin] Exactly.

- And if you think you've got them, they're there.

And so obviously educating people, if you've got just a moment here in this segment.

- [Kevin] Sure.

- [Steve] How do you educate people on which plants they should get rid of and, you know, DNR, and people like that are involved, but yeah, how do you make sure people understand that might look nice, but it's really not helping?

- Well, one of the wonderful things about the H2Ohio program is we have been able to directly interface with the managers of these wetlands across Ohio.

And we meet with them every year at an annual meeting.

We are able to directly communicate with them.

We send them the reports once we're done with them.

And we try to make them very easy for them to understand and they know that they can contact us directly as well.

So we have that direct connection with them.

- [Bob] Yeah, and we issue an annual report, which is gonna be presented today, starting at 10:30, by the way, a 1200 page report that provides summaries of data that we've collected and interpretation of that data, including the results of the plant surveys that Kevin and Helen's team does as well as the soil and water results.

And we work closely with the ODNR staff, who are the ones who decide where and how the wetlands will be.

- [Steve] Applied.

- Installed.

- [Steve] Yeah, because whenever, and I know they're giving me the time to move out here, but because one of the things you see with any kind of project that's gonna deal with the land, that environmental aspect is still incredibly important.

And you'll see them say, well, we're gonna have to, we're gonna move this wetland over here.

And you see that happen, hopefully, as you guys have described, it will be a good useful wetland in the right place doing the right thing.

But that's why you guys are doing this, so good.

Okay, we'll be back in just a moment.

More from the BGSU Center for Great Lakes and Watershed studies here on The Journal.

You're with us on The Journal, on our guests are representatives of the BGSU Center for Great Lakes and Watershed studies, faculty members all.

One of the things we touched on a little bit is, of course, to the interdisciplinary aspect of this, and not just with BGSU, but other universities too.

But within the center and the university, there's a lot of student learning going on.

The students are directly involved in all of this process as well.

So they're learning not just in the classroom, but they're out in the field with you guys doing things.

- [Sarah] Right.

Yeah, so right now we have 21 faculty members across four different units at BGSU who are involved.

And students in all of those faculty members labs can be directly involved with the work that our center does.

And one of the things that we're currently doing is using funds to support student research and travel in the summer and an academic year for research related to Great Lakes watershed issues.

And I think we've funded around 30 or so student research, but have probably close to a hundred students who have been involved with our center just in the past three years or so, whether that's through summer research opportunities or outreach activities.

And so one of the things that we are excited about is continuing to grow by including more faculty members.

So we've added four new faculty to our center just since January when I started.

And we're hoping to continue to expand that and then also allow students, so any students who are working with faculty in our center, are automatically part of our center.

But then also students can directly apply on their own to be a part of our center if they just have interests in watershed issues, Great Lakes issues.

And I've been really impressed that students have taken it on their own to start forming a group on campus, a student group.

It's called SWAG, Student Watershed Awareness Group, I think.

And so they're in the process of getting officially recognized by the university and they'll be affiliated with our center.

And so students can get involved that way too.

- Yeah, well, and I think it's good too because you have students involved and obviously they're learning while they're in college, they're doing this, plus when they're out, they're good ambassadors for what you do and why it's important because they're literally right there with you hands in the water, in the wetland, in the swamp doing whatever.

So when people ask them, what did you do?

You know, this semester, it's like, well, we waited around the swamp in Sandusky County and this is what we found.

And I think it's probably a good thing, because they help spread the word about why this is so important and what the impact is.

You know, Dr. Midden mentioned the economic impact.

And I don't think people really still grasp just what that can mean.

So anytime you can get good illuminating information out, I think it's a good thing.

Alexis, when you look at the projects you work on, what's something in the future that we can look forward to that maybe you're kind of focusing on?

- Well, we have these materials that, as I said, absorb phosphorus from wastewater.

And we're really trying to look at applying those, actually, you know, in real applications.

So we've done this in the lab, but we're sort of thinking about, do we need to design these materials a little bit differently for different applications?

So are we gonna be using these with a city wastewater management group or is this gonna be a local farmer who wants to buy these, you know, materials to use in their pond in the backyard or something like that.

And so we really need to do some new materials design.

And so the students are getting hands-on learning and expertise in doing that.

But I think a really interesting and cool aspect of this research that I enjoy is the students get to interface with different faculty from different departments, different students from different departments, as well as different community groups and learning more about, you know, what do they need for their materials.

And then we can go back to the lab and kind of make those adjustments.

- You touched on something kind of interesting, because if you have a pond, you treat it with various chemicals.

- [Alexis] Yeah.

- And again, purely anecdotally, over the course of time, I've had a pond for like 40, 50 years, when the pond was originally there, the first 10, 12 years, 15 years, no algae, nothing like that.

Water was clear.

Only in the last maybe 10 I know it's purely anecdotal, nothing scientific goes on, but now you have to treat it much more aggressively.

Because if you don't treat it at the beginning of the spring, you get algae.

And before that was never an issue.

And maybe that's because of runoff, maybe it's whatever.

But those are the kind of things that day to day people ask, well, I need to throw more copper sulfate in there.

- [Alexis] Yeah.

- [Steve] I need to throw more algicide in or shade to keep the light from going down.

Because clear water.

- [Alexis] Right.

- [Steve] In some ways, you know, we talked about that, that invasive species.

There was good news about some of them, because they were cleaning the water.

The bad news was now the light was penetrating and the shallowness of the western basin created issue.

So the kinda those data things.

So those kind of materials.

- [Alexis] Yes.

- Might eventually work their way into what I'm putting in my pond.

- [Alexis] Yes that's what we're - Yeah, okay, and the long way around to get there.

But that's, yeah.

So that's a good thing because every time you throw a chemical in there, you're thinking, is this really good?

I mean, it's gonna do what it's supposed to do.

It's gonna kill the algae, it's gonna kill the plant life.

But is that the best way to deal with it?

So maybe you can come up with ways that are more, that are more effective and yet don't create other issues potentially.

- Right, yeah, effectively managing the problem, which is too much phosphorus.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

- And and as we know, if you're living in a rural area, you're gonna have farming, you're gonna have phosphorus, you're gonna have things going on like that.

But Kevin, from your perspective, what's on your downstream agenda here?

Your vision?

- Yeah, I think, you know, involving students more in the research is definitely gonna be great.

We have been talking about creating specializations or actual degree programs, including a graduate degree program that is focused on watershed studies that gives students more of this holistic integrative feeling.

So Alexis talked a little bit about that as an opportunity where they get to learn things from other faculty members in other areas.

I don't know about your own experience as a student, but students don't necessarily take the path that they originally intended.

- [Steve] Sure.

- [Kevin] And so these other experiences with people outside their main focus area might help them in their entire career.

And they don't know that at the time.

So having that integrative educational experience is very valuable.

- Yeah, and they might find out, hey, you know what?

I thought I wanted to do this, I really, this is a passion for me now.

So it speaks to the fact that you need that wide range of experience in college, not just a single track that says, well, here's what I wanna do.

And you don't see anything on either side of it.

So there's that advantage.

And plus, I think, as I said earlier, you're bringing people in who may not have had exposure to the kind of things that we're talking about.

And they're like, wow, I had no idea it was this kind of impact.

This is why this looks like that.

This is why we have to do these things.

- [Kevin] Right, yeah.

- [Steve] And Sarah, you talk about the fact that you've added more faculty.

You want to expand these programs.

Obviously this is an area that's not gonna go away.

I joke about the fact that the one thing that's evergreen in Ohio is algae blooms in the spring, along with redistricting discussions.

That's the other thing we get into.

But the future is that we're gonna keep dealing with this and at some point, hopefully find a solution to it, but that we're still working toward that.

- Right, like I think harmful algal blooms in particular, one of these like wicked problems.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- That just require a lot of different approaches to try to reduce the problem.

And layered on top of that, the climate change issues, I think, are going to continue to exacerbate the issues that we have here.

Though we do have fa, you know, we have faculty who are working not just on monitoring the algal blooms in Sandusky Bay, where we have boats that go out weekly to to monitor.

We have faculty who are working on the genetics of algae and what makes them toxic.

We have faculty who are working on the kind of the biochemistry side trying to understand what's the nature of these very various toxins that these algae can make.

And so trying to take this multi-pronged approach to the problem, even here at BGSU, and then also collaborating with all of the other institutions and faculty who are also working on these really important issues in the Great Lakes.

- [Steve] And I think the one thing that people can take away from this too is that this is research that really is literally on the ground in the water effect, will affect people's daily lives, whether economically, health wise, whatever.

It's very important research that needs to get done, because the lake's not going anywhere as far as we know.

And we've got these issues that we have to deal with over years of, you know, some would say abusing the lake all the way back into the, you know, the Industrial Revolution, things just being dumped in there.

Now we're dealing with the fact that we have a lot of population around the lakes, and that leads to a whole nother array of things.

And then the economic impact, the industrial impact of farming, which is, you know, a benefit, there's no doubt about that.

But we have to find that middle ground.

- Yeah, and almost a quarter of Ohioans get their water from Lake Erie.

And so drinking water quality, tourism.

Right?

So - [Steve] Yeah.

I think there's just, our lives are really tied to Lake Erie and the Great Lakes watershed.

- [Steve] And getting this right.

Finally getting it right, finally, yeah.

Well, thank you so much.

Appreciate you guys what you do and coming in and talking about this.

And as you proceed through these processes, we'll have you back on to talk about where things are going, what what you found out since the last time we talked and what the future is.

What we're gonna do to help solve this problem for Ohio, the Great Lakes, and in essence, basically all over the world.

So appreciate it very much.

- [Sarah] Great.

- [Alexis] Thank you.

- [Kevin] Thank you.

- [Sarah] Thank you.

- You can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM on WBGU-PBS.

We'll see you again next time.

Goodnight and good luck.

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