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Regional definitions vary from source to source. This map reflects the Midwestern United States as defined by the Census Bureau. In turn, this region is sub-divided into East North Central and West North Central areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States

Does “Midwest” do it for you? I’ve always struggled with it as a good geographic descriptor. The Census Bureau didn’t even settle on its definition until 1984.

Whatever the terminology, I kind of embody it: born in Indiana, raised in Ohio, attended college in Illinois and grad school in Minnesota. I always had a Great Lake within easy reach. Maybe that is why I prefer “Great Lakes States”; I think it better defines our location, our neighbors, and the respect we have for water. Though the Great Lakes watersheds are small, they touch eight states and affect more than 30 million people in the United States and Canada.

The connection we have to water may come from our ancestors arriving by boat, fishing to put a meal on the table, vacationing by the shore, or simply being inspired by the vastness of the horizon on a Great Lake. Craig Blacklock’s 2002 project, Horizons was based on the simple rule of taking only one photo a day, from cliffs above Lake Superior. How can water and sky change so much? Some days the break between the two is stark, others so smooth it is hard to say where one ends and the other begins. I can’t imagine ever tiring of the variations.

The EPA has defined 43 areas of concern within the United States and Canada, which require special attention to return to an acceptable level of health. Three in the U.S. and four in Canada have been restored to acceptable levels through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/trump-epa-rollbacks/

While we may enjoy a serene surface on our Great Lakes, it hides a troubled deep. A recent book by Dan Egan, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes details the many ways we have unintentionally altered the lakes, the work that has been done to restore them, and how much is left to do. We are facing some serious challenges with proposed federal budget cuts to the EPA’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Launched in 2010, it is the latest in a series of restoration efforts to protect and restore the Great Lakes.

Among other things, the EPA fights the spread of invasive species within the lakes. These non-native animals out-compete native species and disrupt the ecological balance of the lakes. Another major problem that falls in the jurisdiction of the EPA is phosphorous pollution and associated algae blooms, which can deplete oxygen and kill fish.

We are hosting Mr. Egan on May 24 in Duluth as part of our Moos Family Lecture Series. Come hear Dan as he expertly weaves the tales of how the lakes came to be the way they are and the path forward to preserve what we value most: clean water and healthy ecosystems.

— Carrie Jennings, research and policy director

I felt a bit like Sherlock Holmes when Konrad Schmidt, retired DNR Fisheries biologist, contacted me about when the last known contact took place between two fish populations — the rainbow darters in Lake Phalen and their river cousins. Genetic drift had occurred between the two disjoint populations but the question he posed to me was about how much time had elapsed. Naturally, you ask a glacial geologist this question.

Existing population distribution of rainbow darters. Note the lone dot in the Mississippi watershed away from any rivers. That is the Lake Phalen population. Photo of male darter by Konrad Schmidt.

The rainbow darter (Etheostoma caeruleum) is a bottom-dweller that prefers fast, turbulent waters found in shallow rocky riffles in clear-water streams. They are common in southeastern Minnesota streams and small rivers, like the Cannon, Zumbro, Root, and Cedar. It is very odd to find them in the shallow water of Lake Phalen in Ramsey County. There is currently not even a path for them to get from a rocky, clear-water stream to the lake.

The stream from Lake Phalen dives into storm sewers, even crossing under I-94 before spilling into the Mississippi. One might think the genetic drift that occurred between the disjoint populations was caused by the build-up of the St. Paul urban area and separation of the Rondo neighborhood. But this drift needed deep time — geologic time.

So when was the last time that the lake was connected to the Mississippi by true riverine habitat and what event could have separated them? Let’s talk about waterfalls.

When the last, vast meltwater lake drained from the retreating ice sheet around 13,400 years ago, a big river flowed through the state and a bank-to-bank waterfall formed in the vicinity of downtown St. Paul. Use the Wabasha Bridge to imagine the span of the waterfall, which was located near the St. Paul downtown airport. It retreated rapidly upstream because of turbulence at its base that undercut the rock holding up the falls.

When the waterfall retreated past the creek that entered from Lake Phalen, it created a tributary waterfall in Swede Hollow. This new waterfall on the creek is the prime suspect in separating the Mississippi River rainbow darter population from the Lake Phalen one. The darters just couldn’t navigate the falls. Mr. Schmidt published a scholarly article that concluded the disjoint distribution was consistent with late Pleistocene and recent changes in the course and characteristics of the middle and lower Mississippi River.

The stories of fish — spreading to new areas and being isolated — can tell us a lot about the history of rivers and lakes. This story turns out to have had a natural cause, but every time we dig a ditch or connect a lake or wetland, we are opening the door to movement of species, potentially altering not only the fish populations, but entire aquatic ecosystems.

If you want to hear stories of this played out on a grand scale — a Great Lakes and even global scale — come hear author and journalist Dan Egan speak about his recent book, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes.  We are hosting Mr. Egan on April 25 in St. Paul and May 24 in Duluth as part of our Moos Family Lecture Series.

— Carrie Jennings, research and policy director

You may have seen the photo exhibit by a friend of mine, John White. It was touring the region during the last year (and prints are available for sale here). His alluring and seemingly abstract black and white swirls are actually color photos of wind-eroded topsoil and snow. Snirt — your new word for the day — that is what locals call dirty snow that is commonly seen this time of year in the farming areas of the state.

Soil is slow in forming — and by slow I am talking on the order of thousands of years. So although it makes a pretty picture, it is more than just a shame when it blows away from an area where somebody had hoped to make a living off of it.

Eventually that snow melts and the dirt is carried through ditches to cloud and clog local waterways.  Even more damage is done by the stuff that is attached to the soil — the fertilizers we have applied — in particular, phosphorus.  It tends to hold on tightly to the soil which means that when the soil is transported to the local lake or river, the phosphorus fertilizes them. When the water warms up, you get the familiar green scum that makes most lakes in Minnesota’s corn and soybean belt unappealing and sometimes even deadly.  When the scum dies and settles to the bottom of the lake and decomposes, it uses up the oxygen in the lake. A recipe for a mini dead zone and fish kill.

An ongoing study being conducted in the Root River by Minnesota Department of Agriculture staff and led by Kevin Koehner shows that 48% of the dissolved phosphorus came off the fields in March when the ground was frozen. That would be your snirt and really, any other soil that is not held in place by plants that can easily move when water flows across frozen fields.

Simplest solution to keeping soil in place over the winter? Cover crops. That is something you plant after harvest and plow under in the spring when you plant like winter wheat. Even better is perennial cover like alfalfa that rarely exposes the soil. Farmers may need incentives to incorporate practices that don’t help their bottom line. That is where state and federal policy come in. We will be encouraging the adoption of state policies that help improve water quality during this time of year while the legislature is in session and snirt is in the wind.

— Carrie Jennings, research and policy director

Blueberry, Wild Rice, Hockey, Agate, Honeycrisp, Pink Lady’s Slipper, Morel, Norway Pine, Walleye, Milk, Loon, Lester. Is this some kind of a weird shopping list for a camping trip? If you’ve been a Minnesotan for a while you will recognize this as a partial list of our state symbols. They respectively are our state muffin, grain, sport, gemstone, fruit, flower, mushroom, tree, fish, drink, bird, and soil.

What, you missed the 2012 announcement of the state soil series – the Lester (and that soils have names)? Full name: Lester Loam.

Most people only use “loam” to describe a good soil for growing things. In fact, loam is good for growing things but also precisely describes the ratio of sand, clay, and silt in a soil. Too much of any one makes a soil less than optimal; loams have a nice balance. The loamy soils in the southern part of Minnesota are the envy of many around the world. The Lester is the best of the best. It covers 6,000 acres in the eastern part of MLRA 103 (Major Land Resource Area).

This is the area that, in the 10,000 years since the Des Moines lobe deposited its gray till – a shifting mixture of prairie, wet prairies and forests along with the burrowing and microscopic organisms that lived there – created the perfect combination of texture, structure, organic content, and available nutrients in a sweet soil for farming (sweet meaning calcareous or non-acidic, not sah-weet!).

This is a fortuitous chain of events for those that immigrated to this region, cleared and drained the land, and started harvesting the fruits of the soil. But if soil is an evolving, living thing that took 10,000 years to develop to this point, and also relies on living things to sustain it, how long will the Lester remain one of the best agricultural soils in the world?

The Natural Resources Conservation Service and farmers who rely on their services are focusing more on what makes and keeps a soil healthy and functioning. A large portion of a soil’s health report has to do with its capacity to infiltrate and store water. This is a function of its texture, structure, and organic content.

That is where Freshwater Society comes into the picture. We care about soil health because it impacts how water enters the ground. Soil on the move becomes water pollution because of its effects on water clarity and also because of the problematic chemicals like phosphorus that sorb to it. Keeping soil in place and in a healthy state is everyone’s goal.

— Carrie Jennings, research and policy director

Source: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mcvmagazine/archive.html?keyword=lester (May-June 2013)

I have gone on my share of geology field trips with visiting geologists from around the world. We typically visit exposures of glacial sediment, commonly found in gravel pits, and discuss what we see. When a colleague of mine from the Norwegian Geological Survey stooped to drink from a puddle in a gravel pit in Minnesota, I was horrified. I think I may have smacked the water out of his hands. He stayed thirsty and confused about why I was convinced that our water was not safe to drink.

Why did I assume that puddle water was undrinkable? Dangerous, even?

This was an “exposure” of the water table aquifer, a place where digging for sand and gravel had exposed the groundwater. We were in a rural setting in dairy country and my presumption was that, compared to our deeper groundwater, this was not as safe (but probably better than drinking from a nearby stream).

What are your expectations? Should we expect deep groundwater to be drinkable without treatment? How about shallow groundwater that is replenished by rain but potentially carries with it anything on the surface? Do you think about it at all?

One of our biggest challenges is to get people to think about where their water comes from (and the answer isn’t “the tap”) and how groundwater is connected to surface water. Then we can start tackle the bigger issues of how clean we’d like it to be and how to improve groundwater quality.

— Carrie Jennings, research and policy director

https://artmap.com/evakotatkova/chapter/images#_n4l2

Most of us who spend time on lakes know they can “green up” as they warm up. Excess phosphorus generates that not-so-healthy green bloom.

The Yahara watershed is trying something novel. The watershed surrounds Madison, Wisconsin and has at its center the iconic lakes Mendota and Monona. Even with a state capitol and population of 370,000, it’s primarily agricultural.

The new approach — led by the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District, in partnership with Dane County, Wisconsin DNR, and local governments — works this way: Rather than build three new wastewater treatment plants at a cost of $270 million, why not spend less than half that to tackle the problem where it starts?

The coalition pooled $2 million to pay for approved, phosphorus-reducing measures. A pilot project that began in 2014 targeted the biggest loaders.  Full-scale implementation of the 20-year pact began this year. Results will be demonstrated though ongoing monitoring, and lakes that aren’t green anymore.

Read more.

By Carrie Jennings, research and policy director