The purpose of this grant is to purchase an automated pumping system that will be installed in a wetland being renovated in the East Harbor State Park, Lakeside-Marblehead, OH. This pump will enable us and the Park to control water levels in the wetland to meet research and management goals.

The East Harbor State Park wetlands are the most floristically diverse freshwater coastal marsh remnants in the Western Basin of Lake Erie. A current project, supported by the Lake Erie Protection Fund, is attempting to renovate an 8-hectare diked marsh on the east shore of East Harbor. The goal of that project is to establish conditions in that marsh that will support a diverse flora of wetland species. and to control the impact of Phragmites australis. This is being done by a combination of bottom modification, mowing of Phragmites, and water depth manipulations. The latter is being done, inefficiently, by pumping with a centrifugal pump run by a tractor. Pumping schedules are currently dependent more on the availability of the tractor and the Park personnel to operate it than on ecological or management timing requirements. After two years of trying to manage water depths using this system, we have concluded that a better system is essential if water depths in this wetland are to be managed effectively and efficiently to meet research and management criteria. We must install an automated pumping system that can move water in or out of the wetland as needed to meet those criteria.