Ohio’s freshwater resources are reaping water quality benefits from a statewide research consortium that brings academics and agencies together.

Members of the Lake Erie and Aquatic Research Network (LEARN) recently reflected upon the group’s successes, particularly its first project, the H2Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program, a partnership with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR).

“The wetland effort is top notch,” said Dr. Christopher Winslow, director of Ohio Sea Grant, who helped form LEARN alongside associate director Dr. Kristen Fussell and more than 30 academics from across the state. “Our wetland collaborative monitoring effort under LEARN is a shining example of return on investment. You’ve got six universities, working collaboratively under the LEARN framework, to monitor a subset of approximately 180 wetlands, and those academics are informing the agencies about how to build wetlands.”

LEARN, originally conceived in 2017 under a National Science Foundation (NSF) planning grant, is a network of researchers throughout Ohio and surrounding areas studying Lake Erie, the Ohio River, and related aquatic ecosystems (e.g. wetlands and smaller rivers and streams). Its goal is to help facilitate collaborative research not only among different universities and researchers, but also with government and other non-academic partners. Members noted that it is the only consortium connecting academics to state-based agencies across the Great Lakes.

The idea originally stemmed from discussions at Ohio Sea Grant about how researchers in the state could best share resources and assets located at different field stations and university laboratories, Fussell said.

“We also began to think about the need for diverse sets of expertise and ways of thinking to solve Lake Erie’s most pressing issues,” said Fussell, who also serves as LEARN’s secretary-treasurer. “We wanted a format to bring together social scientists, economists, natural scientists, engineers, or interested undergraduate or graduate students. Out of these discussions, LEARN was developed on paper.”

“It’s connecting academics to academics, connecting academics to agencies, and connecting different disciplines of academics together,” Winslow explained.

After finding initial funding from the NSF grant, planning for the network gained momentum in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, Gov. Mike DeWine’s H2Ohio Initiative enlisted LEARN to partner with ODNR on its wetland monitoring plan. Despite setbacks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and thanks to the efforts of Ohio Sea Grant extension educator Nicole Wright, LEARN started in full force in 2021.

“With the addition of the H2Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program as a collaboration of LEARN members, we had what we needed to continue to grow LEARN into what it is today,” Fussell said.

Dr. Lauren Kinsman-Costello, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Kent State University, was involved in early planning for the wetland monitoring program with the goal of address nutrient loading into Lake Erie. Initially, faculty met to discuss what the program might look like, what ODNR’s needs were, and what kind of resources were available, she said.

“The unique partnership that we formed with the LEARN H2Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program has been critical to improving our prioritization and design of new H2Ohio wetland restorations, tracking our progress, and even revisiting our completed projects to improve their performance.”
Eric Saas, Ohio Department of Natural Resources

“We hear a lot about wetland monitoring, but the reality is that prior to this program, most of the existing methods for monitoring wetlands on a really large scale were driven from a habitat quality perspective,” said Kinsman-Costello, who now serves as research lead of the ODNR-funded H2Ohio Wetlands Monitoring Program. “They aim to assess ecosystem health, which is very different from a targeted assessment of the effectiveness of wetlands at removing nutrients.”

Today, the wetland monitoring program is unique in that it exclusively studies removal of nitrogen and phosphorus as a function of wetlands. Very few other monitoring programs study a diverse system of both restored and constructed wetlands in this way, Kinsman Costello said. The group employs a tiered approach, intensely studying a handful of representative ODNR wetland projects and conducting lower intensity monitoring on others.

“I like to describe it as the difference between a doctor sort of taking your vital signs versus a full medical examination,” Kinsman-Costello said. “It’s a lot more intensive. And in our case, we want to do that both for healthy and unhealthy wetlands. We want to monitor a variety of approaches to learn lessons about what is or is not more effective at mitigating phosphorus and nitrogen loads.”

“When it comes to restoring wetlands aimed at filtering nutrients, there are many questions that come to mind,” explained Eric Saas, H2Ohio wetlands program manager, ODNR. “What are the best types of wetlands to restore? What restoration features or materials should be emphasized? Where are the most effective places on the landscape to situate restored wetlands?”

Now, researchers are working to answer these questions. In 2023, H2Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program researchers visited 51 wetland projects across 267 unique visits, collecting more than 1,800 water samples and 700 soil samples. The program employs more than 30 people: 12 academic principal investigators, three post-doctoral researchers, four full-time central coordination and data management staff, and 14 technical, field, and lab staff. Meanwhile, more than 10 graduate or doctoral students have partnered with the program for their theses, and about 40 undergraduate students have had the chance to train and learn in H2Ohio wetlands.

So far, results suggest that every wetland studied is either doing no harm — not releasing additional nutrients — or is effective at preventing nutrients from moving downstream, Kinsman-Costello said. As the team gathers more data, they’ll be able to demonstrate this further. Insights are already informing how ODNR can optimize their wetlands program.

“The unique partnership that we formed with the LEARN H2Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program has been critical to improving our prioritization and design of new H2Ohio wetland restorations, tracking our progress, and even revisiting our completed projects to improve their performance,” Saas said.

Moving forward, the monitoring program hopes to expand their engagement with communities and conservation partners to make data collection more participatory, with volunteer science, Kinsman-Costello added. Volunteers could help expand the network’s monitoring capacity, most importantly during large rain events.

Recently, the network has taken steps to include non-governmental organizations and industry partners as non-voting members, Winslow said. LEARN also hopes to address topics such as aquaculture, acid mine drainage, and birds through future efforts.

“All of these other groups are saying: we want to know what the academics can do, and we want to know what the agencies want,” he said.

To learn more about LEARN, contact learnetwork@osu.edu, visit LakeErieAndAquaticResearch.org, or attend the upcoming 2024 H2Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program Annual Update webinar on Dec. 4.

Ohio Sea Grant is supported by The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University Extension, and NOAA Sea Grant, a network of 34 Sea Grant programs nation-wide dedicated to the protection and sustainable use of marine and Great Lakes resources. Stone Laboratory is Ohio State’s island campus on Lake Erie and is the research, education, and outreach facility of Ohio Sea Grant and part of CFAES School of Environment and Natural Resources.