Restoring the Great Black Swamp William J. Mitsch, Ph.D. Eminent Scholar and Director, Everglades Wetland Research Park, Florida Gulf Coast University, Naples, Florida, USA Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University Editor-in-Chief, Ecological Engineering Excess nitrogen and phosphorus are causing global change to aquatic ecosystems far in excess of any change we have seen so far with climate change Source: World Resource Institute “More than 750 aquatic ecosystems worldwide currently suffer from degraded ecosystem services due to urban and agricultural inputs that cause water quality impairments such as hypoxic ‘dead zones’ and harmful algal blooms” Jay Martin, OSU proposal, 2014 Wetlands provide valuable ecosystem services: •Water purification •Flood regulation/ storm protection •Biodiversity islands and corridors •Climate regulation (Carbon sequestration) •Locations for human relaxation and nature observation/education Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Mississippi-Ohio-Missouri River Basin Major nitrate sources in MOM Mississippi-Ohio-Missouri (MOM) General extent of hypoxia in Gulf of Mexico Basin Restoration Mississippi River Basin boundary Mississippi-Ohio-Missouri (MOM) Basin Restoration Mitsch et al. 2001. BioScience 51: 373-388 Better Fertilizer Management Created/Restored Restored Wetlands Riparian Bottomlands 2 million ha (5 million acres) of these ecosystems are needed Wilma H. Schiermeier Olentangy River Wetland Research Park at The Ohio State University Summer 2010 Volume 72, SPECIALNovemberISSUE2014 72 Volume 72, November 2014 ISSN 0925-8574 CONTENTS Ecological Contents list/abstracts published in: Cambridge EcologicalScientific AbstrEngineeringacts; Current Contents/Agriculture, Biology and Environmental Science; Elsevier BIOBASE; GEOBASE; Studies Abstracts, Biological Abstracts and BIOSIS Previews. Also covered in the abstract and citation database SCOPUS®. Full text available on ScienceDirect® The Olentangy River Wetland Research Park: Two Decades of Research on Ecosystem Services Engineering ECOLOGICAL ENGINEERING Guest Editors Vol THE JOURNAL OF 1,2 . William J. Mitsch 72 3 ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION Julie K. Cronk ( 1420 Li Zhang4,5 ) 1 – X 1Eminent Scholar and Director, Everglades Wetland Research Park, Florida Gulf Coast University, X X 4940 Bayshore Drive, Naples, FL, 34112, USA 2Founding Director and Professor Emeritus, Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 43202, USA S 3Assistant Professor, Department of Biological and Physical Sciences, Columbus State Community College, 550 E. Spring St., Columbus, OH, 43215, USA p 4Assistant Director, Everglades Wetland Research Park, Florida Gulf Coast University, 4940 Bayshore Drive, Naples, FL, 34112, USA ec 5Former Assistant Director, Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 43202, USA ial Is This publication is partially from presentations at the 4th International EcoSummit “Ecological Sustainability: Restoring the Planet’s Ecosystem Services” held 1–5 October 2012 in Columbus, Ohio, USA. s Available online at www.sciencedirect.com u ScienceDirect e 05101 Special Issue: The Olentangy River Wetland Research Park: ELSEVIER Two Decades of Research on Ecosystem Services Guest Editors: William J. Mitsch, Julie K. Cronk and Li Zhang Editor-in-chief William J. Mitsch Source: Mitsch et al. In press. Ecol. Eng (Nov 2014) Source: Mitsch et al. In press. Ecol. Eng (Nov 2014) in press (Nov 2014) Ecol. Eng. Editorial Unifying a city with its natural riverine environment for the benefit of both: Extending Ohio’s only Wetland of International Importance to a much larger river ecosystem corridor William J. Mitsch, Ph.D. Chair, U.S. National Ramsar Committee Editor in Chief, Ecological Engineering Eminent Scholar and Director, Everglades Wetland Research Park, Florida Gulf Coast University, Naples, FL, 34112 USA Founding Director and Professor Emeritus, Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43202 USA Author’s Note: Much of this plan was described in a report written in early 2010 (Mitsch, 2010) and described in a radio interview from May 2010 that remains on the web at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6U_Uv7b_9I&index=4&list =FLHYBBiI_1lknXtWewwNMMlQ The Florida Everglades Kissimmee River Lake Okeechobee Big Cypress Swamp The Everglades Gulf of “River of Grass” Mexico Coastal Mangroves Treatment Wetlands in the Everglades aka Stormwater Treatment Area (STA’s) Lake Okeechobee Stormwater Everglades Treatment Agricultural Areas (light Area green) 57,000 acres of these wetlands have been Florida Everglades created! Stormwater Treatment Areas (STAs) upstream of Everglades Stormwater Treatment Areas (STAs) upstream of Everglades STA 1W Phosphorus (last 5 years) " $ ! " # ! Outlow Inlow ""! ppb "!! &%! &$! &#! &"! &!! Phosphorus, %! $! otal T #! "! ! "!!% "!! ' "!&! "!&& "!&" AVERAGE INFLOW 191 ppb 10 ppb AVERAGE OUTFLOW 35 ppb AVERAGE REDUCTION 82% Stormwater Treatment Area (STA) mesocosm experiment Last 6 months, September 2012 – March 2013 #! *+,-./ '# '! 0 12 &# ##0 3.+45.- &! 6 7485-9-: %# 9:);#:)2<;= %! ;-8.<=759> 8 - 7+? $# )$ 6 7485-9-: 7 07/@57>> $! # 374479- ! !"#$ &'$ ()* +"' ,-. /"0 1-2 ()$)% $!)$ $!)& $%)$ $%)& $)&$ &)%)% ')%)% 3453 3456 G Model ECOENG 3292 No. of Pages 12 Ecological Engineering xxx (2014) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Engineering j o u r nal homep age: w w w . e l s e vie r . c o m / l o c a t e/e col e n g Protecting the Florida Everglades wetlands with wetlands: Can stormwater phosphorus be reduced to oligotrophic conditions? William J. Mitsch a ,b ,*, Li Zhang a , Darryl Marois a ,b , Keunyea Song b ,c a Everglades Wetland Research Park, Florida Gulf Coast University, 4940 Bayshore Drive, Naples, FL 34112, USA b Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA c School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska, 3310 Holdrege Street, Lincoln, NE 68583-0974, USA A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article history: The Florida Everglades is being threatened by high-nutrient stormwater coming from agricultural runoff. Received 23 June 2014 The main nutrient problem is phosphorus, which causes the highly oligotrophic sawgrass (Cladium Received in revised form 23 September 2014 jamaicense) communities in the northern Everglades to become eutrophic Typha latifolia/T. domingensis Accepted 3 October 2014 communities. Current government directives require that the total phosphorus concentration of storm Available online xxx water drainage into the Everglades be limited to approximately 10 ppb (mg-P/L). Over 23,00 0 ha treatment wetlands, referred to locally as stormwater treatment areas (STAs), have been created from Keywords: farmland to treat the stormwater. They are generally effective in removing 6 0–80% of the total Phosphorus Florida Everglades phosphorus; however, the 10 ppb goal has rarely been achieved. A three-year experiment, involving Treatment wetlands mesocosms planted with Everglades-native wetland plants was conducted in the Florida Everglades from Stormwater treatment March 2010 to March 2013. Eighteen flow-through mesocosms (6 m x 1 m x 1 m with 40-cm water Cladium jamaicense depth) received about 2.6 cm/day inflow. The eighteen mesocosms were randomly assigned with six Nymphaea odorata different plant communities with three replicates of each treatment, consisting of sawgrass (C. Typha domingensis jamaicense); waterlily (Nymphaea odorata); cattail (Typha domingensis); submerged aquatic vegetation Najas guadalupensis (SAV) including Najas guadalupensis, and Chara sp. and a Nymphaea–Eleocharis sp. mixed community; and soil without vegetation as a control. Total phosphorus (TP) in the inflow water was 25 ± 1 mg-P/L (n = 55) over the 3 years. Through 2012 the average outflow of all of the treatments was 34 ± 1 mg-P/L, a 51% decrease from the average outflow of 69 ± 6 mg-P/L for 2011. Outflows began to be routinely lower than the inflow in the 3rd year of the study. The average total phosphorus concentration decreased overall to 19 ± 1 (n = 5) at the end of the study in 2 013 suggesting that the suspected phosphorus reflux from the Lake Erie Algal Blooms “Nutrient impairment continues to plague Lake Erie, impacting an $11.5 billion tourism industry” Ohio Lake Erie Phosphorus Task Force (Nov 2013) Satellite Image from Sept 3, 2011 of Western Lake Erie (Michalak et al. 2013) PNAS SANDUSKY, Ohio – “A green slime is blooming once again around Lake Erie and anglers, boaters and tourism officials are hoping it won't toss a toxic monkey wrench into everyone's fun on the water.” D'Arcy Egan, The Plain Dealer, August 24, 2013 Lake Erie Thursday, August 21, 2014 Mayor says water crisis is similar to 9/11 Both were wake-up calls, led to second-guessing BY TOM TROY, BLADE POLITICS WRITER Mayor D. Michael Collins said on Monday that the water emergency that crippled Toledo’s water supply Aug. 2 was like the terrorist attack suffered by the United States on Sept. 11, 2001 — a wake-up call to community action. And Toledo City Council’s utilities committee on Monday delved into the Aug. 2-4 crisis that made Toledo a national byword for the health threat posed by blooming algae. Mr. Collins said in an interview with The Blade’s editorial board and a Blade reporter that just as 9/11 created a change in Americans’ attitude toward terrorism preparedness, so the great algae bloom of 2014 should not be ignored. Sources of Phosphorus Metric to Lake Erie, 2003-2011 tons P/yr Non-point