Lakeside News Spring 1998

Greetings from Florida
Summer 1998
Fossil Discovered
President's Report
Girls Summer Camp
Studying the Lakes
Adult Nature Weekend

Greetings from Florida

By Arnold van der Valk, Director

I am spending the 1997/1998 academic year on a faculty improvement leave in Florida. Because of all the building activity at the Lab this year, this was not the ideal year to be away. (The planning for this leave started before these projects were initiated.) Consequently, I am missing all the excitement associated with the construction of the new Waitt Water Quality Laboratory and with the renovation of the Mess Hall from a summer to a year-round facility. I have been able to experience both projects vicariously through photographs that I have been getting regularly. Nevertheless, this is a poor substitute for actually experiencing these projects on a day to day basis. I can hardly wait to see the new Waitt Laboratory and the “new” Mess Hall when I get back this summer.

Having to learn about the progress being made on these construction projects indirectly has thrown into sharp focus for me what I consider to be one of the major shortcomings of modern life--we are becoming increasingly richer in information, but poorer in experiences. I have received lots of information about these projects--blueprints, construction reports, photographs, etc., but I have no real experience of what it is like to be involved in the construction or renovation of a building . I did not experience the thrill of seeing the foundation dug, the walls going up, and the roof being completed, etc. On the other hand, I avoided the frustrations caused by the delays due to bad weather, by a subcontractor not showing up on schedule, by the wrong material being delivered, etc.

Fortunately, I have been able to experience a great deal of South Florida. For the first time in 25 years, I am living in an urban area. My home and office are in Palm Beach Gardens, which is at the northern end of one of the finest examples of urban sprawl in the United States. There are over 11,000,000 people living in the narrow belt between the Atlantic Ocean and the Greater Everglades. This megalopolis starts at Miami and runs north to Jupiter, which is just to the north of Palm Beach Gardens. There are many advantages to living here: the weather, lots of fine restaurants, theaters, and museums, and incredible recreational opportunities of all kinds. My office is in a building that also houses a hockey rink! There are also lots of drawbacks: there is much too much traffic, everything is more expensive, parking places are nearly impossible to find, and the high crime rate and its underlying social problems are worrisome.

There is, however, much more to South Florida than sunshine, urban sprawl, angst, and road rage. It also is remarkably easy to experience the “real” Florida. We live 10 minutes from the beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and only five minutes from the eastern fringes of the Greater Everglades. In other words, it is very simple and cheap to go swimming, snorkeling, beach combing, hiking, camping, canoeing, fishing, SCUBA diving, etc. What has made it possible for us and millions of others to experience the real Florida are a whole series of public and private institutions that have established preserves and set up interpretive centers so that visitors can understand and appreciate what they are experiencing. What I am talking about are not the well known parks in South Florida such as Everglades National Park, whose entrance gate is two hours by interstate from where we live, but a host of mostly small preserves and parks run by the State of Florida, local counties and cities, conservation groups, and universities. These institutions collectively operate a series of environmental education and interpretive centers that act as a “learning trail.” By following this trail, a visitor can learn about and experience every kind of aquatic, coastal, and terrestrial habitat in South Florida.

These small preserves and their interpretive centers in Florida have made me realize how much more Iowa Lakeside Laboratory could contribute to improving the experiences of visitors to the Iowa Great Lakes region. I have found that it is more difficult to experience the real Iowa than the real Florida. There are not many places in Iowa to which you can go to learn about and visit our prairies, wetlands, and lakes. If all goes well Lakeside will become such a place. In the next five years, Lakeside is to become a year-round environmental education facility. The Waitt Water Quality Laboratory with its new classrooms and the renovated Mess Hall are the first major steps toward making this a reality. The construction of new year-round housing units, which could begin as early as this fall, and the renovation and winterization of other buildings will make it feasible for people of all kind, grade school students to retirees, to visit Lakeside in order to learn about the natural wonders of Northwest Iowa.

The ongoing and planned improvements in our facilities have begun the process of converting Lakeside into an attractive and effective education and interpretive center. We also will need to develop and run programs on prairies, wetlands, and lakes that will be suitable for visitors of all ages, and we will need to develop an interpretive center, most likely by renovating Mahan Hall, out of which to run these programs. In other words, I will get many opportunities to experience new things at Lakeside, including the construction and renovation of buildings, in the next few years.

Summer 1998

By Sue Sprong, Secretary
Iowa Lakeside Laboratory

Registration for this summer’s courses at Iowa Lakeside Laboratory is going well. The first term (May 26 or June 1-June 19) courses are Archaeology (starts May 26), Ecology (starts May 26), Environmental Geology of Northwest Iowa, Fish Ecology, and Wetland Ecology. Second term (June 22-July 17) courses are Aquatic Biology, Ecology and Systematics of Diatoms, Evolution, Plant Taxonomy, and Prairie Ecology. Third term (July 20-August 7 or 14) courses include Freshwater Invertebrates, Field Mycology (ends August 14), Landscape Approaches to Environmental Planning, Plant-Animal Interactions, and Soil Genesis and Landscape Relationships (ends August 14). All of these courses are offered for one credit per week through one of the three regents' universities. Following the Ecology and Systematics of Diatoms course, Dr. Eugene Stoermer will offer a Diatom Clinic, July 20-24, for professionals or advanced graduate students. This clinic can be taken for one credit or for non-credit by paying a $175 laboratory fee.

For those interested in a shorter course, Lakeside offers seven Natural History Week courses August 9- 14. These courses are non-technical introductions to a specific aspect of the natural history of the Upper Midwest or techniques for studying natural history. The courses are Amphibians and Reptiles, Nature Photography, Mushrooms and Other Fungi, Fish Biology, Prairies and Prairie Restoration, Life in Lakes, and SCUBA Diving. These courses can be taken for one credit or for non-credit. The non- credit fee for these courses is $125.

Birds and Birding is another non-technical course being offered June 22-26. Field Archaeology offers an opportunity for participants to take part in an archaeological dig during one of the following weeks: May 26-29, June 1-5, June 8-12, or June 15-19. Either one of these courses can be taken for one credit or non-credit ($125). These two courses and the Natural History Week course can be taken for credit through one of the regents' universities or Iowa Lakes Community College.

Two new courses are being offered for teachers this summer. They are Project WET and The Leopold Education Project.

Project WET is a kindergarten through 12th grade program which focuses on water use for all water users. It has a strong science base upon which environmental issues having to do with water use are investigated. As an inter-disciplinary program, it is designed to supplement existing curricula. Topics such as surface water, ground water, water quality, water management, water’s cultural impact, and water conservation are included in the course. Project WET will provide experiential learning that will be transferable into the classroom. This course will meet July 27-31.

The Leopold Education Project is a curriculum for 6th-12th grade students that uses the epic book, A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold as a basis for many inside and outside learning activities in science, math, social studies, fine arts, and language arts. The goals of the curriculum are to create an ecologically literate citizenry by elevating student awareness of the natural world, fine turning the skills necessary to read the landscape and instilling a love, respect, and admiration for the land so that each individual might develop a personal land ethic. Leopold believed that education was the primary method of achieving land health and earth-compatible values. Leopold advocated a harmonious relationship between humans and the components of the earth as a way to achieve land health. The Leopold Education Project Workshop gives teachers the chance to learn about Leopold, explore his writings, and learn about and use the teacher’s guide with lessons for students to use outside and inside. The lessons include activities in writing, observing, hypothesizing, and taking care of our outdoor world. Participants in the workshop will receive a teacher’s guide, a set of task cards for outdoor activities, a copy of the Sand County Almanac and a video tape titled A Prophet for All Seasons, a description of Leopold’s life and the LEP. These materials are made possible through a State of Iowa REAP grant.

For information on courses being offered this summer at Lakeside, call me at 515-294-2488 or check our World Wide Web site at http://www.public.iastate.edu/~Lakeside.

Fossil Discovered

By Michelle Bauer

What started out as the typical class field trip for one Lakeside Lab student last summer ended up as the discovery of a lifetime.

Anthony Nielsen was with his Prairie Ecology class when he stumbled across a 30 million-year-old fossil.

“I slid down the hill and just happened to see it in the rock,” Nielsen said.

“We were climbing up a mountain and as it came down, we slid down because it was steep, and I just happened to find the jawbone of an oreodont,” Nielsen said.

The oreodont was a mammal which existed 40 million years ago and became extinct three million years ago, with no living direct descendants.

The full skeleton of the oreodont resembles that of a pig; however, due to the structure of their teeth, it was believed they chewed cud like a cow. According to Nielsen the nickname of the oreodont was the “ruminating pig”.

After finding the fossil, Nielsen and two classmates looked around and found other parts of the bone embedded in the rock, which they couldn’t pry out.

“We knew it was a jaw because we could see the teeth, and we knew it was a young animal from a class I took at Iowa State earlier,” Nielsen said.

He described the teeth as sharp, and they had turned black as they turned into sediment.

“We had no idea how old it was,” he said.

Nielsen first took the find to his instructor. The next day he took it to the park ranger, who identified it as the oreodont.

“I had to fill out a report. Then we had to draw out three landmarks on a map so we could find it again, since there was no one to take us to the site,” he said.

The park ranger said there’s a possibility they could perform a dig at the site, and if they do, Nielsen will be one of the first to know. According to the park officials, the oreodont is one of the most common mammalian fossils found in the area.

“Some people find fossils and a lot of people look for them. It’s not that uncommon,” Nielsen said.

Nielsen, a senior at Iowa State University majoring in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology, was not on a fossil find that day. He was with his classmates on a field trip for his Prairie Ecology class offered through Iowa Lakeside Laboratory.

The class of eight students took a trip to the Badlands and other sites surveying prairie vegetation for one week. They also traveled to the Niobrara River in Nebraska.

“This was definitely the coolest thing that happened on the trip,” Nielsen said.

Waitt Water Quality Laboratory - Winter 1998

President's Report

By Sue Richter
Friends of Lakeside Lab, Inc.

Thanks to all our friends for making the Waitt Water Quality Laboratory a reality! Through the generosity of over 180 friends and alumni of the Lab over $840,000 was raised to build this facility. A $400,000 challenge grant was received from the Kind World Foundation, formerly the Waitt Foundation. The Lab will gratefully be named the Waitt Water Quality Laboratory. Construction for the year-round facility began in the fall of 1997, and it will be operational for the summer of 1998. We are on schedule and on budget!

Steve Fisher has been named the lab technician and will oversee its functions. The Lab will monitor our watersheds, conduct research, and educate people on environmental issues. It will be utilized by the regent’s institutions, private colleges, community colleges, K-12 schools, and local environmental groups.

Dedication has been set for Friday, July 10, 1998. Please join us for this momentous occasion.

The Friends of Lakeside Lab will also provide $2,500 in student scholarships for the summer 1998 session. They have also been working on programming grants.

The Dining Hall renovation is another exciting project at Lakeside. The Friends organization was happy to play a small role. Stylecraft, a local Milford furniture manufacturer, is donating all of the furniture for the student lounge. Interior design consultation was provided by Jane Hummel, an ISU graduate.

What has happened at Lakeside in the past five years has been a miracle. It is a wonderful example of what can happen when people and organizations work together for a common goal. Congratulations to all and thank you!

Girls Summer Camp

By Michelle Bauer

It’s bug spray rather than tanning lotion and jeans with boots rather than bathing suits with sandals.

Opting to go beyond the ordinary, this group of teenage girls experienced the environment of the Great Lakes area at the Lakeside Lab Summer Camp for Girls during the summer of 1997.

“Our school doesn’t do anything like this,” Katie Ekvall, a student from Marshalltown said. “Here we can go beyond the basics; we can do hands-on stuff,” she said.

The camp offers hands-on environmental learning for girls who are middle school students from around the state of Iowa. Approximately 15 girls participated each of the two weeks the camp was offered.

“Our goal is to maintain girls’ interest in studying science,” Bev Marshall Goodall, Director of Women in Science and Engineering Program at the University of Iowa said. “In the classroom there’s not as much information integrated into hands-on learning as there is here,” she said.

Girls interested in every aspect of science, from field and biology to veterinarian school to anesthesiology attended the camp.

“We’ve been having lots of fun,” Savannah McClimon, a student from Charlotte said. “We just stick with basics at my school, which is good, but this way we get to go beyond that,” she said.

Their first morning, they took a pontoon tour of Little Millers Bay in West Lake Okoboji to study the beauty of the aquatic biology.

That afternoon, they were hiking across Cayler Prairie, identifying the numbers of plant species in a measured area and identification of those species. They also learned how to measure wind speed and moisture in the open field.

“They are studying plant and animal interactions in several habitats,” Goodall said.

Traipsing through the tallgrass areas of Cayler Prairie, Tom Rosberg, faculty member at Lakeside Lab, points out different plants to the girls. They are fascinated with the mountain mint, wild licorice, and lead plants, bombarding him with questions and wild guesses to the answers.

“I think this has been the funnest one we have had so far,” Ekvall said of the nature hike.

According to Goodall, the first three days are filled with learning about data collection and analyzation of plant species. They learn about plant ecology and classification, how to make plant presses, aquatic biology, and entomology.

The last few days, the girls got into groups of two and worked on independent projects. “They collected their own data and put together a poster of investigation which they have designed,” Goodall said.

The week wraps up with poster board presentations from the girls and a trip to Arnolds Park Amusement Park on Friday.

While this was only the third year of the camp, Goodall said it was successful for the participants.

“Ten of the 16 girls from last year showed an interest of wanting to return, which gives us the indication that they liked it,” she said.

“The one thing different we did this year was we invited back the girls from last year,” she said. “Some came back to do different projects,” she said.

Goodall said while most of the girls are put with others in the same grade, those returning from last year helped out the newcomers and served as group leaders.

According to Goodall, this camp is a collaborative effort of the three state universities. Mary Ann Evans with Women in Science and Engineering from Iowa State University and Goodall work with the fundraising and administrative duties of the camp.

Lyn Countryman, the lead teacher at the camp and administration at the University of Northern Iowa, organizes the curriculum of the camp. She collaborates with instructors at Lakeside Lab and other teachers, preferably women, to set up the educational activities.

“We try to get female role models as much as possible,” Countryman said. “It’s really important for the girls to see women in the science field,” she said. “The girls can ask questions as ‘Why did you decide to be in science’ and ‘Why are you here’,” she said.

Countryman also sees the camp as a way to focus on promoting high self esteem in the girls.

“We talk to girls about how to feel good and live a successful life in today’s society,” she said. “It’s a difficult role for women to be a career female and how do you balance it all,” Countryman said. “Many feel they are supposed to be superman,” she said.

“The neat thing is we start to see them seeing themselves as scientists,” she said. “The girls realize it’s OK to like science,” she said.

“By starting them younger than at the university level, we hope to keep the girls interested in science throughout the years,” Goodall said. “We hope they’ll want to come back here when they reach the university, and they will already know the techniques and habitats,” she said.

Studying the Lakes

By Michelle Bauer

Scuba diving in the Great Lakes was just an everyday part of the job for botanist Glenn Crum last summer.

Crum did a study of submersed aquatic macrophytes in West Lake Okoboji, the chain of East Lakes, and Big Spirit Lake.

With assistance from Jacqueline Clark, an aquatic bioscience major from the University of Glasgow in Scotland and some help from the DNR, Crum spent the summer of 1997 on the lake exploring the aquatic plant life.

“I’ve been provided with a considerable amount of help from Iowa Lakeside Laboratory, West Okoboji Protective Association, and the DNR,” Crum said. “The DNR has really been helpful in providing people like Eric Bookmeyer, who has been diving with me.”

Wax pen and paper in hand, Crum dives to the depths of the lake, tallying the numbers and kinds of aquatic flora found at different locations. Clark drove the boat, following Crum and shielding him from the waves of nearby jet skiers and power boaters. Bookmeyer went down with Crum, carrying the compass and assisting Crum under the water.

“I’m driving my hand into the bottom of the lake, something no one else is doing,” Crum said. “This is a very simple way of considering the health of the lake. It’s like a health practitioner feels your body to feel the stiffness to see what kind of life you’ve been leading. That’s kind of what I’m doing to the lake. I’m stuffing my hand into it.”

According to Crum, this is not just a literal statement.

I was up on North Bay (in West Lake Okoboji) and I was able, with no problem at all, to swim with my arm extended nearly to my shoulder, well past the elbow, pushed into the silt,” he said. “This is alarming.”

Crum said this is an indication of quick aging in the lake. “There seems to be the popular opinion around here that West Lake is in ever so much better shape than it was and maybe it is, but if you get the idea that it’s not aging rapidly, guess again,” he said.

He said the siltation is covering up places where plant life and bottom dwellers grew. “I have yet to see a clam, and I have yet to see a crawdaddy; and its because their habitat is being silted in,” he said.

“North Bay and Emerson Bay seem to be the very worse, followed by Smith Bay,” Crum said.

He accredits the siltation of the lake to fertilizer runoff from yards and increased pressure from powerboats.

“If you want a green lake, have a green yard. If you want a blue lake, have a brown yard,” he said.

He believes that the 300 foot speed limit should be enforced to all boat traffic around the entire lake to decrease the pressure, especially around the shoreline.

Crum not only scavenged the lake for answers to his own questions, but also made comparisons to past studies. This was not the first study of its kind done in this region, nor the first done by Crum.

According to Crum, the first study of aquatic flora in the Great Lakes was performed 100 years ago by Bohimel Shimek, followed by a similar study in 1926 by Pammel. Crum then followed in their footsteps, with the advantage of comparing his own studies to theirs.

“They both left rather good records,” he said. “I can go to them, look at them, and compare them to things I’m finding now,” he said.

“In 1972, I was asked to do a study of submersed flora of West Lake Okoboji, Big Spirit, and the East Okoboji chains,” he said. “It occurred to me a few years ago to redo my study. Now I’m comparing things from what I saw 25 years ago and what these people saw 100 years ago.”

Because he can compare his findings to those over a century old, Crum can see trends occurring in this region. The chain of lakes in the East Lake Okoboji chain are particularly grabbing Crum’s attention.

“Those lakes without a doubt have changed the most and fluctuated the most over the last 100 years,” he said. “100 years ago, those lakes had a huge amount of bullrushes around the edge. The lake from bank to bank and one end to the other were covered with submersed vegetation.”

“By the time I got to them in 1972, there were virtually no emergent vegetation at all,” Crum said. “The number of species went from 15 species at the turn of the century to three or four in 1972.”

Now, however, Crum is finding that the results are coming full circle, with another increase in vegetation.

“This year (1997), consistently from one end to the other of the East Okoboji chain of lakes there were 11 or 12 different species,” he said.

“Big Spirit Lake is probably least changed from 100 years ago till now,” Crum said. In this lake, he has found a decrease in emergent vegetation; and submersed plants that have floating leaves are not nearly as widespread as they were 25 or 100 years ago.

Crum has also found considerable changes in the algae abundance of charaphytes, Nitella, and Tolypella. Chara, according to Crum, are a large, odd algae which thrive in clean water.

“That’s a really important part of Spirit Lake and extremely important part of West Lake,” he said. “I’m sure there also used to be a large amount of charaphytes on East Lake, and now they’re virtually absent.”

According to Clark, the field study involves considerable collection of plant species. “Half of it involves us driving around and using the garden rake and grapple pulling up plants,” she said. “The other half is getting the plants by diving.”

Clark snorkeled near the shorelines, gathering plant samples. She pressed and dried these plants to add to the collection which exists in the Lakeside Laboratory herbarium.

“That will be neat to have my plants in the herbarium for future years,” Clark said.

“This is fantastic fieldwork. I’m ecstatic to have this opportunity work with Glenn and be involved with such a major study,” she said.

Crum hopes his fieldwork will be seriously considered by the people of this area for the future of the Iowa Great Lakes.

“I’m suggesting the community supports more underwater research,” Crum said. “I think there should be scholarships supporting people to study these lakes.”

“A regular program of underwater surveys would be very worthwhile,” he said.

“The economic tension that drives this community is the lakes, and its the rather decent quality of the water that attracts people here, but yet if the water quality isn’t maintained, the attractiveness will diminish,” Crum said.

Adult Nature Weekend

An Adult Nature Weekend will take place at Iowa Lakeside Laboratory Friday evening, August 14, through Sunday noon, August 16. This is an opportunity for adults to learn more about nature. A bird hike, field trip covering the geology of the area, lectures, and clinics are a few of the activities being planned for this weekend.

More details should be available by May. Please call Sue at 515-294-2488 for more information.