May is American Wetlands Month and what better way to celebrate than with a whole webinar on wetlands! Although many think of wetlands as secluded places out in nature, they can actually be found in some of Iowa’s largest cities. In this week’s webinar, Urban Wetlands 101, John Swanson with Polk County Public Works dives into the important role wetlands can play in urban landscapes.
With increased urbanization comes changes in the way water flows across the land. This water can no longer absorb into the ground and is now sent directly to water bodies via underground storm drains. This altered movement of water not only aids in the transport of pollutants, but also allows water to move faster which can result in unstable stream banks. Swanson notes that one solution to the problem is working with individual homeowners to implement practices like rain gardens, permeable pavers, and rain barrels. Another solution to this problem is creating urban wetlands.
Two types of wetlands can be found in urban settings – stormwater wetlands and urban oxbows. These wetlands can have many goals, but as Swanson notes, the major goal is to slow the water to prevent issues downstream. While there are many parts to a successful urban wetland, Swanson breaks it down into 10 lessons learned from their efforts. To learn more about these 10 lessons, watch this week’s full webinar. Also, tune in next week to hear from Wendong Zhang on Decoding Iowa Farmers’ Understanding of Edge-of-Field Practices and check out the archives to watch past webinars.
Widespread adoption of edge-of-field (EOF) practices—such as saturated buffers, bioreactors, and water quality enhancement wetlands—is vital to achieving the goal of 45% nutrient reduction outlined in the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy. However, few farmers in the state have embraced EOF practices on their land—the Decoding Iowa Farmers’ Understanding of Edge-of-Field Conservation Practices project investigates why. Over 1,000 farmers and landowners across five different HUC-8 watersheds in the Des Moines Lobe shared their perceptions and concerns about EOF practices in two rounds of surveys.
Lack of understanding of various aspects of EOF practices makes farmers and landowners uncertain and reluctant to adopt them:
EOF Practices Themselves: EOF practices are newer practices, rooted in recent scientific advancements. Farmers and landowners have little experience with how the practices work and how to maintain them.
Environmental Benefits: Saturated buffers and water quality enhancement wetlands offer multiple benefits—improving water quality and wildlife habitat—whereas bioreactors only benefit water quality. None of these EOF practices are designed to enhance soil health.
Governmental Regulations: More than a third of farmers surveyed are apprehensive about bureaucratic “red tape” involved with adopting conservation practices.
Additional outreach—and more effective outreach—are critical to increased EOF adoption.
KEYS TO SUCCESS
The project identified five keys to success to increasing edge-of-field practice adoption:
Farmers respond well to clear, visual, and succinct resources.
Well-designed, easily digestible content is more effective than traditional narrative formats.
Infographics are particularly effective among farmers who have not previously participated in government conservation programs.
Including wildlife benefits on the infographics increased the likelihood farmers would adopt the practice, but was less effective in video format.
Outside of infographics, farmers prefer to hear about new practices from other farmers. Videos featuring farmers were more effective than those featuring extension professionals.
Based upon Decoding Iowa Farmers’ Understanding of Edge-of-Field Conservation Practices: Evidence from Two Surveys in 2022 and 2023, this publication is a collaboration of the Conservation Learning Group and Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University, with support from the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship-State Soil Conservation and Water Quality Committee, and Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.
Please join us for the Iowa Learning Farms webinar at noon CDT, Wednesday, May 1, featuring John Swanson, Polk County water resources supervisor, Polk County Public Works. Swanson works to promote and facilitate projects and practices to protect and improve water quality in and around Polk County, Iowa. He helps to educate constituent groups within urban and rural communities about the benefits of water conservation practices and the importance of preserving and constructing wetlands.
In the webinar, “Urban Wetlands 101,” Swanson will discuss the basics of incorporating wetlands into urban environments to help to improve water quality, manage floodwaters while enhancing aesthetic and habitat contributions. He will provide an overview of the purpose and functions of urban wetlands and discuss practices including stormwater wetlands, oxbow restorations and floodplains which have been used strategically in Iowa to manage urban drainage. Swanson will also provide insights on the strategic placement of wetlands that can provide beautiful amenities while treating hundreds of acres of runoff.
“In a state dominated by agriculture, it is always good to remember that urban areas have their own environmental footprint, and wetlands are a key to minimizing water quality impacts,” said Swanson. “Urban wetlands are one of the most impactful practices that can be installed in urban areas to improve water quality, and the intrinsic benefits of providing recreational areas, wildlife habitat and stormwater management multiply the impact in many ways. I hope this webinar will spark interest in implementation of urban wetland practices.”
Webinar participants are encouraged to ask questions of the presenters. People from all backgrounds and areas of interest are encouraged to join.
Webinar Access Instructions
To participate in the live webinar, shortly before noon CDT May 1:
A Certified Crop Adviser board-approved continuing education unit (CEU) has been applied for. Those who participate in the live webinar are eligible. Information about how to apply to receive the credit will be provided at the end of the live webinar.
Rick Pederson, Mike Bouland and Vince Sitzmann pictured during the closure of seven agricultural drainage wells in Humbdoldt County on April 8, 2024.
Agricultural drainage wells (ADWs) were developed in the early to mid 1900’s to discharge cropland tile drainage water to underground aquifers. The ADW Closure Assistance Program fund was established in 1997 to protect drinking water aquifers by cost-sharing with landowners to close agricultural drainage wells and develop alternative drainage outlets to surface streams or install alternative management practices. To date, IDALS has worked with landowners to close and adapt drainage for 195 of the wells. This virtual field day will explore the process of ADW closure, benefits to water quality and improved ease of farming with the use of innovative, alternative drainage systems.
“Ag Drainage Wells have been a focus area in Iowa for many decades. I want to commend the sustained effort to get them properly closed over the last quarter century by many landowners, partners and conservation professionals, including the team at the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship,” said Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig. “With the last 10 Ag Drainage Wells set to be closed this year, we are on the cusp of finally closing this chapter of Iowa’s history and marking another win in improving Iowa’s water quality.”
“The thing that is unique about this project in Humboldt County, is that it is at a very low elevation and there’s no practical way to have a gravity outlet. So we have been working with these 12 landowners to close seven of the remaining ten agricultural drainage wells and create a wetland mitigation bank,” noted Mike Bourland. “One of IDALS primary goals is to improve water quality in Iowa and through this project we are not only protecting water quality through the closure of these wells, but also through the creation of a wetland.”
Participants may be eligible for a Certified Crop Adviser board-approved continuing education unit. Information about how to apply to receive the CEU (if approved) will be provided at the end of the event.
Every week looks different for everyone on the Iowa Learning Farms (ILF) Water Rocks! (WR!) team. Join me as I give you a glimpse of a week in March when I traveled to three communities and spent some time in the office working on virtual outreach and other tasks for our programs.
Monday
Office day! The whole staff is almost always in on Mondays, so we can have staff meetings (every other week) and just be able to talk to each other face-to-face about projects. I worked on scheduling blog and social media posts advertising our upcoming webinar, updating sections of the year-end report draft for ILF, scheduling evaluation surveys for last week’s Virtual Field Day, and planning out social media posts for the month of April for both ILF and WR! accounts.
Tuesday
I had the morning off and then left Ames at 2:30pm for an evening Wetland and Beaver Dam workshop in Oskaloosa, of which I was the emcee. I worked with Mahaska County Soil and Water Conservation District to put on this workshop that over 30 people attended.
Wednesday
Another day in the office. I continued working on things I didn’t finish on Monday, hosted the webinar at Noon, and spent time developing our NEW YouTube Channel for ILF webinars. I also attempted to clean up my desk and successfully raided my candy dish.
Thursday
I woke up bright (actually, it was still dark) and early for a day of WR! Outreach in Council Bluffs at Iowa School for the Deaf. We talked with the students about wetlands and watersheds. On the way back to Ames, my colleague and I talked about the March Madness tournaments, mostly ISU and Iowa’s women’s teams. Go Cyclones!
Friday
I started Friday off with a couple of hours in the office and then off to Dallas Center Grimes Middle School for some more WR! Outreach. It was a Friday, so of course I had to get a group picture with the students to celebrate a great week!
To sum it all up, it was a great week! I ended up talking with over 120 youth and adults across the state of Iowa in person. I have a weakness for chocolate, enjoy talking about basketball, and LOVE teaching others about conservation practices.
Attend a workshop before you start getting in the field this season!
March 26, 2024 | 5:30-7:30pm
Mahaska County Environmental Learning Center
2342 IA-92
Oskaloosa, IA 52577
Wetlands and beaver dams have both historically been regarded as obstacles rather than assets in Iowa agricultural settings, but both contribute to water quality benefits such as the transformation of nutrients, storing floodwater, slowing the flow of water, and recharging groundwater resources. In addition, both provide habitat for local and migrating wildlife and can provide recreational opportunities for people.
The workshop includes a great program and a complimentary meal. Please RSVP to ilf@iastate.edu or 515-294-2473 to help ensure space and food!
Blake and Sally Hollis, of Lanehaven Farms, farm together outside of Waterloo in Black Hawk County. They met at Iowa State University where Blake studied Agricultural Business and Sally studied Mechanical Engineering. Blake moved back to the farm and Sally worked at John Deere in various roles until transitioning to working on the farm full-time in 2013. They raise pigs, seed corn, and row crop corn and soybeans. Recently some of their acres have become certified organic and they grow organic corn, soybeans, and winter wheat.
Implementing conservation practices on their farm is not a one-step decision for Blake and Sally. Not only does a new practice or method need to make sense based on land needs, but also align with the Hollis’ five core values – Efficient, Progressive, Integrity, Customer Wow!, and Stewardship. They have trialed and added many new practices to the farm, starting back in the mid-80’s when they began ridge tilled all of their land while Blake’s dad was farming. In the 90’s they switched to strip tilling all their acres, and today continue strip tilling corn and have switched to no-tilling their soybeans. “We do what we do because we believe it’s the right way to farm,” said Blake.
“Low risk, low-cost practices are much easier to adopt,” said Blake. The Hollis’ both emphasized how important the partnerships they’ve made over the years have helped them become early adopters to many conservation practices. Partnerships with multiple stakeholders, like the Miller Creek Water Quality Improvement Project, have allowed Sally and Blake to implement a wide range of conservation practices like cover crops and no-till, as well as edge of field practices like a bioreactor, saturated buffer and wetland. “Cost-share dollars that we’ve received have greatly accelerated our risk tolerance for trying new things,” said Blake.
Utilizing both in-field practices and edge-of-field practices, the Hollis’ and their community have seen many benefits from their efforts. That is why Blake and Sally keep looking to try new things and continue to make conservation work. Sally said, “We know so much more now than we did at the beginning of that project and we’re in a much better position to go forward and continue to make a difference and improve things.”
“Those who are able to take risks and try things out, can help lead the way for changing how it’s done in the future,” said Sally. The riskiest choice the Hollis’ have made recently, organic row crop farming. They received their certification in 2022 and hope to transition more acres to certified organic. Organic farming requires some troubleshooting for Sally and Blake as they still want to limit tillage. “This season we tried the plant green and roller crimp approach and the economics clearly beat the pants off the conventional tillage approach,” said Blake. “We hope to implement this practice for our organic soybeans across the board.”
“We look forward to continuing and growing our conservation practices,” said Sally. Blake and Sally are both very passionate about farming and what it means for their family, land, livestock, and the world. “We always say that we want to keep our eyes on the horizon and our feet on the ground,” said Sally.
Iowa Learning Farms, in partnership with the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, and Conservation Learning Group (CLG), is hosting a free virtual field day on Thursday, January 18 at 1 p.m. CT. Join us for a live discussion with Sara McMillan, professor of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University, and Karen Wilke, Associate Director of Freshwater at the Nature Conservancy.
The virtual field day will explore an oxbow in Kossuth County, including how it naturally formed and the restoration process so far. Located within an actively used pasture, the restoration process took into consideration factors like livestock safely accessing the water. These pastured oxbows help improve overall forage production by providing a place for water to collect and reduce flooding within the pasture. Additionally, by providing a water source out of the stream, these systems improve water quality through the reduction of direct contributions of bacteria from livestock in the stream and the maintenance of streambanks that help retain sediment and phosphorus.
“When we are designing these pastured oxbows, we want to be sure that we are doing a seeding plan that will be successful for livestock and the wetland,” noted Wilke. “We’re looking for something quick to establish and stabilize those banks and is hardy as well. When possible, we also use natives as they can be as nutritious and palatable to livestock as other types of pasture grasses.”
Participants may be eligible for a Certified Crop Adviser board-approved continuing education unit. Information about how to apply to receive the CEU (if approved) will be provided at the end of the event.
Starting his own small farming operation only three years ago, Iowa Learning Farms farmer partner Jacob Bolson strives to do his part to better the land through conservation. Renting his first 240 acres in the Fall of 2020, Jacob immediately began working towards bettering the land. There are several unique characteristics that drew Jacob to this piece of land in Hardin County: 139 tillable acres, 30 acres of pasture, two wetlands, some timber, and Beaver Creek intersects it. To protect the water and improve the land, Jacob implements conservation practices on all corners of his farm.
Jacob Bolson in front of his 2023 corn crop
Growing up near Decorah in northeast Iowa, agriculture has been a part of Jacob’s life from a young age when he worked on his family’s small farm and also helped his neighbors. He attended Iowa State University in 2002 to study Agricultural Engineering. It was as an undergraduate student at Iowa State that Jacob developed his passion for conservation when he participated in a research project on controlled traffic farming, a management strategy in which the same wheel tracks are used by all field operations. Shortly before receiving his degree in 2007, Jacob met his wife Lindsey. After marrying in 2009, Jacob and Lindsey became a part of her family’s operation in Hardin County. This added further opportunity to grow not only his agricultural knowledge, but his ability to utilize conservation practices.
Pasture growth after nearly three years of rest
With the hopes of farming their own land, Jacob and his wife became involved with the New Farmer Program through Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI). When they received word that a 240-acre piece of land was available to rent, they jumped at the chance. Ten years of corn-on-corn production and conventional tillage left the crop acres needing some care. The 30-acre pasture was also suffering from severe overgrazing. Seeing this, Jacob began creating a plan to turn the situation around.
With help from PFI, the Southfork Watershed Alliance , a cover crop peer group, and agricultural publications, Jacob began working to improve his land. Along with no-tillage and strip tillage, he immediately seeded a cereal rye cover crop on the row crop acres. He continues to use cover crops every year. He decided to let the pasture rest, as it had been grazed to nearly bare soil and he has watched it become healthy and thrive. Jacob is fortunate to have two natural wetlands on his property which help remove nitrate from the water draining into it from the adjacent crop field. To further help decrease the nitrate levels in the water leaving his field, Jacob installed two woodchip bioreactors in 2022.
In the future, Jacob is looking into establishing pollinator habitat on the edge of his fields and experimenting with alternative cover crops such as camelina.
Jacob Bolson next to a wood chip bioreactor control structure
While there are many opportunities for increasing conservation practices on your land, there are also many challenges. Jacob worries that the increase in land consolidation “is going to negatively impact the environmental interaction that production agriculture has with the land.” His reasoning behind this is the time it takes to complete the conservation projects on his small acres and also the limit to technical support for conservation in the counties. Jacob noted that he spent two hours in the NRCS office planning for his 240 acres. He couldn’t imagine how much time it would take if he was planning for a 5,000-acre operation.
Jacob is proud of what he has done on his farm, noting, “My favorite part is the opportunity to be connected to the land and knowing the impact of what I’m doing, positive or negative.”
Why are we building water quality wetlands? How many wetlands have been constructed in the state? How are they funded? What do the wetlands look like when constructed?
All of these questions and more were answered in the most recent Iowa Learning Farms webinar where Shane Wulf from the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship gave an update on wetlands across the state.
On average, water quality wetlands remove 52% of the nitrate concentration in tile-drainage water coming from cropland areas. They work well in helping Iowa meet its targeted nutrient reduction strategy goal, a 45% nitrate reduction.
Since 2002, IDALS has installed and monitored 129 water quality wetlands. Most of which were placed in the Des Moines Lobe with the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP). Others are located in high-priority watersheds across the state.
Currently, 3-5 wetlands are built per year. IDALS is scaling up the implementation of water quality wetlands and has over 60 wetlands under development. If you are interested in having a wetland to not only help with water quality but provide habitat and water storage, there is state and federal funding available.
Iowa Learning Farms 