High Tech Lab Helps Researchers Understand Wetlands

The prairie marshes, ponds and streams near this town just north of Chicago would look familiar to the Europeans who first settled northern Illinois 150 years ago.

But the wetlands today are being fed by a maze of underground pipes with the flow of water from the Des Plaines River regulated by a computer.

It’s part of a $10-million project to help scientists better understand wetlands. Researchers worldwide are watching, because the work could become a model for similar projects to restore vital marshes and swamps.

“We’re aiming for a natural prairie landscape, so when you look across it you will see what the early explorers would have seen,” said Donald Hey, who heads the 450-acre Des Plaines River Wetlands Demonstration Project.

‘Trying to Compensate’

“Most of what we’re doing is trying to compensate for the loss of landscape through the introduction of concrete and controls,” Hey said. He is director of Wetlands Research Inc., a nonprofit group funded by corporate and government grants.

Nationwide, more than half of the 200 million acres of wetlands that existed when European settlers arrived on the continent have disappeared. They continue to be destroyed at an annual rate of 275,000 acres, or more than one-third the area of Rhode Island, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Wetlands--marshes, swamps and bayous--can soak up flood waters and help improve water quality, many conservationists say.

“One of the key values of wetlands is they serve as a kind of a filter--some people might call it a kidney--within an aquatic system,” said David Davis, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s wetlands protection program.

“We need to be finding ways to restore areas that have been degraded,” Davis said in a telephone interview from Washington.

May Serve as Model

He said the Des Plaines project probably will be examined around the country as a model for other projects that have been spurred by increased awareness of wetlands and their benefits.

The 3-mile stretch of the Des Plaines River, about an hour’s drive north of Chicago’s Loop, will in the next few years be restored to the kind of flora and fauna that inhabited the site before settlers drained it for farming in the 1850s.

“We’re reversing a 130-year trend,” Hey said. “We’re taking out a lot of vegetation that is ecologically out of place.”

Much of the vegetation that had overtaken the natural plants has been cleared. That has involved bulldozing the land to conform more to its natural contour and taking out many of the trees that settlers had planted.

“It was choked--it was overgrown with trees when we started,” Hey said. “I’ve been amazed that there hasn’t been more outcry over the cutting of the trees.”

Migratory Birds Return

Where the project has been completed, the bulrush marshes are peppered with highlands of oak, making the site a textured patchwork of browns and grays. Since the beginning of the spring, it has begun to turn various shades of green and migratory birds have returned to roost.

Hey hopes to see more of the osprey, heron and bufflehead duck, as well as fox and beaver that have already begun to repopulate the area.

“It’s amazing the change we’ve had in waterfowl,” Hey said. “The more we open up the land, the more we’ll see the waterfowl coming back.”

The site looks like a nature preserve, but with numerous conduits, pumps and monitoring stations hooked up to an on-site computer, the project is also a laboratory for experimenting with various aspects of wetlands management.

“One of the things that is particularly interesting about the project is that it combines both wetlands restoration and applied research,” said Davis of the EPA. “It’s kind of a living laboratory.”

Exploring Water Depths

Hey said the project will explore what water depths, soils and plant types are most effective in improving water quality, how long to retain the water and what kinds of other elements are needed in the system.

So far, with only $5 million of the $10-million price tag for the project raised, Hey and his colleagues have built four experimental wetland areas. They can be filled to any depth, water can be retained for any length of time and then drained in various cycles.

“We’re really trying to find out how to make wetlands work, how to restore them, how to keep them running,” Hey said. “We really don’t know which kinds of plants do the most in terms of water purification.”

Plans ultimately call for another four experimental areas by the time construction is completed in early 1990, Hey said. Congress has authorized another $2.2 million for the project, but has not yet appropriated any of the money.

Researchers From China

Scientists from various states have visited the site, and in March a group of wetlands researchers from China toured the project.

A documentary film and manual on wetlands restoration are also planned.

Lt. Col. Jess Franco, Chicago district coordinator for the Army Corps of Engineers, said the corps hoped to use much of the data from the project to restore other wetlands.

“What’s being done here can be used for similar wetlands projects across the nation,” Franco said. “In Louisiana, on the coast of California, in Florida--they’re different from what we see in the Midwest. But this is a good first step.”