Michigan Nature Monday: Michigan’s Many Water Resources

Michigan is well-known as the “Great Lakes State” but there is much more to the state’s freshwater ecosystem than the massive inland freshwater seas that garner all the attention. There is a true “underdog” in Michigan’s freshwater systems—groundwater.

In honor of National Groundwater Awareness Week (March 5-11, 2023), the Michigan Nature Association is proud to explore a vital component of Michigan’s groundwater system, fens, written by MNA volunteer Zoë Goodrow.

What is a fen?

When the final glaciers in Michigan retreated north about 8,000-12,000 years ago, they shaped landforms that eventually became the wetlands we see today. Fens are among the rarest types of wetlands – more specifically, peatlands – found in Michigan. What differentiates fens from other wetlands is their hydrology.

Fens are fed by a continuous flow of groundwater that filters through nutrient-rich layers of sediment, like limestone, resulting in an ecosystem rich in calcium and magnesium. The steady supply of groundwater into fens means that fen soils remain saturated throughout the year. This causes a reduced abundance of bacteria that break down plant materials (compared to other wetlands), resulting in a buildup of decayed plant debris – also known as peat.

Rare species in fens

Fens have 500 times more rare plant and animal species than the average acre of land in Michigan. They support nearly 60 rare species and are the Michigan equivalent of rainforests in terms of relative biodiversity. Typical plant species that are unique to fens across Michigan include sphagnum mosses, white lady slipper, fringed gentian, edible valerian, and carnivorous plants including sundews and pitcher plants. Rare animals that habituate fens include the yellow rail, Mitchell’s satyr, and eastern massasauga rattlesnake. Fens are extremely fragile and sensitive systems that are already being impacted by climate change, which does not bode well for the rare species that are endemic to fen ecosystems. Because of this, and their significance to Michigan’s biodiversity, it is important to know the guidelines for minimizing disturbance before you visit one.

Types of Michigan fens

Michigan is home to many types of fens, including the northern, prairie, patterned, and coastal fens. These different fens are characterized by the natural processes that formed them and the climatic conditions of the regions they reside in.

Prairie fen photo by Dave Cuthrell.

Northern fens are found in the Upper Peninsula and the northern half of the Lower Peninsula. They occur where a glacial outwash meets a more textured glacial feature like a kettle lake or an end moraine.

Prairie fens, located in the southern half of the Lower Peninsula, occur in former oak-savanna prairies. As their name suggests, they are dominated by a mix of prairie and wetland sedges, grasses, and forbs. These fens were formed via the same glacial processes as northern fens.

Patterned fens, also known as string bogs, also occur in the Upper Peninsula. What differentiates these fens from northern fens is that they are a series of alternating ridges and hollows, oriented parallel to the contours of the land. The natural processes responsible for forming these unique systems are still unknown. While there are several proposed hypotheses – researchers agree that an essential factor is the direction of water movement, as the ridges and hollows are consistently oriented perpendicular to the flow of groundwater. (See more on patterned fens with MNA’s Fox River Wetlands in the video linked below)

Click on the image above to watch “The Fox and the Fen”. Photo by Jason Whalen, Fauna Creative.

Coastal fens occur along Lake Michigan and Lake Huron in the Upper Peninsula and northern Lower Peninsula. The natural processes that formed them are inextricably linked to those of the Great Lakes. The water tables that influence these systems are subjected to seasonal and multi-year lake level fluctuations, so vegetation in coastal fens changes quickly when water levels change.

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To experience a fen habitat first-hand, consider visiting MNA’s Lefglen Nature Sanctuary in Jackson County. The sanctuary is home to a prairie fen and a natural flowing well visible from the south trail. Visit our online sanctuary map for directions and more information.

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Captive Rearing Strategies Could Impact Lake Sturgeon Recovery Success

by guest contributor Derek Smith

Flowing between the kitschy, Bavarian-style architecture of Frankenmuth, Michigan is the Cass River, where biologists released 104 young lake sturgeon in September 2022. Before releasing them, the biologists equipped the sturgeon with tracking and identification devices to follow the fish’s movements and survival after their release. That knowledge is critical to assess the success of sturgeon release events because there is no guarantee the sturgeon will remain where they are released.

A young lake sturgeon being released into the Cass River. The fish will leave the river after its first year, but scientists are hoping that they return when they are old enough to spawn. Photo courtesy Derek Smith.

Once numerous in North American freshwaters, lake sturgeon are considered globally endangered due in part to severe overfishing in the late 1800s and early 1900s and are absent from many rivers where they historically lived, such as the Saginaw River and its tributaries, including the Cass River. According to US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Justin Chiotti, the goal of releasing captive-raised sturgeon is to “restore historic populations to self-sustaining levels.”

But sturgeon don’t hunker down in one place. After one year, many sturgeon leave their birth rivers to live in lakes, bays, and river mouths. When they reach sexual maturity between twelve and twenty-seven years later, the sturgeon return to their natal waters, which are better suited to spawning. There, fertilized eggs and larval fish take shelter from predators between the rock crevices in cobblestone substrate and thrive on the fast-flowing, oxygen-rich water.

How sturgeon navigate back to their rivers of origin is still largely unknown, but scientists think that larval sturgeon imprint to chemical signatures in their natal waters. Later in life, the sturgeon “sniff” their way back to their natal rivers to spawn by following those chemical queues.

Imprinting captive-reared sturgeon to rivers where they are now extirpated presents a challenge to conservation biologists When sturgeon are not raised in the waters in which biologists plan to restore self-sustaining populations, the re-introduced fish might not imprint to the historic habitat, potentially reducing the return rates when the fish are old enough to spawn. ,

A lake sturgeon fish hatchery in Genoa, WI. Photo courtesy Derek Smith.

Stream-side rearing facilities could be the solution to the imprinting challenge. At these facilities, biologists raise sturgeon directly in the river water where the sturgeon will be released. The Toledo Zoo has one such facility along the Maumee River, where they have been raising fish for release into the Maumee River since 2018. Similar facilities are located in Michigan, such as the Black River facility run by Michigan State University and the Big Manistee River facility run by the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians.

According to Matt Cross, the Toledo Zoo’s Conservation Coordinator,“the idea with the stream-side facility is that the fish will pick up on the different chemical cues from the river, which they will use to return to the river to spawn.” By raising sturgeon in the waters to which they will later be released, the Zoo’s biologists are increasing the chances that the sturgeon are in the river water during the developmental stage when imprinting occurs, which Cross says is “a big question mark.”

But the stream-side facilities are costly and have water quality issues that off-site hatchery facilities optimized to grow large amounts of fish are better equipped to manage. The National Fish Hatchery in Genoa, Wisconsin is one such facility. There, U.S. Fish & Wildlife biologists rear sturgeon from eggs in Genoa well water. The facility raises hundreds to thousands of sturgeon for release into rivers each year, but there is a chance that hatchery-raised fish miss the crucial period at which imprinting occurs before they are large enough to be released. The unknown timing of when sturgeon can imprint to rivers obscures the relative effectiveness of these two rearing strategies.

Larval lake sturgeon swim around a tank filled with well water at the Genoa National Fish Hatchery. Biologists refer to the fish at this age as “free-living embryos” because they still have a yolk sac that provides all their nutrition. Photo courtesy Derek Smith.

According to Cross, “it’s a cost-benefit problem.” If sturgeon raised in well water still reliably return to the rivers where they are released, the large number of fish raised at the Genoa Hatchery could be a boon to sturgeon conservation across the Great Lakes region. On the other hand, if the hatchery-raised sturgeon wander, additional streamside facilities may prove necessary to re-introduce self-sustaining sturgeon populations to target rivers. The Cass River, for example, lacks a stream-side rearing facility and may potentially benefit from one.

To better assess the costs and benefits of each rearing strategy, biologists at the Toledo Zoo, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Ohio Division of Wildlife, Michigan State University, and the University of Toledo will test whether the two rearing-strategies impact how sturgeon return to rivers. In the summer of 2022, the biologists collected eggs and sperm from the same spawning adults in the St. Clair River, where healthy, self-sustaining populations exist today. Fertilized eggs were created by mixing sperm and egg, then half of the eggs were raised at the Genoa Hatchery while the other half were raised at the Toledo Zoo’s stream-side facility.

Once the fish were fingerling size, the biologists equipped them with PIT tags. The tags are similar to the microchips implanted into pet dogs and cats and encode an identification number linked to information about where an individual fish was released and in which facility it was raised. Whenever a released sturgeon is recaptured, scanning its PIT tag will allow biologists to identify how many fish from each rearing facility returned to the Maumee River to spawn

Both institutions have partnered to release sturgeon into the Maumee River in this manner since 2018, so the oldest fish released in this program are only 4 years old. The team must wait until the first of the released sturgeon mature eight to twenty-three years from now before they get their answers.

Michigan’s Winter Wonders: Green Frog

Winter weather has arrived in most parts of Michigan by now, bringing dread for some, and excitement for others. But have you ever wondered what’s happening under the snow? Many of Michigan’s reptiles and amphibians search for tunnels or other underground cavities to wait out the cold winter temperatures. Still others might remain underwater, remarkably surviving the long winter months with little to no oxygen!

Such is the case with the Green Frog (Lithobates clamitans), one of Michigan’s most abundant frog species. These semi-aquatic amphibians spend their winters hibernating at the bottom of permanent pools and rivers, “breathing” in oxygen through their skin, occasionally nestled among piles of leaf litter that give off some amount of heat as they decompose, and sometimes can be seen swimming before the water has frozen over, or through clear ice. *A common misconception of hibernating animals is that they spend the entire time ‘sleeping’, when in fact hibernation is rather a period of reduced activity.

A green frog rests on a rock at MNA’s Joan Rodman Memorial Nature Sanctuary. Photo by Jodi Louth.

So, why spend the winter underwater rather than on land? Other frogs in Michigan like the wood frog, spring peeper, as well as toads, hibernate in tunnels and under leaf piles. These frogs are able to survive the freezing temperatures because they produce excess glucose which helps prevent freezing of the cells in their bodies, acting as a sort of antifreeze. Green frogs on the other hand, are not able to function in this way, and so they must stay in above-freezing temperatures through the winter.

Adequate winter habitat for these species is a critical part of ensuring their survival to the next season, and threats to that habitat exist – even as the snow flies! For many of us, fall is a time for “cleaning up”, for raking up all the leaves that have fallen (and jumping in the pile), then bagging them up and shipping them off to a community dump site. But this practice robs our yards and natural areas of needed habitat, not only for the insects that overwinter in leaf piles like caterpillars and firefly larvae, but also for the many reptiles and amphibians that call our state home. The leaves provide a “blanket” between the ground and the snow, they provide heat as they decompose in place which also returns essential nutrients to the soil.

There are so many benefits for Michigan nature from leaving the leaves, so skip the fall “cleanup” and enjoy reap the rewards come springtime. Learn more about Michigan’s many reptiles and amphibians, and their conservation needs, with Herpetological Resource & Management at herprman.com, and learn more about the benefits of leaving leaves, visit healthyyards.org or leaveleavesalone.org

A Milestone Year

The Michigan Nature Association is celebrating its 70th Anniversary throughout 2022. MNA’s spirited founding generation pioneered the protection of critical habitat for rare, threatened and endangered species, establishing Michigan’s oldest land conservancy and the only one
that serves the entire state. They also laid the foundation for our remarkable sanctuary network, and thanks to supporters past and present, it now includes over 180 sanctuaries in 60 counties. For some plants and animals MNA protects the finest—and sometimes the only—remaining habitat. We protect Michigan nature, we protect it for everyone, and we strive to protect it forever.

Join the celebration by learning more about some of our historical milestones below, and watching our 70th Anniversary video!

Top to bottom: What started as a bird watching group in 1951 signs articles of incorporation in 1952. In the 1960s, the organization acquires its first 10 properties, including its first Upper Peninsula property. In the 1970s, MNA joins the “Save the Pines” campaign and acquires one of its crown jewels: the Estivant Pines Nature Sanctuary. In the 1980s, Twin Waterfalls Memorial Plant Preserve becomes the 100th property protected by MNA. In the 1990s, MNA creates nearly 40 new nature sanctuaries that will become the most frequently visited. In the 2000s, MNA partners with the Michigan Karst Conservancy to protect the Mystery Valley Karst Preserve and Nature Sanctuary. In the 2010s, MNA is awarded accreditation by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, and earned its first renewal in 2019. In the 2020s, MNA joins the “Keep the U.P. Wild” Coalition, seeking wilderness designation for more than 40,000 acres of land in the Upper Peninsula. Today, MNA celebrates 70 years of protecting Michigan’s natural heritage.