Prairie Sportsman

(birds chirping) (bright music) - [Bret] In 1989, the Science Museum of Minnesota funded the St. Croix Watershed Research Station to address water quality issues both locally and across the state.

As a research facility, it's generally not open to the public, but director Adam Heathcote invited us in to give "Prairie Sportsman" viewers an inside look at one of the world's premier water research centers.

(gentle music) - We're very interested in water.

That's why it's the perfect place to have a research center like this because I don't know if there's anywhere else in the country where water is as universal a important issue as it is to the people of Minnesota.

So this is the Spring Creek Building behind us.

This is the original building that was the St. Croix Watershed Research Station when it was first founded.

In 1994, it was expanded to the building behind me, which is the Harmon Research Center.

It has been functioning as one of the most productive water chemistry laboratories in the state and has housed research projects that have covered counties all across Minnesota and also in countries all across the world.

We've developed an actual international reputation as a scientific group.

So we processed samples here, particularly lake sediment core samples from all over the world.

This lab actually does all of the Great Lakes National Park monitoring network samples.

And one of the most unique things we do at this laboratory is that we practice a type of science called paleolimnology.

And that's the study of sediment cores in order to reconstruct the history of a lake or its surrounding environment.

But by using these sediment cores, that allows us to look sometimes to the year how old each section is using these radioisotopic dating techniques.

So we can say what was this lake like 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 10,000 years ago?

Say you wanted to fix a lake in Minnesota, but you wanted to set a realistic goal.

So you wanna say like, well what was it like in 1900, or maybe just before then, 1850?

And that will be your goal.

That's about as clean as this lake's gonna get.

(upbeat music) So one of the interesting things we measure in terms of dating is a radioisotope called Cesium-137, which is a human-made radioisotope.

So it did not occur anywhere on earth until we started blowing up nuclear bombs.

And in the 50s, we were actually doing that in the atmosphere.

And because of that, this radioisotope spread all over the planet.

It's useful for dating because one, it didn't exist before.

And also we signed a treaty with the USSR in 1963 to stop atmospheric bomb testing.

And because of that, there's a clear signal of it ramping up in sediment and then just disappearing.

And so we can use that as a very accurate timestamp of this critical kind of period, which also predated the Clean Water Act.

So if we're trying to see like did the things we put on the landscape to fix the water quality help?

And so we can look at it before and after by looking at what were the organisms like that are preserved in the sediment pre-Clean Water Act and post.

(gentle music) At any given time, we might have five or six main research projects that we are actually leading.

We have many more than that that we are collaborating with or supporting.

Right now we have a couple big projects that are funded by the Environmental and Natural Resources Trust fund, the Didymo Rock Snot Project.

We also have just started this year one that's called Pristine Lakes or Wilderness Lakes, where we're looking at harmful algal blooms that have started to crop up in some of our most pristine systems.

Basically every scientist here comes in with their own kind of unique research program which aligns with whatever their interests are.

There's a couple studies that we've been involved in that we still see the benefits of today.

Have you heard of Triclosan?

It was antibiotic that was in like all hand soap 15 years ago and it was, you know, the producers of it said that it was water soluble, it doesn't build up in the environment, it's not harmful, because there's a lot of worry about antibacterial products making it into water systems where they can breed like these super pathogens because they're basically training bacteria to be resistant against the tools we have to fight against them.

But Dan Engstrom, the former director along with other collaborators, actually went out and did a study of that, and using those lake sediment cores, they found that it had actually accumulated in sediments, meaning that it accumulated everywhere.

And because of that, Minnesota became the first state in the country to ban Triclosan in hand soap, and now it's banned federally.

We work at so many different levels.

Like we are not just working for a state agency or a federal agency.

A group from a lake association could come to us and say "hey, we're worried about our lake.

We've raised a little bit of money ourselves.

Will you help us out?"

And we're able to do that because we have enough flexibility and expertise.

(gentle upbeat music) This is Amber's shop.

One of the cool things about working here is that we have a full-time facilities manager who not only maintains the building and the grounds, which she's also a professionally trained sculptor and welder.

And so she's able to make things for us.

- These two objects here are core sectioning boxes.

This is the old core sectioning box that was in use for about 40 years.

As you can see, it's seen better days, it's done a lot of work.

And this is the new core sectioning box that I replicated from these specs.

So when our scientists take a core sample out in the field, it comes to us in a clear plastic tube.

And that tube is inserted here.

And basically, like a big Push Pop, we push the sediment up through the top and it's removed one centimeter by one centimeter.

Necessity breeds innovation.

So we have to make a lot of our own equipment and our own tools for use in the field.

Dan Engstrom made this several years ago.

This is his design and there's really, there's no way you could go out and buy this.

So the great thing about my position that even though I'm not a scientist, I get to learn a lot through science by supporting the work that everyone else does.

(gentle music) - [Bret] After touring the research station's state-of-the-art laboratories and shop, Adam and senior scientist Mark Edlund show us around the facility's grounds that include wetlands and rare boiling springs.

- So this is Spring Creek, this is the stream that the building is named after.

It's completely-spring fed.

And then the boiling spring is here.

This is one of them.

This is the biggest one.

They're actually all throughout this kind of wetland complex.

So this is something that will basically roll year round.

And this is one of the biggest examples of these that I've seen anywhere in Minnesota.

- If you just sit and look at the spring here, you see the groundwater's coming up with enough pressure that it just dislodges the sand here, and it is quick sand in Minnesota.

And this is impressive.

Watch this.

So what did I just, so if you stepped in this, you'd go down what, five feet?

- So this is Taylor's Pond.

It was formed when the road was built across Spring Creek.

You can see there's a culvert here that just pops out on the other side that remains ice-free pretty much year round.

And because of that, because there's quite a few waterfowl that actually over winter along the St. Croix, mainly Trumpeter Swans and Canada Goose.

The Polaris Foundation stepped up and they basically gave us this brand new boat for free in 2018.

Really broadened our capabilities.

There's no body of water in Minnesota that we can't go on now.

It's a credit to the people at the Science Museum who set this up back in 1989, that they had the vision, this was something that was not only a good idea, but that also would be this sustainable.

We're actually doing more research now than we have ever before.

So this is a program that has continued to grow with time.

(gentle music)