Iowa State and the Reserve of the Army National Guard are working together to restore and preserve Iowa wetland areas.

Camp Dodge, a military base north of Des Moines near Johnston, contains a pristine wetland area. It is thought to be the southernmost prairie pothole created during the last ice age, when glaciers formed what is known as the Des Moines Lobe geological formation, said Arnold Van Der Valk, professor of botany at ISU. The Des Moines Capitol Building sits on the southernmost edge of the lobe.

The army base also received some agricultural land as part of a land acquisition project a few years ago, said Mary Jones, environmental specialist for the wetlands restoration project.

She said a goal of the program was to come up with new ways to create partnerships between the scientific community and the military.

In recent years the military has come to the realization that they control a large amount of natural lands in the U.S., Van Der Valk said. As a result, they want to manage their land in a responsible way. They are performing site management plans so they don’t destroy natural lands and endangered species.

Jones said a lot of military training areas are places where the military is trying to balance good land stewardship with their military needs.

She said it is counterproductive for the military to destroy this land because “you can’t train on ruined land. We are seeing a lot of [training] areas become refuges for endangered species.”

Scientists and the military are interested in the restoration of the agricultural lands to wetlands and the preservation of the already existing pristine wetlands. The restoration project is on 30 acres of recovered agricultural land, while the pristine wetland covers about 10 acres, Jones said.

Many researchers from Iowa State, the Department of Natural Resources and the Iowa Geological Survey, to name just a few, are involved with the project.

“It’s not innovative, but it is unusual for so many subjects to be studied,” Jones said. “I think it is really fascinating that we are getting to watch something recover.”

Scientists like Van Der Valk are interested in knowing the processes by which wetlands restore themselves. The Camp Dodge site may provide some answers.

“Like most of Iowa, that site was drained to make it agricultural land,” Van Der Valk said. “So most all the land north of Des Moines was drained within the last 100 years or so.”

He said nearly 10,000 other wetlands have been restored but very few of those restorations have been looked at carefully. He said study of the Camp Dodge wetland will be an attempt to get a better understanding of how a restoration works.

“We want to know how much disruption of these wetlands will determine how they are going to regenerate,” he said.

The interesting thing about this project is that it is one of very few projects where the military has wanted to actively restore a wetland, Van Der Valk said. In previous such ventures the military has been concerned with preserving existing natural areas. Thus, it is a great opportunity for scientific study.

“They are actually restoring areas that have been disrupted,” he said “Other bases generally just protect what they have and that is all that is required by law.”

Van Der Valk will examine the processes by which plants are restored to a wetland.

Jones said a lot of wetland projects fail because scientists don’t know just what exactly is going on when one tries to study a wetland. The information gained from this restoration project will help in future efforts.

“The ultimate purpose is to give us a wetland when we are done and a good quality wetland,” she said.

Jane Schuster, a graduate student in animal ecology, is looking at how bird populations are affected by wetland restoration. She will be counting the number of marsh birds that enter the wetland as it is restored and comparing this with other pristine and restored areas.

Since the area is in the early stages of restoration, she only has preliminary data on birds inhabiting the area.

Eugenia Farrar, professor of zoology and genetics at ISU, is examining the distribution of amphibians, such as frogs and salamanders, on the pristine wetland.

“The military in this country have preserved some of the biggest areas of natural lands,” said Farrar. “There is another big munitions area in the Quad Cities area that’s a big area. They’ve done an inventory and they found a lot of unusual species. That’s what they are finding at Camp Dodge, and they have a large number of habitats.”

In addition to wetland restoration, an old house foundation has been converted into a hibernaculum for snakes, Farrar said. The foundation may provide a winter home for hibernating snakes. The foundation has been tiled to prevent water from entering the structure.

Van Der Valk said the Iowa Geological Survey is examining how water flows in a wetland restoration.

“That’s interesting too, because none of the restorations that have been done before have looked in detail at the hydrology of wetlands,” he said.