Work on wetlands earns kudos for prof

The Virginia native has won the 2004 Stockholm Water Prize.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- William Mitsch is used to the noise and crowds outside his office at Ohio State University. And he's learned that when the food fights, territorial disputes and love triangles get out of hand, it's best to let Mother Nature settle the score.
Mitsch's office overlooks the Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, 30 acres that include three man-made wetlands that he helped build a decade ago.
The marsh has become a screaming, buzzing, ticking, trilling place, largely because Mitsch has simply let nature take the lead.
"She's the chief engineer," said Mitsch, the park's director. And by all accounts, she's been busy.
How it has developed
With little in the way of human intervention, the marsh has become home to red-winged blackbirds and Great blue herons, leopard frogs and painted turtles, muskrats and minks, and hundreds of other species, both flora and fauna.
Mitsch's approach to wetland management here and on five continents has influenced environmentalists and ecological engineers.
This year it earned the Virginia native the 2004 Stockholm Water Prize, which he shares with a colleague, Sven Erik Jorgensen, an environmental chemist at the University of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Copenhagen, Denmark.
In August, Mitsch will collect the award -- which he calls the Nobel Prize of water -- and $75,000 from the Stockholm International Water Institute.
When Mitsch arrived at Ohio State in 1986, he sent his students to Chicago to conduct wetland research at the Des Plaines Wetlands Demonstration Project site.
Soon he envisioned an experiment that would take 20 years to complete -- a 5-acre "lab" that would consist of a pair of kidney-shape wetlands.
He lobbied Ohio State officials, and in 1992 Mitsch took possession of a low-lying flood plain near the Olentangy River considered too soggy to build on.
In early 1994, Mitsch and his students began digging a pair of identical shallow basins, the better to compare and contrast.
Less than 10 yards apart, they shared the same soil and contained the same amount of water.
Marshes' conditions
By March of that year, water from the Olentangy River was flowing into both basins. But while students planted more than 2,500 plants in one, the other was left a muddy ditch. Ten years later, both marshes are lush and populous.
"One isn't better than the other," Mitsch said. "They're just different."
The major differences include water temperature and the kinds of plants and animals each support. For instance, the planted marsh is full of fish. Its twin, however, is dotted with cattails, providing a haven for frogs, salamanders and water snakes.
Both function like wetlands -- acting like kidneys or sponges that absorb pollutants and filter through clean water.
Each year, the wetlands remove 3,500 pounds of nitrogen, 250 pounds of phosphorus and 27 tons of sediment that would otherwise flow directly into the Olentangy.
Not everyone agrees with Mitsch's hands-off approach, however. Joy B. Zedler, a botanist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said it doesn't work with all man-made wetlands.
"Mitsch works on river flood plains where his approach is appropriate," Zedler said. A salt marsh, she said, must contain at least five saltwater-tolerant plants in order to sustain its characteristic wildlife. And nature doesn't always take the lead.
"If you leave the site to develop on its own, you get a bunch of weeds," Zedler said.
Expert's reputation
Still, Mitsch has a reputation as a "major thinker on the leading edge of wetland restoration," said Julie Sibbing, wetlands-policy specialist with the National Wildlife Federation, based in Washington.
"He is training the next generation of wetland researchers."
Hundreds of graduate students have found their niche studying with Mitsch, including Deni Porej, director of conservation science for the Nature Conservancy's Ohio chapter.
"If not for Dr. Mitsch, I might still be studying snakes in Hawaii," said Porej, who recently launched a state project to monitor vernal pools -- small, temporary wetlands that serve as the primary breeding grounds for amphibians.