LIGHTNING ROUND & POSTER PRESENTER LIGHTNING ROUND TITLE : Canvasback ducks, wild celery, and nutrient regulation in aquatic ecosystems: Restoring keystone processes LIGHTNING ROUND ABSTRACT: This presentation highlights the importance of historic biological controls over water quality in wetland ecosystems. Historic wetlands are characterized as clear-water ecosystems that supported a diverse array of plankton, vegetation, invertebrates, and vertebrates. Many organisms synchronized via food webs to provide strong regulation over nutrient cycling. The terminal fate of many food webs actively exported nutrients out of the aquatic and into the terrestrial environment. Nutrient exporting food webs acted as critical keystone processes for maintaining the clear water state and diverse biological assemblages. This presentation seeks to emphasize the importance of biological controls over nutrient regulation, water quality, and biodiversity in wetlands. The presentation begins by modeling a significant nutrient export mechanism, a symbiosis between the canvasback duck and wild celery, that actively exported thousands of pounds of nitrogen and phosphorus annually from aquatic ecosystems. Functional extinction of the canvasback wild-celery nutrient export mechanism, one hundred years ago, facilitated the collapse of the clear-water state in many wetlands across Wisconsin. The presentation then identifies additional nutrient export mechanisms associated with wetland ecosystems, including eat-outs by herbivores, herp migrations, and insect hatches. The presentation concludes by suggesting restoration of nutrient export mechanisms is critical for long-term wetland health and models several management strategies for implementation. POSTER TITLE: Wetlands, nitrogen, and restoration POSTER ABSTRACT: I will highlight the impacts of nitrogen on wetland vegetation and associated food webs via trophic cascades that result in a catastrophic transition from highly diverse functional wetlands into aggressive monocultures and dysfunctional ecosystems. Nitrogen sources, pathways, and both early warning and terminal stage symptoms will be identified. By identifying novel management strategies, such as haying and grazing, to prevent or reverse eutrophication, and also identifying areas that due to severe nitrogen eutrophication, are not suitable for restoration, information will be synthesized. BIO: Stephen Thomforde has 30 years’ experience in restoration design, installation, and research in wetlands, shallow lakes, streams, and shorelands. His research involves modeling historic keystone processes that reinforced biologically diverse, highly functional, productive, and provisional aquatic ecosystems. His designs on 10,000 acres incorporate restoring processes that ultimately lead to highly successful projects.