Amazing journey: From sinkholes to the sea
by Tom Swinford, Land Preservation Director
Sycamore Land Trust’s work is focused on saving one of Indiana’s most important and increasingly valuable ecological assets: water.
Water is the magical substance upon which all life depends. It is what makes planet Earth unique in our little universe—and, until we know better, beyond it. From something as common as a soft rainy day or a mud puddle, to a cool drink on a hot August afternoon, it is forgivable—and understandable—that we sometimes take water for granted.
Yet water is life itself. We all crawled from the primordial mud, and the sights and sounds of water are deeply embedded in our reptilian brains: a lake at sunset, a waterfall, the rhythm of rain on leaves.
Today, our water systems face increasing demands from a restless and thirsty world. For generations, water management leaned heavily on engineered solutions alone. But awareness is growing that long-standing nature-based solutions—forests, wetlands, soils, and streams—are essential infrastructure. For decades, Sycamore Land Trust has worked to protect and reassemble this green infrastructure across the forested hills and stream corridors of southern Indiana. Our modern and expanding world places ever-growing demands on water. Power generation, agriculture, and public supply are among the largest uses, and for centuries, humans have engineered systems to control water’s movement—a recognition of its power to shape civilizations.
Today, those demands are greater and more complex than ever. In the United States, water use is measured in the hundreds of billions of gallons per day, and these withdrawals increasingly alter how much water moves—and when—through streams and rivers. In Indiana, the effects are becoming harder to ignore. Peak flows now arrive as brief but powerful surges following intense rain events, scouring streambeds, collapsing banks, and carrying sediment and nutrients downstream. At the other extreme, prolonged low flows leave streams shallow, warm, and stressed, with diminished oxygen and concentrated pollutants.
These extremes are amplified by landscapes that shed water faster than before—drained agricultural fields, straightened channels, and growing areas of pavement and rooftops. As so-called “one-hundred-year floods” arrive with increasing regularity, damage to farmland, roads, and communities continues to grow. In 2021 alone, Indiana experienced dozens of flood events that resulted in National Flood Insurance Program claims, even without a federal disaster declaration.
Rising water from Beanblossom Creek flooded our parking lot at Beanblossom Bottoms Nature Preserve in April 2025. Photo by John Lawrence
While flooding captures headlines, slower-moving water-quality problems extend far beyond our borders. Nutrients and sediments leaving Indiana’s rivers—including the White and Wabash—ultimately flow south through the Mississippi River system and into the Gulf of Mexico, contributing to one of the largest hypoxic “dead zones” in the world. Many Hoosiers feel a personal connection to that distant coastline, whether through family vacations or cultural touchstones like John Mellencamp’s familiar lyric about those who “vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico.”
Keeping soil and nutrients on the land—rather than in our rivers—is a shared goal across Indiana’s conservation community. For Sycamore Land Trust, that work begins upstream, in places like the Beanblossom Creek watershed, where restoring forests, wetlands, and floodplains helps slow runoff, filter pollutants, and protect water quality locally and far downstream.
Ecosystem-based solutions in practice: Beanblossom
While land trusts were long driven by wildlife and habitat protection of special places, increasingly the work of conservation and land trusts is being recognized as providing nature-based solutions—protecting ecosystem services and natural resources that our communities and economies depend upon. Leading among these services is the filtering, storage, and supply of clean, cool water.
Humans have long sought technological, engineered infrastructure to manage water. But nature has been doing this work for millennia—quietly, efficiently, and at scale.
The restored wetlands at the future Carl Ziegler Wetlands and Education Center helped to hold water from Beanblossom Creek during the April 2025 flood. Photo by John Lawrence
The Beanblossom Valley is a living model for putting ecosystem-based solutions into practice. This state-significant belt of green represents landscape-scale conservation in the heart of southern Indiana’s hill country. The valley encompasses ancient upland forests, southern wetlands, karst sinkholes, caves and springs, glacial deposits, and swampy floodplains—all reinforcing a resilient whole that supports a profusion of native life at every level.
Within this interconnected landscape, our most vulnerable wildlife—migratory birds, cave-dwelling bats, salamanders, frogs and snakes, insects, and rare plants—find the abundance and redundancy of habitats they need to persist through all seasons and life-cycle stages. The presence of large, intact habitat blocks such as Morgan-Monroe State Forest strengthens this system further, hosting nesting populations of migratory songbirds including Cerulean Warblers, Hooded Warblers, and Worm-eating Warblers—species now listed as state endangered and documented to have declined sharply over the past 50 years.
Conservation gains momentum in the Beanblossom Valley
Historically, the Beanblossom Valley was settled early, and cultivation efforts were intense. While some areas were converted to row-crop fields, many wet and hilly landscapes were used for cattle pasture, with some family farms tracing their roots back to the county’s earliest settlement. The valley’s broad bottomlands and associated wetlands were nearly all cleared and brought into agricultural production—with mixed success over time.
Extensive efforts were made to drain wet soils through channel straightening, ditching, and widespread installation of drainage tiles. Yet flooding and saturated soils persisted, revealing the limits of engineered solutions alone in a naturally wet and geologically complex landscape.
By the mid-1990s, the trajectory of the valley began to change. In the early 90’s, Sycamore Land Trust acquired 95 acres of forested bottomland that would become the core of Beanblossom Bottoms Nature Preserve. That acquisition marked the beginning of a sustained effort to protect and restore the valley’s natural systems.
Protected in 1995, Beanblossom Bottoms Nature Preserve gives visitors a rare opportunity to explore the heart of a thriving wetland along one of the longest wetland boardwalk trails in the Midwest. Photo by Liz Robb
Over the following decades, strategic land acquisition and restoration—including reforestation and wetland construction—were advanced using creative and varied funding sources. In 2016, Beanblossom was designated a Bicentennial Conservation Area, recognizing its significance to the State of Indiana and providing $1 million for land acquisition. As natural vegetation returned, floodwaters slowed, infiltration into aquifers increased, groundwater base flows were sustained, and nutrients and sediments were trapped. The land—and the water flowing into and through it—began to heal, and native life responded to the expanding mosaic of restored habitats.
Today, Sycamore Land Trust has protected and restored more than 2,400 acres of forests, wetlands, floodplains, and streams within the Beanblossom watershed—demonstrating how landscape-scale conservation truly “lifts all boats” by improving habitat, water quality, and flood resilience across the system.
Together, these protected forests, wetlands, and floodplains slow floodwaters, sustain streamflow during dry periods, and keep soil and nutrients on the land—demonstrating how nature itself functions as essential water infrastructure.
Aquatic Biodiversity and Food Webs
Even the smallest forms of aquatic life are part of a complex web connecting land and water. Invertebrates such as crayfish, mussels, and aquatic insects form the foundation of freshwater food webs and serve as living indicators of water quality. These systems do not stop at the water’s edge.
Sycamore partners with the Indiana DNR to monitor the health and abundance of animal species at our nature preserves along Beanblossom Creek. Photo by Chris Fox
Long-term surveys by Indiana Department of Natural Resources nongame aquatic biologists point to exceptional—stable, and in some cases improving—biodiversity within Beanblossom streams. To date, 79 species of native fish are known from the stream, including sensitive species such as paddlefish, three species of stream lampreys, and several darters—the small, colorful relatives of walleye that are highly responsive to water quality and habitat conditions.
Recent mussel surveys offer additional signs of recovery. More than 500 healthy individuals of the pistolgrip mussel have been documented in a short stretch of stream near the Sam Shine Foundation Preserve, representing one of Indiana’s largest known populations of this remarkable species. These findings suggest that land protection, reforested floodplains, and restored wetlands are making a measurable difference in stream health.
Our surveys with Indiana DNR have recorded over 35 species of reptiles and amphibians on our nature preserves in the Beanblossom Valley, and macroinvertebrates that sustain them, like these native fairy shrimp. Photo by Indiana DNR
Migratory birds—waterfowl, shorebirds, wading birds, and songbirds—are among our most beloved wildlife, yet also among the most concerning, with populations in decline across North America. Within the Beanblossom watershed, Sycamore Land Trust staff working alongside DNR biologists are documenting increasing use of restored wetlands by migratory birds, underscoring the importance of intact aquatic–terrestrial systems that support life well beyond the stream channel.
Wetlands, Rivers, and Migratory Systems
The Beanblossom Valley’s importance as a conservation corridor is rooted in its unusual geological setting. The valley sits at a crossroads of southern Indiana’s major landscapes, where rugged upland forests transition into karst terrain shaped by limestone, sinkholes, and caves, before connecting westward to the White River across broad floodplains formed by glacial deposits. This diverse foundation helps explain why wetlands—relatively scarce in much of Indiana’s hill country—are concentrated here, and why the valley continues to function as a critical pathway for water movement and migratory life.
Today, Beanblossom links large public forestlands such as Yellowwood State Forest with the White River flyway, allowing migratory birds and other wildlife to move through an increasingly connected landscape—one that also protects drinking water, moderates flooding, and sustains biodiversity across the watershed.
Forests, Soils, and the Water Beneath Our Feet
Little Hikers explore a protected stream to learn about water quality with Sycamore’s Environmental Education Program. Photo by Kate Hammel
Much of Sycamore Land Trust’s work in the Beanblossom watershed remains rooted in forests. Beneath those forests, soils, and underground networks of fungi and tree roots quietly store and move vast amounts of water—often holding far more than lawns or farm fields and releasing it slowly to streams and aquifers. With nearly seventy percent of the watershed still forested, Beanblossom has a resilience advantage rare in Indiana, reinforced by its rugged terrain and extensive public lands. Protecting these forests safeguards not only the habitat aboveground, but the invisible systems below that recharge aquifers, sustain streamflow, and provide one of nature’s most effective forms of long-term water infrastructure.
Clean water is a shared inheritance, shaped by the land it moves through and shared across communities, downstream neighbors, future generations, and ecological systems.
In a time of changing climate and growing water pressures, intact forests, wetlands, and floodplains do the quiet and unseen work of flood attenuation and sustaining baseflows during drought, showing how permanent land protection provides permanent water protection.
Because this work is ongoing, our shared inheritance of clean water depends on a shared commitment to stewardship, partnership, and valuing natural lands over time for the benefit of water, wildlife, and people alike.
This story was featured in the Winter – Spring 2026 issue of The Twig, “The Water Quality Issue.” Read more at sycamorelandtrust.org/twig.
