MSU researchers establish connection between forests and drinking water, followed by education and nature conservation strategies

EAST LANSING, Michigan — The benefits of Michigan’s 20 million acres of forests can be viewed from several angles. Michigan’s forests play a key role in offsetting greenhouse gas emissions through carbon storage, providing wildlife habitat and increasing biodiversity, offering numerous recreational opportunities to the state’s residents and visitors, and providing timber resources and other forest products – which contributed over $26 billion to Michigan’s economy in 2022, according to the latest data from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Research by a team of scientists at Michigan State University shows that people get another benefit from forests that they may not realize: They filter and provide clean drinking water.

In 2022, Emily Huff, associate professor in the Department of Forestry, Asia Dowtin, assistant professor in the Department of Forestry, Emily Huizenga, former master’s student in the Department of Forestry, and Jo Latimore, aquatic ecologist and outreach specialist in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, published in the Journal of American Water Resources Association their findings on how stakeholders assess forests in terms of their ability to provide clean drinking water.

Stakeholders in this study were divided into seven categories: water users, water suppliers, forest owners, industry partners, policy makers, local governments and nonprofits. Huff said the team hypothesized that people would not associate forests with their ecological benefit – a benefit that ecosystems provide to people – namely, providing clean drinking water. That assumption was confirmed by her team’s research, she said.

“In general, most people understand that where there are forests, there is cleaner and more abundant water,” Huff said. “But they have not recognized the functional connection that protecting forests leads to cleaner drinking water.”

“We’ve come to the conclusion that the reason for this is because Michigan is very diverse in terms of where water comes from and where it flows in different watersheds. The focus is on the overall water quality of the Great Lakes, but less on the quality of drinking water.”

In addition, Huff said, unless they have a well, many people do not know where their drinking water comes from or how (and to what extent) forests contribute to clean water.

According to the U.S. Forest Service, more than 150 million people in the U.S. rely on forests to filter drinking water. In Michigan, 56% of residents get their drinking water from surface water, while 44% get it from groundwater, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Forests help purify drinking water through several processes. Leaves and branches of trees buffer heavy rainwater from the forest floor and prevent the erosion of sediment into water bodies, protecting surface water from pollution. As rainwater percolates through the soil as groundwater, it is filtered by tree roots, which absorb nutrients.

Huff says her findings now provide an opportunity – or “untapped potential,” as described in the title of her team’s study, “Untapped Potential: Do Stakeholders Value Forests for Providing Clean Drinking Water?” – to educate people about the direct impacts of forests on drinking water.

“Our next steps were to think about community outreach,” Huff said. “We want to make people more aware of the functional connection between forests and water and inspire them to learn more about where their drinking water comes from. If there is an opportunity to protect a forest that contributes to a city’s drinking water supply, we want to raise awareness of the benefits that this brings.”

One way to accomplish this is through collaboration with state agencies. Mike Smalligan, the Michigan DNR’s forest management coordinator, oversees Forest to Mi Faucet, a Michigan DNR program designed to provide education about the relationship between Michigan’s forests and drinking water. The initiative involves a variety of partners from different backgrounds, including those from watershed councils, land conservation associations and conservation districts, and forest and water organizations at the regional, state and national levels.

The program officially began in 2022, when Huff and her team’s research was published, but Smalligan said conversations between him, Huff and Huizenga about how to better link forests to water quality began as early as 2016. Smalligan said Huff and her team narrowed the general topic of water quality to drinking water, which eventually helped shape Forest to Mi Faucet.

“That was a very insightful narrowing of focus because, of course, everyone in Michigan drinks water,” Smalligan said. “In 2016, we were only a few years removed from the start of the Flint water crisis, when drinking water in Michigan was a crisis and something we needed to pay more attention to. I wanted forests and the Michigan DNR to be more relevant in a discussion about drinking water.”

Forest to Mi Faucet is an evolution of a broader, national U.S. Forest Service program called Forests to Faucets, which identifies U.S. watersheds that serve as drinking water sources and would benefit from forest conservation or restoration projects.

In addition to educating stakeholders about the connection between forests and drinking water, Forest to Mi Faucet helps find ways to reduce water treatment costs in communities through forest filtration, protects forests from land use changes, teaches landowners responsible forest management, and promotes forest cultivation through strategic tree planting.

“If we want to protect our drinking water, the most important thing we can do is manage the land well,” Smalligan said.

Huff said protecting forests as a source of drinking water does not mean landowners cannot manage the forests. Both she and Smalligan said there are sustainable ways to harvest forest products without disturbing water ecosystems, such as creating appropriate infrastructure that allows loggers to not disturb watersheds and knowing which areas should be left untouched to ensure water protection in the future.

“Healthy forests protect clean drinking water, and healthy forests are sometimes actively managed for forest products,” Huff said. “There are opportunities to clear forests that are sensitive to water quality and quantity, and ultimately, where forests exist, they far outperform any other land use when it comes to water quality and quantity. Sometimes we need to be able to market wood products to protect land as forests.”

A longer-term goal she hopes to achieve based on her team’s research, Huff said, is to explore the possibility of creating a market that compensates landowners or forest managers for the water-based ecosystem services their forests provide.

“That would essentially mean moving money from the consumer or utility upstream to the forest owner or manager, so that the forests are protected through a system where the beneficiaries – the water users – pay the forest owners or managers money to keep their land forest,” Huff said. “We know that there are trade-offs in land use and that sometimes forests are not the highest value that a particular piece of land can be. So this could be a way to counteract the attractiveness of converting forests to other land uses.”

Michigan State University AgBioResearch scientists are discovering dynamic solutions for food systems and the environment. More than 300 MSU faculty conduct cutting-edge research on a wide range of topics, from health and climate to agriculture and natural resources. Originally founded in 1888 as the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, MSU AgBioResearch oversees numerous research facilities on campus as well as 15 field sites across Michigan. For more information, visit agbioresearch.msu.edu.