Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- Creek Chubs?
From: Todd D. Crail (tcrail-in-UTNet.UToledo.Edu)
Date: Sun Nov 28 2004 - 21:55:06 CST
Hi Lance,
I don't have any yet except pictures of farmers behaving badly :) We're talking small ditches here though... The picture on this site will give you an idea:
http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~ncd/
This has a decent overview of what I'll be diving in. And I'm glad you asked this question... I need to get ahold of the people. God bless Google.
NANFA member Jeff Grabarkiewicz (my Soil n Water partner in crime) has some photos of restoration projects as well. I'll try and round those up tomorrow.
Out in Decatur, this might be equally pertinent. The inherit beauty is... the farmers don't need to do squat except throw in some prairie plant seed, leave a couple extra rows, and mow it once in the fall. Their tiles are still above the water line (so they don't clog up), the massive root systems of the prairie plants will help maintain their tiles by locking up the silts, and these ditches eat up both energy (velocity) and trap sediments. Just think of how much sediment is caught in that "bench" alone that the guy is standing on in the picture!
What?! You mean they do less work, spend less money, increase profitability and foster our environment-in-the same time!?
It's a beautiful win-win situation, and I hope to turn this into public ed to show folks that we all want the same things in life... It's just our approaches may be different :)
Tough part will be when I approach the Metroparks and tell them "If you want to foster historic biodiversity, you need to cut down cooridors along the ditches going through your properties. There's not enough energy to create habitat with these trees and compromised light in this historic prairie region, not to mention an aquatic community that needs a highly productive sun-light driven habitat that can be burning off all those fertilizer BEFORE they get into the mainstems. You're actually hindering biodiversity and contributing to urban stream compromise by _having_ the trees."
And of course... that completely appeals to my sick and twisted sense of humor and irony :)
Did I mention I have a 100 yard segment of ditch,-in-full sunlight, that's populated by 8 species of fish, a host of invert biodiversity, completely isolated in the center of the Oak Openings, which has thick forested canopy on both ends of the open segment... Which once under the trees, _all_ the animals disappear? Nice root wads, treelitter, and not a living thing present besides bacteria.
That makes me giddy.
Todd
----- Original Message -----
From: Lance Merry
To: nanfa-l-in-nanfa.org
Sent: Sunday, November 28, 2004 10:09 PM
Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- Creek Chubs?
This second stage ditch you're talking about, do you have any pictures of it handy? I follow what you talk about but I'm-in-a loss as to how large/small this ditch is.
Lance Merry
Decatur IL
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: Fri Dec 31 2004 - 12:42:54 CST