Stream Restoration Workshop Part 2

Bill Zeedyk continued our restoration workshop outside, where we walked along a narrow channel and discussed how what we might do to restore it. It was an interesting exercise in scale, as the channel itself was no more than a couple feet wide. However, it allowed us to evaluate the channel as though it were a long channel.

At the Las Cienegas Conservation Area, one of the largest causes of erosion is road construction. If the roads are not graded properly, all the water will runoff in the same place, creating erosion and cutting down alongside the road. We witnessed many places where the runoff from the road was causing deep gullies.

Bill taught us how to evaluate the conditions of a stream by measuring the sinuosity and the entrenchment. By looking at streams on such a small scale, we were able to measure the distance between the meanders as well as the length of the meanders. He showed us examples of where baffles could be used to create meanders, as well as examples of places where the meanders were to long, which could lead to the stream cutting off the entire meander and losing its sinuosity.  This workshop gave us experience recognizing bank flow and measuring the characteristics of streams.

Gully caused by runoff from the road.