Through the Wind and the Driving Rain
You could say the weather was against me that day. I woke up in the morning to pouring rain and a temperature in the 50s. Not exactly the best conditions for planting wetland grasses on an island in the Chesapeake Bay. But nonetheless, the Baltimore Aquarium volunteer packet did say “RAIN or shine.”
So I hopped in the car with some fellow co-workers and began the hour-and-a-half drive from Annapolis to the planting site at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge. I had never been to Eastern Neck before, but I will surely return, preferably on a warm, sunny day! The refuge, located at the mouth of the Chester River on the Eastern Shore, is one of the top five waterfowl habitats in Maryland.
I arrived at the parking lot to find the hardy Aquarium staff ready to load us onto a boat and shuttle us to the planting site. So I suited up in layers and raingear and prepared for an interesting boat ride. The river was a bit choppy, so the ride was a cross between white water rafting and riding a rollercoaster with a bucket of water dumped over your head every five minutes. Taking a ride in a washing machine might be a similar experience.
Thoroughly drenched, I arrived at the planting site ready to get to work. My mission that day was to plant two species of grass on the eroding sandbar separating Hail Creek from the Chester River. We broke into teams and started planting. My team had a diviler, a feeder and a tucker. The diviler dug the hole, the feeder put fertilizer in the hole, and the tucker planted the plug of grass.
A tucker planting a plug of marsh grass
We repeated the process over and over and over until half of the sandbar was planted with new grass. The other half would be planted by more volunteers the next day.
Before and after planting marsh grasses on a sandbar at Hail Cove
After a long day of planting, we boarded the boat back to the mainland. Soaked to the bone, the Aquarium staff was nice enough to give us some trash bags to sit on or in, depending on our preferences. I went home knowing that through the wind and the driving rain, my blades of grass will remain.
Krissy stands in the driving rain at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge after planting marsh grasses at Hail Cove
Forestry Workgroup “Leads by Example” at Banshee Reeks
The rain was falling heavy all through Tuesday night and
things had not changed much when the alarm went off the next morning, signaling
the new day. The Chesapeake Bay Forestry Workgroup had a meeting scheduled at
Banshee Reeks Nature Preserve in Loudoun
County, Virginia.
Hearing and seeing the rain and knowing the schedule of the
day brought back memories from my past life. For years, the month of April had
a pretty profound impact on my life. One
of the duties as an employee working for the Virginia Department of Forestry
was to plant tree seedlings with volunteer groups. The best planting months are March, April,
November and December, but April was extremely busy with plantings because of
Earth Day and Arbor Day. You can plant trees
during other months, but for “bare root” seedlings with no soil on their roots,
months with high precipitation and cooler temperatures are the best.
The Banshee Reeks Manor House sits on the top of a hill and Goose Creek winds through
the rolling farmland and forest. The
“Banshee” was with us that Wednesday because of the pouring rain; the misty
spirit hung over the reeks (rolling hills and valley). But hardy as the Forestry Workgroup members
are, they hopped on a wagon and rode down the hills -- in the pouring rain --
to Goose Creek to
see the task before them.
The heavily grassed floodplain had bare areas that were
prepared for a riparian buffer planting.
Our hosts from the Virginia Department of Forestry had planting bars,
tree seedlings, gloves, tree shelters and all of the equipment needed to get
the trees in the ground; the Workgroup members were the muscle. The group
planted approximately 125 sycamore, black walnut, river birch, hackberry and
dogwood shrub seedlings -- again, in the pouring rain -- in a little over an
hour.
As we road the wagon back up the hill -- still in the
pouring rain -- and looked back at the newly planted floodplain, the enthusiasm
was hard to contain. There was a special
warm feeling that drifted over me, reminiscent of my days of planting with
volunteers: the feeling of knowing you just did something special that will
last far into the future. For the
Forestry Workgroup members who promote riparian forest buffer plantings in the Bay
watershed, this was a “lead by example” exercise.
As everyone got into their cars to return to their home
states of Maryland, Pennsylvania,
West Virginia and other parts of Virginia, yes, they were
cold, they were wet, but they were proud of their work.
Shades of Blue
If I told you that within the Chesapeake Bay watershed,
there was a wilderness oasis, devoid of the drone of highway interstate traffic
and the ever-present hum of electricity, where you can run your fingers along
the rigid surface of billion year old exposed granite and relish in your
escapism from modern development knowing you’re surrounded by 80,000 acres of
protected and never-to-be-destroyed-for-any-reason forests, would you believe
me?
I wouldn’t believe myself had I not touched the rocks with
my own fingers, experienced the almost overpowering silence with my own ears
and sighed in relief when I learned that the beauty I was completely
encompassed by was actually safe. Really safe. Like I can bring my own children
here someday and they will see with their eyes exactly what I saw through mine,
safe. Of course, I’m speaking about Shenandoah
National Park and the misty Blue Ridge
Mountains of the great state of Virginia.
As I began my 35 mile trek along Skyline Drive, the
signature route through the Shenandoahs, I travelled through a 700 foot tunnel in
the belly of Mary’s Rock Mountain where I was reminded by a quirky sign that,
‘only 1,300,000,000 years ago this rock was still molten magma’. . . lest I
forget, of course. I occasionally pass the wayward backpacker, no doubt
following the 101 miles of the Appalachian Trail
that transect the park, and I’m offered a casual wave and a glance that I can’t
help but interpret as, “You get it, too . . . this place is special”. Although
I’m visiting the park in the winter, I honestly feel a bit like a peeping tom
but in the best way possible. With the trees having shed the last of the autumn
leaves, I can see deep into the woods and eavesdrop on the inner workings of a
forest from squirrels climbing tall knobby chestnut trees to white-tailed deer nuzzling
through the fallen leaves in search of food.
At the tallest point of my journey, I pulled over at
Thorofare Mountain Overlook which is approximately 3570 feet higher than my
cubicle on the third floor of the Chesapeake Bay Program Office in Annapolis, MD
(not that I’m measuring). It was here that I experienced the deepest silence of
the journey. Sitting on a segment of a stone wall that runs almost the length
of Skyline Drive built with hard work and sweat by the boys and men of the
Civilian Conservation Corps early last century, my feet seemed to dangle on the
edge of the world. To my right, vast, open farming segments nestled comfortably
within the valley. To my left, row after row of misty near-ethereal Blue Mountains, each succeeding into a fainter shade of
blue until the last mountain blends almost artistically into the horizon. Yeah,
I get it. This place is special.
So, if I told you that within the Chesapeake
Bay watershed, there was a place 75 miles from our nation’s
capital where the mountains are enchantingly blue, the silence is deafening, and
you could experience true, unspoiled nature the way nature is intended to be, would
you believe me? Well, I guess you’ll just have to go and found out for
yourself.
Forest buffers featured at latest Forestry Workgroup meeting
Judy Okay
is a riparian forest buffer specialist on detail from the Virginia
Department of Forestry working at the Chesapeake Bay Program office.
In early October the search was on for a site in the Bay
watershed for the November 18 Bay Program Forestry
Workgroup meeting. Educational workgroup meetings are good because members
can get out of their offices and visit the fields and forests of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. After a few calls, the Virginia Tech
Mare Equine
Center in Middleburg, Virginia,
separated itself from other choices. It was a perfect location for the forestry
workgroup meeting because it has a 23-acre riparian forest
buffer, and forest buffers would be the focus of the meeting.
Riparian forest buffers are a topic near and dear to my
everyday life. People often tell me I live in “buffer land” because my job is
very specific to that area of forestry.
I really am very interested in watersheds as holistic ecosystems and
think of forest buffers as the integral link between what happens on the land
and how those actions are reflected in the water quality of streams and rivers.
Along with other Bay
goals, the
riparian forest buffer goal will fall short of the 10,000-mile commitment
made for the 2010 deadline. The number of riparian buffer miles achieved
annually has dropped off from 1,122 miles in 2002 to 385 miles in 2007. Since Forestry
Workgroup members represent state forestry agencies, NGOs, and other groups
interested in Bay forests, they are the logical group to come up with ways to
address barriers that stand in the way of achieving state riparian forest
buffer commitments. We spent the afternoon of the Forestry Workgroup meeting discussing
the barriers to riparian forest buffer plantings and ways to eliminate those
barriers.
The Forestry Workgroup meeting also featured two
presentations on new riparian forest buffer tools intended for use by local
governments, watershed groups, and local foresters. The first presentation, given
by Fred Irani from the U.S. Geological Survey team at the Bay Program office, was
about the RB Mapper, a new tool developed for assessing riparian forest buffers
along shorelines and streambanks. The other presentation, given by Rob Feldt
from Maryland DNR, was about a tool for targeting the placement of riparian
forest buffers for more effective nutrient removal. (You can read all
of the briefing papers and materials from the Forestry Workgroup meeting at the
Bay Program’s website.)
After all the business, it was time to experience the Mare Center,
their streamside forest buffer and the rolling hills of Virginia. A tractor and wagon provided transportation
to the pasture to see the buffer, which was planted in 2000 with 2,500 tree
seedlings. It was a cold and windy day, and there were actually snowflakes in
the air. We had planned to ride the wagon out and walk back, however, with a
little bit of a bribe, the wagon driver waited while we checked out the forest
buffer for survival, growth, and general effectiveness for stream protection.
The Forestry Workgroup meeting was productive, educational,
and enjoyable. How often can we say that
about group meetings? Sometimes it is
worth the extra effort to provide a meeting place with an outdoor component that
conveys the endeavors that the Bay Program workgroups are all about.
Getting aboard the low-impact development train
Mike Fritz is with the U.S. EPA at the Chesapeake Bay Program office.
Here at the American Society of Civil Engineers International Low-Impact Development (LID) Conference in Seattle, I’m swept up body and spirit by the
growing throng of several hundred enthusiastic devotees to the cause of polluted
runoff (a.k.a. “stormwater”) reduction. As a non-engineer EPA bureaucrat,
I’m a first-time participant in this biennial LID pilgrimage. But after three
days of PowerPoint presentations and an all-day field trip to Portland, Oregon,
which is the other “LID Mecca,” I’m just about ready to compose my own rap tune
out of cool LID lingo and design “treatment trains” (combinations of multiple
LID techniques) in my sleep. When I get home I’ll definitely take a new look at
my own roof downspouts and concrete driveway, and think about how much
reinforcement my carport will need before I can put a vegetable garden on the
roof!
I used to be an engineer when I was a kid growing up in the
suburbs of hilly central Connecticut.
One of my favorite activities was building snow dams in the street gutter when
the rain finally came and melted the snow on our particularly steep hill. It
was great fun to pack the snow into a big ice dam and then, when the call came
to go inside for dinner – invariably at 5:00 sharp – kick the dam open and send
a big slushy gusher down the street.
Down at the bottom of the hill it always flooded out of the street and
into the Perraults’ front yard. (Maybe that’s why I felt guilty when I saw them
at Sunday Mass.)
Of course at that time, I didn’t see any connection between
that phenomenon – the runoff gusher – and the fact that we could always catch
trout in the Quinnipiac
River upstream of the
city but never caught any downstream. Or why we never found any oysters when we
went way downstream to tromp through the mud in Long Island Sound, even though
my grandfather and uncles told great stories of burlap sacks full.
From what I’ve learned thus far, the “treatment train” at a
house like mine would go something like this:
- First,
don’t cut down any trees and plant as many additional trees and shrubs as
possible.
- Basically
get rid of the lawn.
- Catch
all the rain you can on a green
roof, where it either evaporates or gets used up by the plants. That’s
evapotranspiration.
- For the
remainder of the water that comes down your downspouts, run it directly
into a rain garden,
where a lot of mulch, trees, shrubs and native plants soak it up (more
evapotranspiration), and lots of it goes through the soil into the groundwater.
That’s infiltration.
- If you
have a driveway, garden path or sidewalk, replace the non-porous
(impervious) concrete and asphalt with porous (pervious) stuff. More
infiltration.
- If
there’s still a surplus of water, run it through a vegetated
swale (more evapotranspiration) and into another basin with more trees,
shrubs and mulch. The surface of the swale should be a little lower than
the surrounding land so that it may form a pond for a little while when
there’s a really heavy rain. That’s biorentention.
By that point, you should have pretty well mimicked what the
Chesapeake Bay watershed used to be: a
beautiful hardwood forest with clean waters in healthy streams. With this LID
“treatment train,” now we can all be engineers! Choo Choo!
An afternoon at the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center
Alicia Pimental is with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay at the Chesapeake Bay Program communications office.
Yesterday I visited the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center (CBEC), located in Grasonville on Maryland's Eastern Shore. It's an excellent spot for an afternoon walk, with trails that wind through salt marshes and loblolly pine stands. According to its website, CBEC has four miles of trails, two observation towers and two observation blinds, which are great to take photos from. There's also a one-mile water trail, with canoes and kayaks on-site available to rent (though it was a little too chilly to be out on the water yesterday!).
CBEC is also part of the Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network, a network of over 150 sites in Maryland, Virginia, D.C., Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware and New York. Gateways include water trails, parks, wildlife preserves, museums and more. If you're looking for a way to experience the Chesapeake Bay or your local river, the Gateways Network has lots of spots to offer.
CBEC is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. It's about a 20-minute drive from the Bay Bridge and there's a $5 per person admission charge. I hope you're able to go check it out!
A boardwalk through the marsh leads to a small beach area, where terrapins nest and lay eggs each spring.
One of the observation blinds is located on a small pond and offers great photo opportunities.
Estuary conference in Providence, R.I., worth the long ride
Liana Vitali is a Living Resources Subcommittee staffer with the Chesapeake Research Consortium at the Chesapeake Bay Program.
Some
people might say that riding a train for 12 hours from Annapolis,
Maryland, to Providence, Rhode Island,
and back to attend a conference about our nation’s valuable estuaries
demonstrates real environmental dedication. Others might say, “Take the plane!”
I, of course, traveled the route using the former method. Who needs to deal
with extraneous baggage charges and cramped seating when you can pay the same
amount to travel via train through the New England
countryside and view the fantastic fall foliage, while also having ample time
to catch up on that long-forgotten summer read? OK, in retrospect, I wish I
took the plane. But no matter what mode of transportation, hundreds of
participants from around the country gathered in Providence, Rhode Island,
last week for the 4th biannual Restore
America’s Estuaries (RAE) Conference.
The four
days of the conference were jam-packed with over 50 different sessions, workshops
and plenary discussions pertaining to all things estuarine. Most of the
sessions I attended were facilitated by organizations and speakers from outside
the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Working here at
the Bay Program, I often have a front-row view of how our
partners are working to restore and protect our Bay. However, I felt by
attending sessions led by, say, the Puget
Sound Partnership or Save
the Bay - Narragansett Bay, I might gain a different perspective on how to
approach our efforts here in the Chesapeake Bay
region.
This
strategy worked! For example, while attending a session called “Creating Public
and Political Will to Restore Our Coasts and Estuaries,” I learned that the
folks at People for Puget Sound
developed a fun, comprehensive social marketing campaign called MudUp. Almost since its inception, MudUp has
been a huge hit with the local community through convincing poster ads and an
endearing Mud Monster mascot that attends all MudUp events. Hmm, if the Chesapeake
Bay Program had a mascot, what would it be?
As a side
note, Providence
and nearby areas are real delights to visit. A few co-workers and I had some
free time to visit Newport,
which is just a must-see. The mansions and Cliff Walk are truly spectacular.
Oh, and you can’t leave Newport
without a visit to Flo’s Clam Shack; you would regret it if you didn’t go and try
their fish and chips -- so good!
All in
all, my trip to Providence was extremely
insightful (no matter how long the commute!), and I’m looking forward to the
5th biannual RAE Conference in Galveston,
Texas, in 2010!
Liana gets soaked by a wave as she enjoys Narragansett Bay and the Atlantic Ocean at sunset in Newport, Rhode Island.
Thoughts from the World Water Expo
Lewis Linker is a modeling coordinator with the U.S. EPA at the Chesapeake Bay Program.
The world’s a pretty big
place. So when a group of water resource experts from different parts
of the world come together, and all describe the same problems (though
seen through different lenses of geography, culture, and language),
that’s a notable thing.
That’s what happened at the 2008 World Water Expo in Zaragoza, Spain,
where water resource experts from across the globe — including
Australia, Israel, Jordan, Spain, South Africa, and the United States —
participated in a scientific symposium as a kick-off to the Expo. All
invited speakers there spoke of problems with growth, water supply,
water quality, and climate disruption. The water resource conditions in
the various countries were as varied as the languages spoken, but the
underlying problems were the same. Jordan, for example, is arid with a
developing economy, whereas Australia is arid with a post-industrial
economy — yet both face the same challenges of growth, water supply,
water quality, and climate disruption.
Where does the Bay Program fit into this picture?
As an invited participant, the Bay Program described our approach of
integrating models, monitoring, and research for restoration of the
Chesapeake. Our presentation of the linked airshed, watershed,
estuarine, and living resource models, along with the supporting and
corroborating monitoring observations and research was well-received,
and was seen as a world-class example of the information systems needed
to support water resources under pressure from population growth,
climate change, and past environmental degradation.
All of the invited speakers spoke to problems of
growth and water quality. In the Chesapeake, we’ve been working a long
time to restore water quality despite growth pressures in our
watershed, so these are issues we’re familiar with. But just like in
other parts of the world, the issues of providing an adequate water
supply and climate disruption are also emerging issues for the
Chesapeake. Last year, the city of Fredrick, Maryland, had to curtail
construction permits due to concerns over the sufficiency of water
supply. This may be a harbinger, because our Chesapeake water supply
infrastructure is designed for average annual flows different from the
decreased annual flows we may see with future climate change, as the
Bay Program has described in presentations at the 2007 American Water
Resources Society and the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation.
At the World Water Expo we saw that the challenges
of growth, adequate water supply, water quality, and climate disruption
were ubiquitous. The world’s a big place and a watery place. How ironic
that we’re all in the same boat.