Ryerson Woods

This morning I went for a walk in light rain at Ryerson Woods, in the far north suburbs of Chicago. It's a 550-acre state nature preserve with examples of mesic forest, dry-mesic woodland, and northern flatwoods. Ryerson has special significance for several reasons; It's where I began my journey in restoration as a volunteer in the spring of 1983, it's where I conducted several years of quantitative research on amphibians, and later, in the late 1990s, I contributed to a hydrologic restoration design.

Today I visited one of those restoration sites. The photo above doesn't look like much, as is typical of northern flatwoods sites. Lots of stunted oaks and shrubs, a lot of detail for the eye to take in all at once, not a lot of individual features that stand out.

There are a few things to notice, though. The first is one that isn't there: The shallow ditch once present is gone. It would have been in the foreground, and it drained the entire area. Then, there's the hydrology indicators, the vegetation characteristic of seasonally wet areas, the buttressed roots of the trees, the barely visible water marks. In the spring, this entire area holds at least six inches of water. There's the fire scar on the base of the tree, evidence of prescribed burns. Finally, there's the dense carpet of herbaceous vegetation. It's denser than I remember, and the mid-level canopy is more open.

Overall the site looks good. I'll want to return in springtime, when it's wet, but my visit today suggests a healthier community than last time I saw this place.

In my opinion flatwoods communities were once more open than this, so hopefully this is an intermediate step along the restoration pathway. It seems to be a good beginning.