the land has a story to tell

Last month I visited a friend in Springfield, Ohio. Driving out from Chicago, I chose not to take the Interstate, and took smaller roads instead. Coming in from the northwest, entering Logan County, I recalled that there had once been a Hine's emerald dragonfly locality nearby.

The next morning I found time to go online and do a little searching. My memory had been accurate; the type locality had been in Logan County, near Indian Lake. That's about all I was able to find without getting back to my files which were 2,000+ miles away. So at the end of the trip, I did enough recon to get a sense of the land north of Springfield (more on that later) and filed it away for future action.

This morning at the office I was working on an entirely different aspect of the Hine's emerald dragonfly, which is a federally endangered species. Mostly it was number crunching, calculating density estimates for a major field study I'd led in Illinois over the summer. There, a dozen or more Hine's emerald dragonfly populations persist while in Logan County Ohio no one has seen the species since 1930. However, in writing up a tech memo with todays analysis, I had occasion to pull out the original description of the species, published in 1931.

In that paper, E. B. Williamson provides an unusually thorough description (for that time) of the type locality. He says:

“Ohio State Road Number 117 crosses the North Fork of the Little Miami River north of Huntsville, Ohio. The North Fork is a small stream at the bridge, only a few feet wide and at the season we were there carrying but little water. From its source a mile or two above the bridge it meanders through open and pastured fields in an almost flat terrain of clay soil. Below the bridge there are some willows, adjacent thickets, a few trees, and long, dense growths of lizard-tail through which the water winds its way, often concealed by the abundant vegetation. This condition passes abruptly after about a quarter of a mile into a deep dredged channel about 20 feet wide, which extends into Indian Lake. The upper end of the dredged channel, possibly a quarter to a half mile in length, is in heavy swamp woods, winding through which is the old channel of the creek, now reduced to pools of greater or lesser length.

In this woods is a heronry which Professor Hine visited on June 7, 1929. Leaving the woods along its northern side where it adjoins a golf course, he saw a dragonfly hovering two or three feet above the ground in an open spot under a bush."

A week later, James S. Hine and C. H. Kennedy returned to the site:

“The day was rainy and apparently unfavorable. They failed to find any Somatochlora in the woods, but on visiting the dredged channel they were able to take five specimens resting on low bushes on the wood’s side of the high bank of earth thrown up by the dredge when the channel was dug."

A total of six specimens were collected in 1929, and only one in 1930 despite searches by a larger group. It appears that the dredge activity had recently disrupted the habitat, and that the collectors found the final remnants of a dying population.

On a 2006 Google Earth photo, the type locality is easy to locate. There is now a dredged channel to a point well above the bridge. North of the stream and west of SR 117 is a residential subdivision, and across from this is a narrow wooded band and then open farmland. Downstream is an extensive woodland extending all the way to Indian Lake, and within the woodland several old channel scars are visible. Depending on which channel was active in 1929, the specimens were collected either near the subdivision-woodland boundary, or a short distance into what is now woodland. There is currently no evidence of a golf course, although it’s possible that the subdivision occupies the former location.

Here's what I'm able to determine from Williamson's description, a look at that Google Earth photo, and (just now) a look at a detailed surficial geology map of the region:

The site is associated with the headwaters of the Great Miami River drainage, and specifically with the north fork;

Most of the surrounding land has been dramatically altered, with the possible exception of some woods on the downstream end that don't appear to be of very good quality;

The North Fork appears to be much more extensively dredged now than in 1930;

As with most other known Hine's emerald dragonfly localities, the site is underlain by dolomite bedrock. Unlike most of those other sites, at the Logan County locality the bedrock is covered by anywhere from 150 to 250 feet of glacial till, outwash, and alluvium;

Sand and gravel outwash deposits just north of the channel appear to be the most likely source of groundwater, however the site appears to be relatively level;

Organic deposits are prevalent between SR 117 and Indian Lake in the vicinity of the channel, with alluvium up channel and till to the south;

There is no evidence of suitable remaining habitat anywhere in the immediate vicinity of the type locality.

Chasing down additional detail would most likely require a return visit to Ohio. The oldest photos I can find online date to 1994, and these show conditions similar to those in the 2006 photo mentioned above. Normally, air photos are available from as early as the mid to late 1930s, and getting a look at these, and at any slightly older maps of the area, would be among the highest priorities to reconstruct historic conditions. Of course, there's no substitute for actually walking the land.

What little I've learned thus far has raised some interesting questions. First, this place is quite different than the other populations I've visited. Understanding the type locality may shed light on the overall habitat requirements of the species, and may assist with restoration efforts elsewhere.

Would restoration be possible at the type locality? In theory, probably. In practice, any serious attempt to restore hydrology might very well flood the adjacent subdivision. There is also, as far as I can tell, no publicly owned land to start from. Then there are the genetic issues, with the nearest source populations hours away by car.

Next, some thoughts on what I saw during my too-brief visit to the area. In the meantime, there's more on the Hine's emerald dragonfly on my web site

aspect

I'm just back from a hike through Russ Park. It's within the city limits of Ferndale, so close that I was easily able to walk there. In a straight line, it's perhaps four blocks from my front door, a little more than that counting the less than straight roads in between.

The park sits on the first ridge of the Wildcat Hills, which rise quickly at the edge of town. The top of the ridge is perhaps 480 feet, not high relative to some of the ridges to the south. But there are some very steep slopes within the park, some approaching vertical.

Winter storms coming in off the ocean from the northwest cross the level Eel River delta, and hit the Wildcat Hills. In part because of the extra precipitation that results, there's a stand of Sitka spruce on the north facing slopes. Sitka spruce is more typical of places well to the north, and this is one of the southernmost large mature stands. On the somewhat sunnier south facing slopes, Douglas fir predominates. The several ravines which drain the park tend to support something closer to a riparian community, red alder and at lower elevations, bigleaf maple. Everywhere in the park is a dense carpet of ferns, some of them six feet tall, and bright green moss.

The forest in Russ Park is not old growth; in fact the place has been quite dynamic over the past few centuries. Government Land Office survey notes from the 1850s describe a place with large spruce 36 inches in diameter and more, and also with considerable standing dead timber. The cause is uncertain; a major Cascadian earthquake is well documented from approximately 1700, and it likely did plenty of damage on the unstable steep slopes of the Wildcat. But 150 years would have been plenty of time to recover from that. So what the surveyors described may have been caused by drought and catastrophic fire, or an insect infestation, or any of several other things.

In any case over the next half century most of the trees on the ridge south of town were cut. Turn of the century photos of Main Street show nearly bare grassy hills in the background, with a few patches of young trees returning.

The 105 acres which are now Russ Park were donated to the City of Ferndale in 1920 by Zipporah Patrick Russ. It's noteworthy that donations of parkland are apparently one of the reliable paths to what passes for immortality in human culture; most everyone else from that time is forgotten today, and yet each day we walk those trails, we see her name.

It's unlikely that any of the forest standing today within the park is more than 100 years old. It does not yet have the complex multi-layer canopy and abundance of standing dead snags and down woody debris that characterizes old growth. Yet it's now a mature forest, and over the next few decades it will progress toward the old growth state. The three light gaps caused by storms a few years ago are regenerating, each adding complexity to the site.

When I left the house around noon today, it was foggy but dry. There had been some light rain last night, but nothing during daylight hours. As I ascended the trail I entered the fog, and soon, near the top of the ridge, it was for all practical purposes raining. Not from the sky; instead, this was fog drip, the mature trees harvesting the fog, the drops falling onto the trail. The trees are now large enough to create their own weather, in the process perpetuating themselves and the lush green undergrowth below them. An ecological process disrupted for decades by logging has once again begun to function.

It was a relaxed and uneventful walk. On the way back down I found a rough-skinned newt walking on the trail, his bright orange belly warning would-be predators away from his toxic skin secretions. A few frogs called sporadically from the ferns, not moved into the ponds yet. Small birds, nuthatches and chickadees, flitted from tree to tree. A larger mammal moved away from me, unseen in the dense growth; probably a deer, although I've seen bear on that hillside before.

Russ Park is maintained by local volunteers. While it's not a formal restoration project, spruce have been planted in a clearing where non-native eucalyptus fell in winter storms, and the trail needs constant attention to maintain access. I saw three other people today on the trails, so it's a resource that is used by the local community, and by tourists visiting to birdwatch or just get outdoors for a walk. Certainly I appreciate having it so nearby.

time

Early in my consulting career, I was asked to conduct an endangered species evaluation at a site in north-central Massachusetts. It was a complex site, about 500 acres of mostly spruce-fir forest with a variety of wetland types and small streams disappearing and re-appearing in the sandy soil. With my then-colleague Christine Ross, we spent about three days out on the site before returning to a Boston office to write up the results.

On the first of those three early spring field days, we were given a guided tour of the site by a forester who had years of local experience, who had been caring for that particular site for a long time. He knew every inch of the land, cared about it deeply. He maintained a professional attitude, never expressed an opinion on the proposed development of the site, but it must have pained him. Although he'd overseen selective cutting of the site, it had been done so lightly that it was almost impossible to tell.

That development never happened. It was a bad idea, poorly thought out, and it fell apart under the weight of economic feasibility. The fact that we'd found evidence of a couple of sensitive species on the site never really had a chance to factor into the decision.

But over those three days walking a mature forest, I'd repeatedly stepped over remnants of old stone walls. Clearly, much of this site had once been farmland. Because of the wet and rocky soil it had quickly been abandoned for more fertile places. Over the intervening 200 or maybe 300 years, it had recovered quite nicely. The vernal pools were so full of wood frog and spotted salamander egg masses that it seemed almost possible to walk across the pond on them. It was a magical place.

The project site had a little more history behind it than most of the U.S., or at least more history written down, more than we know about those other places. While there we'd stayed in a revolutionary war era hotel just across the state line in New Hampshire, and other things of that age were fairly common in the neighborhood.

The project site had come full circle. The forest had been cut, the land had been tilled, and abandoned. The forest had grown back. Maybe not the same as the original forest, but diverse in a way that reflected the ecological process in play at the time of regeneration, and a few fairly random accidents of seed bank and land management.

In most of the U.S. we're still looking at a much shorter time cycle. But even in my own lifetime, I've seen change. Places that in my childhood were buckthorn thickets in former farm fields now have large trees beginning to shade out the shrubs. Only weeks ago, I drove by a place that had once been so dense, it was impossible to see into. Now, I could walk through it without difficulty.

Often these changed places aren't the same as what was once there, what they would be with fire management. But my point is that change is never ending. Looking at any snapshot of time is misleading, especially when it's done within the context of a human lifetime.

When I first became involved in habitat restoration, a friend who thought in terms of 100 years impressed me as a visionary. Today I understand that we need to be thinking over timescales much longer than that.

new

The first of the updates are posted at http://kmier.net and there is now a link back to this blog.

The index page is updated, and the dragonfly and about pages are new. The habitat restoration page is about 60% updated. The rest still needs some work... maybe tomorrow.

changes

At last, the web site update is underway. It's been an extremely busy summer, but the same work overload that delayed the updates has provided a wealth of new material, especially on the federally endangered Hine's emerald dragonfly.

But now, back to coding. The index page is ready, there's just a little more writing to do for the second-tier pages and then it can go live.

Upscale nature

Today was spent hiking at Ryerson Conservation Area north of Chicago. From 1984 through 1989 I was a volunteer here, conducting amphibian research and occasionally assisting with educational programs. During those years I learned a great deal from many people, and came to know very nearly every bit of these 550 acres.

Today was just a fun hike, no real looking around, nio real going off trail, just enjoying the fall colors.

There's been some restoration work done here, perhaps the most important being some hydrology work including plugging old ditches in the northern flatwoods. I had some involvement in that project. It's the wrong time of year to look at it, much too dry in the fall. In early spring, when the flatwoods ponds are full and the leaves haven't really reappeared and it's still easy to see what the water is doing, that's the time to visit.

resources

Last night I wrote a project description for one of my latest habitat restoration projects in San Mateo County, California. That's offered the incentive to update one of my web sites, to add an entire section on restoration projects in an attempt to get some real world experience, with photos, out there. The intent is to get that up and running very soon at least in a skeleton form, and to link back to this blog from it. Thus the blog will be an informal mechanism to record random thoughts and things that are in various stages of completion, while the web site will hold more formal descriptions and articles about projects which have actually been designed and, often, built.

Once it's actually up I'll post additional information here.