Guthrie Creek

This was taken at the beginning of a Saturday hike down the Guthrie Creek trail, on BLM's Lost Coast Headlands site near Ferndale, California. It's only a mile each way, and about 800 feet elevation change, one of the easier hikes I've done this year. It's well worth the minimal effort.

Most people stop at the Fleener Creek trailhead not far above Centerville Beach. It's a shorter and easier trail, but it's also more crowded. Continue on the one lane road, winding and in places unpaved, and one drops down into the Fleener Creek valley, rises up the far side, and then winds past coastal grasslands and patches of Sitka spruce and Douglas fir forest. The terrain seems somehow disconcerting, disorienting to some first-time visitors; I presume that it's the twisted and broken topography of this young and unstable place a handful of miles north of the Mendocino triple junction.  In any case, eventually there's a small parking lot on the right with tide tables conveniently posted and the Guthrie Creek trailhead just beyond.

Although not  currently targeted for restoration, it does show some diversity. In the foreground of the photo, on the south-facing slope, is coastal scrub. At the bottom a patch of grassland is visible, probably weedy annuals although it's no longer grazed. A ribbon of willow-alder riparian threads through the valley. On the opposite north-facing slope patches of Sitka spruce intermingle with more scrub.

The pocket beach below, much of it safely accessible only at low tide, is bordered by nearly vertical mudstone cliffs. It's a quiet place, with few visitors except the occasional AV coming down the beach and even fewer hikers on the trail. It's been different every time I've visited, more than a dozen times now; a section of cliff newly collapsed, the stream mouth in a new location every time, driftwood and large tree stumps in new arrangements. It's a good reminder of how dynamic nature is, in this place where winter storms and the occasional earthquake re-arrange things at will.

Salt River

From a boat ride this afternoon on the newly restored lower Salt River channel. The new channel is on the lower right, the center and distance show bordering salt marsh re-established by removing a levee and with some grading. This was taken during an eight-foot tide, fairly high for this location.

Evidence of the past

This photo was taken near the mouth of the Eel River last week. The redwood stump is huge, the smaller, left edge is more than six feet high. It's standing in the midst of a large open area... there's a bit of coastal terrace prairie visible in the foreground, a shallow tidal marsh with pickleweed grading into invasive Spartina beyond that, and coastal dunes just visible in the background. The river is off to the right, perhaps a quarter-mile away.

We know the stump has been there a long time, and it's highly weathered. It's possible that it was deposited here during the 1964 floods which inundated most of the estuary. Redwood tends to occur a few miles inland here, so it  was probably swept down the river first from somewhere upstream.

It's a good reminder of the power of  ecological processes, in this case the floods which periodically occur on the Eel. We can restore or otherwise manipulate to whatever degree, but it's important to remember that someday the waters will once again rise, and as a result some locations will change profoundly as a result of scour or sediment deposition.

flatwoods

Another photo of Ryerson Woods (Lake County, IL) from last weekend. This one gives a better look at the trailside area where a shallow ditch was filled to restore hydrology.

Northern flatwoods are an unusual community on claypan... in this case a dense, yellowish clay just a few inches below the surface... characterized by stunted oaks including swamp white oak, various shrubs, and a herbaceous layer which includes several uncommon sedges. In late winter and spring it's very wet with numerous small vernal ponds which support a diverse amphibian community, and in late summer and fall conditions are typically very dry.

prairie and marsh

Prairie Wolf Slough in Highland Park, Illinois was agricultural land just a few decades ago. The Lake County Forest Preserve District and several project partners restored the site, mostly prairie with areas of shallow seasonal marsh. The marsh is visible in the left background of the photo, dominated by cattails.

The site is an island in suburbia. It's right next to a shopping mall, which at least makes it easy to grab a cup of coffee before walking the trails. On a sunny day shiny corporate office buildings can be seen gleaming in the far distance, much more subdued on the rainy day of the photo. To the east is an upscale residential neighborhood, to the north a four-lane highway. Yet the site looks pretty good, and supports healthy populations of western chorus frogs and northern leopard frogs. It's a good example of a restoration from bare ground, seeding the prairie back, and plugging ditches or breaking tiles to bring back wetlands, and then managing intensively to keep invasives in check. The site sees low-level but constant trail use, with a small parking area to make access easy.

Although I had very little to do with this one... a half-day baseline amphibian survey when the site was recently abandoned ag land in the late 1980s, and some backup for a grad student monitoring frogs post-restoration, about 15 years ago, I like to stop in every now and then simply because it's so easy to do, and on the way to other sites where I've spent much more time.

Rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium), the flowers long past bloom, against rain clouds; taken on Saturday at Prairie Wolf Slough, Highland Park IL

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.