USGS Multimedia Gallery: (Video)--Recreating wetland-stream complexes in urban watersheds, Howards Branch, Baltimore, Maryland

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Faith: We're at Howard's Branch which is a

project that's about 10 years old. It's

a sand seepage wetlands stream complex.

And I'm standing here with Ron and Kevin

and Keith. Ron, this is the first

project that the county was involved in

of this sort and type. Tell us a little

bit about the background on the project.

Ron: Okay, you're correct. This is an

entirely new technique that was first

introduced to us a little over 10 years

ago I guess, upwards of 12 years ago.

And the origin of the project itself,

the valley floor here actually was part

of a reservoir of water for a water

production facility. It's a little

further downstream here. It was serving

the one community up to our left. And

what had transpired over the years is

the dam structure for the reservoir

itself had deteriorated in a fairly

significant storm event, a downpour of

rain overwhelmed that dam structure and

there was a catastrophic failure of the

wall of water then washed its way down

to the tidal waters down below. But what

was left behind was this valley floor

that was pretty much filled over many

years with the sediment that transported

in behind the dam structure itself. And

after the dam failure itself, the

sediments were progressively being moved

out of the valley floor on downstream.

It was cutting a channel. It was

meandering through those legacy

sediments and transferring a lot of

material downstream.

At that time, Keith Underwood, the

innovator behind the technique that was

deployed here and the number of other

residents in the communities that are

nearby here, had been advocating for

this new technique that Keith had come

up with relative to how to restore these

kinds of degraded systems. And that

basically led to our first journey as it

relates to a creation of a wetland of

this nature.

Faith: So Keith, we're standing on a

wetland complex. What's the significance

with this within kind of the history of

the area?

Keith: From a biologic standpoint, I

have always had strong interest in

plants and then led to rare plants. In

1996, a colleague, Phil Sheridan and

myself conducted a survey, a biological

survey of all the remaining Atlantic

white cedar, remaining west of the

Chesapeake Bay. The trees that you see

around here are associated with numerous

other rarities, the picture plants, the

sundews, the carnivorous plants, the bog

orchids. In fact, the vast majority of

our rare threatened and endangered

species for this area here. So we began

efforts to look for opportunities to

restore those organisms. What we found

in that inventory was 1214 live

individuals above a meter in height on

10 sites here. And that set off the

alarm bells that we really needed to

begin restoration sites.

Faith: So particular to that Atlantic

white cedar kind of complex. So

everything that we're looking at here

has been put in and built up, kind of

capped over the existing millpond

sediment.

Keith: Right.

Faith: So all of this has been planted

to restore that kind of environment.

Keith: Well we initially pursued

opportunities to restore the degrading

natural sites and it was clear that we

were not going to get permits for that.

So we began efforts to find, to locate

opportunities to synthesize the

conditions to create these backup

populations on degraded sites and this

was the site selected for a number of

reasons.

Faith: So Kevin, I can hear the frogs in

the background as we're talking. So this

really has a lot of habitat potential as

the water is spread out into these

different wetland environments. Say a

little more about that.

Kevin: Well it's quite different here

than it was you know 12 years ago when

this was first proposed. And at that

time it was just a single thread channel

moving through these unconsolidated

sediments with very little habitat

value. We shocked the stream for fish

and found no fish in there, some frogs

and some eels at that time so very

little habitat value at that time. The

flood plan was mostly rice cut grass

with some red maples coming up. Today

you look at it and you see a vast

difference in the complexity of the

habitat and the species that are out

here. And as I said earlier, we saw, you

know we've already identified three

species of frogs already and just today

and the wood ducks that are here and

then the fish that are in the stream and

all the variety of plants that exist out

here and some of them very rare. So

quite a big difference from what it was

12 years ago.

Faith: I imagine there's a lot of

maintenance involved in this still that

we don't really see currently but a lot

of community involvement in taking care

of invasive – do you have problems with

invasive species coming in down here?

Keith: No this side is essentially self

manning at this point in time. Yes, as

you look around, the vast majority of

the cedar that you see here back behind

us is recruitment from natural rainfall.

The cedars were planted here as a seed

source. We bucked the conventional US

Forest Service approach to attempting to

restore cedar stands simply because

there wasn't enough material remaining.

We devised a method to get the trees up

in a nursery operation large enough to

provide their own seed rain and begin

colonizing the site on its own volition

here.

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