When I was at home, I chose to get to look at a stream that runs through my neighborhood. I picked it because it is similar in size to the stream at my phenology site, and they are both nearby urban areas. The section of the stream that I focused in on has recently been disturbed by a giant flood. The stream runs through the bottom of a valley, and the neighborhood developers wanted to connect both sides of the valley with a road. To do this, they built a culvert and piled up dirt to level out the ground for a flat driving surface. This worked well until one night a couple of months ago, there was a massive storm, and the culvert couldn’t handle the amount of the water. The water built up behind the dirt dam and eventually became too much. The culvert gave way, and a flood of water roared through tearing up everything downstream.
I wanted to look at this site, as a study of succession. The culvert has since been rebuilt and our neighbors have been trying to improve the land. Unfortunately, there are still signs of massive erosion. The topsoil is still mostly washed away leaving the banks of the river just red clay. All of the underbrush has been washed away, and some of the trees were knocked over as well leaving just the strongest trees standing. Where people have not put straw down. It is an interesting place to study because the land on one side of the road (where the water had built up during the storm) has almost completely recovered, while the side is still in the early stages of recovery. Because of this, I can see an example of what the destroyed side of the river will look like once it has fully recovered.
The wet red clay banks are perfect for showing tracks. I saw evidence of a couple of dear and a rabbit walking along the bank presumably getting a drink from the river. I also saw a couple of bird tracks which I was not able to identify. I did not hear any birds in person while I was there, and I did not run into any animals in person while I was there. The stream itself looks to be in good health. It was clear with lots of crawdads, and little fish swimming around. It does not look as though the stream bed was disturbed too much from comparing the healthy and damaged sections of the river. There are some older trees along the bank such as oaks and cedars. There are also some younger grasses in the areas where people had placed down straw and seed over top of the clay. In the unmanaged parts of the bank, there is still just red clay, with no topsoil to support any plant growth yet.
My stream at home is very different from the stream in centennial woods. This is for two main reasons, first is that they are in different locations geographically, and second is because they are in two different stages in terms of succession. The centennial woods stream has not had any significant disturbances recently, so it is relatively developed and is later on in its successionary pattern. The stream in my neighborhood has just recently had a large disturbance and right now only has lots of old growth trees. I will see a re-emergence of grasses, and primary succession trees in the future. I enjoyed my trip to the stream, and will definitely go back in the summer to see what progress has been made.
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