On Saturday I hiked up Spruce Gulch, off Left Hand Canyon Road in Boulder, to see the weed research and eradication projects being conducted there. Tim Seastedt, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, says the landowners asked him and his colleagues to help control weeds without using herbicides. The owners didn’t want chemicals in the water supply.

We parked along a meadow where a student has installed rain-out devices to determine how cheatgrass (a winter annual) responds to different levels of precipitation. Seastedt said these devices keep 50 percent of precipitation off the grasses growing below them. Cheatgrass is classified as a noxious weed in Colorado, but it is on List C, which means the state will help cities and counties more effectively manage cheatgrass, if they wish to do so. In another experiment, the meadow was mowed regularly to 2 inches, which caused cheatgrass to yield to storksbill, another winter annual.

Up around the bend, we stopped to look at this patch of western wheatgrass. Plant ecologist David Buckner pointed out that there was little to no cheatgrass here because invasive species like cheatgrass cannot compete with native perennials. This conclusion has been borne out at other study sites in this area by planting spotted knapweed seedlings along with perennials. Only a few of the seedlings survived.

The chimney and foundation below are all that’s left of a homestead and blacksmith’s forge, destroyed in the Overland fire. Seastedt said his research team was planning on using the homestead as a staging site for their experiments.

Farther up the road, we passed the access for running water at the site, which Seastedt said is most helpful for conducting this kind of research. It is a siphon system, and he described how they had to pour many, many gallon jugs of water into a small hose in order to restart the siphon one year.

Despite the weeds invading this land, many native species still survive, such as these creeping mahonia, pussytoes (with white flowers), and horsetail. Ancient forests of horsetail were one of the sources of coal.

We walked through a fence that marked the boundary of the area where the landowner hand-pulled spotted knapweed. Seastedt and his colleagues also do hand-pulling of spotted knapweed, but they have introduced five different species of insects (biological controls) to make the job easier. The insects do not eradicate the plant—that would eradicate their food supply—but they do discourage it to the point that native plants can compete with spotted knapweed in disturbed areas.

Insects have also proven effective in reducing the spread of dalmation toadflax in Spruce Gulch. I asked Seastedt if the team studied the insects to ensure they didn’t spread to other plants. He said they had tried to force the weevils to eat penstemon, a close relative of toadflax, and the weevils didn’t like it.

As we hiked up to the ridge, we could see how the 1988, 2003, and 2011 fires had affected the area. Buckner said that studies of burned areas that have been “restored” show less diversity of plants than areas left to recover on their own.

Restoration is an ever-evolving science, as that conversation showed, and I for one hope that future “management” of ecosystems will use the lightest touch possible. We can’t avoid management in the future because we have altered ecosystems around the world so drastically, but we can point those ecosystems in a direction that will allow them to recover on their own.

The National Forest Foundation will spend the next five years planting trees in an area of Angeles National Forest that was scorched to the dirt.

The Station Fire, alleged to be arson, started in August 2009 and was contained in October 2009, burning 161,000 acres of the national forest near the city of Los Angeles. About 14,000 of those acres were deforested.

I liked this paragraph from the article:

Workers have been collecting seeds from other parts of the forest in elevations that correspond to the destroyed areas. The seeds have been sent to a nursery that has been growing the saplings being planted in the forest. Officials hope to plant a variety of fir and pine trees on an estimated 4,200 acres this year and already have planted about 500,000 trees.

In the last few years restoration has definitely gone local, with open space officials doing their best to plant seeds gathered locally in an effort to preserve biodiversity. For example, Boulder County holds numerous seed collection events. Those seeds are given to local farmers, who grow them and harvest the new bounty of seeds. Boulder County then uses those locally grown varieties of seed in its restoration efforts, making sure that varieties adapted to local microclimates are preserved.

But restoration is a complicated business, and we’re still learning how to do it well.

“What I’ve been told is that they’re planting Coulter pines in areas that used to have big cone Douglas fir and they’re doing it because that’s what they have available,” said Jon Keeley, research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey Western Ecological Research Center. “They have a lot of them, they’re cheap and they grow fast.”

Keeley says that is not good ecosystem management. Who knows? Maybe he’s right. Then again, maybe the big cone Douglas fir is one of those trees that needs fire to help its seeds sprout.

It’s very important to restore quickly after a fire, especially in a forest like this one so near a city. Erosion and mudslides have already caused damage in the area, so the most vulnerable areas should be reseeded and replanted with trees as soon as possible. Kudos to the National Forest Foundation for taking on this responsibility.

Source: “Parts of Fire-Ravaged Calif. Forest to Be Restored,” Noaki Schwartz, Associated Press, April 15, 2011

Ed Self, executive director of Boulder nonprofit Wildlands Restoration Volunteers, had a great article in the spring 2011 newsletter. I’m going to quote from it here.

We normally think of outdoor recreation as doing one of myriad activities such as hiking, mountain biking, skiing, rock climbing, horseback riding, etc. At these times we are “users” of public lands, aiming simply to have fun with friends and get some good exercise.

I’d like to introduce the notion of restoration AS recreation. Land stewardship and restoration work share all the features of recreation. When you participate in a restoration project, you have a ton of fun; spend time with friends; get great exercise; see beautiful places; eat delicious food; and you even get to camp out if it’s a multi-day project. And, you get one additional benefit as well. You get the satisfaction of giving something tangible back to the special places you love, rather than just “using” those places.

Thanks, Ed. I couldn’t have said it better.

If you like outdoor restoration projects, go to WRV’s website and look under the Projects tab. They have habitat restoration projects along the Front Range and elsewhere at various levels of difficulty, for adults and teens.

Divers have found deep-water reefs (up to 500 feet) thriving off the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico, in a area where shallow-growing corals are struggling.

The deep underwater landscape they encountered was populated by lettuce coral, the lace-like star coral and several species of sponges, as well as groupers, snappers and reef sharks, said [University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez Professor Richard] Appledoorn, who is calling for the protection of the reefs and nearby shallower areas where fish spawn and later retreat to deeper waters.

Why is this good news? Because if pressures let up on shallower corals (runoff pollution from beach development, dredging, oil spills, etc.), then fish and coral from the deeper area may be able to recolonize the shallower waters and improve the health of those reefs.

The discovery—first announced by NOAA last week [in early January]—comes as officials in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands seek to create the Caribbean Regional Ocean Partnership, an endeavor that aims to better coordinate the use of coastal waters and the implementation of conservation programs.

Source: “Puerto Rico Aims to Protect Newly Discovered Reefs,” Danico Coto, Associated Press, January 13, 2011

A local blogger I know from Boulder Media Women has posted a wonderful article about taking care of human and natural communities. Priscilla Stuckey is very compassionate about people’s difficulties in learning to heal local natural communities. Please read it and send her some Twitter and FB love.

On Angel Food Cake and Earth Care

Last Friday I slipped into the Local Foodshed Commons and Conference, part of Boulder County’s Eat Local! Week sponsored by Transition Colorado. There are so many groups working on increasing local resilience, it’s hard to keep them all straight. I go to events sponsored by Transition Denver and set up by Dana Miller; now Transition Westminster/Arvada/Broomfield is holding contradances every third Sunday!

Yet the conference was a quiet affair when I arrived. Booths lined the walls of the Glenn Miller Ballroom at the University of Colorado, where I found The Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman, about growing through the winter in “cold greenhouses”; Holy Shit: Managing Manure to Save Mankind, which made me laugh; and, most interesting to me, How to Store Your Garden Produce by Piers Warren (all available from Chelsea Green Publishing).

I also found myself lingering over pictures from a local farm that uses permaculture principles. One picture caption discussed how permaculture mandates surrounding fruit trees with the following: plant to attract beneficial insects (both pollinators and insects that attack damaging insects), plants to repel damaging insects (onions, garlic, marigolds—that is, anything with a strong smell), plants to fix nitrogen in the soil, and a food source (in this case, squash). I love stuff like that. I love the mixing of types of plants, which is counter to how most of us were raised to garden; I love the attention being paid to pollinators; I love the idea of growing plants to improve the soil in an orchard.

I guess I’m multidisciplinary at heart.

By the time I finished visiting the booths, perhaps 60 people were listening to Bruce Milne talk about establishing a New Mexico foodshed. When I think of local foodsheds, I think of recruiting farmers to grow food. But Milne made a point that hadn’t occurred to me. He said that a local foodshed needs a broker between farmers and restaurateurs, a liaison who can develop contracts that allow farmers to make a living and that allow chefs to have a stable supply of food. He also asked the question, “Should we issue local bonds to support farmers?”

I would vote for that. Would you?

Milne is part of FoodPrint NM, formerly called the Alliance for a Carbon-Neutral Foodshed (kudos on the name change!). It was formed in response to a 2006 executive order by Governor Bill Richardson to reduce New Mexico’s greenhouse gas emissions by 11 million metric tons by 2020. One way to do that is to grow food locally (within 300 miles of urban centers instead of the 1,500 miles food often travels), so less fuel is expended getting food to people.

Travel Globally, Grow Locally?

I’m torn between the Location Independent life I envision and my desire to live simply, grow lots of food in the summers and consume it throughout the year, and make my own clothes and furniture. I know the former is probably more suitable for me; I know that I’ve never grown more than a small fraction of the food I eat and that my few attempts at sewing (let alone carpentry) were not all that successful. But somehow I’m still drawn to the idea of that self-sufficient life, even though it would mean staying in place. It’s difficult to be a farmer (even a small-time one) and travel the world.

But maybe Todd and I could travel the country and interview people who are doing these things. Then we could connect the local farmers with other locals who don’t know about these efforts.

Or maybe I could be a sometime farmer, traveling places and interning on local farms.

I know plastic travels that far because the trash exhibit I saw in 2004 at the Centro Ecologico Sian Ka’an (CESIAK) includes some plastic from Poland that had washed up on the beach in Mexico.

I hate trash. If it were up to me, everything would be recycled, whether we think it’s possible now or not. But that’s the eco-dictator in me speaking, which does not generally go over well.

If it’s any comfort to those of you who feel judged by recyclers and other environmentalists, I have to restrain myself from picking up recyclables wherever I go. When I was at the Toyota dealership the other day, I wanted so badly to pull the plastic bottles out of the trash and place them in the recycling container 15 feet away. People! Put the recycling and trash bins right next to each other! Don’t make us walk extra steps to recycle.

I was reminded of CESIAK recently after reading “When Garbage Doesn’t Die” in the Spring 2010 issue of Alert Diver (you’ll have to create an account to read it). This article lists several things people can do to reduce trash blowing into the oceans (stop using plastic bags; carry your own water bottle and coffee cup) but, most interesting to me, also names organizations working to prevent and clean up marine debris.

Algalita Marine Research Foundation was founded by Captain Charles Moore in 1994 to preserve and protect the marine environment. In 1997 he was sailing through the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (between Hawaii and California) and discovered the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch. His foundation is currently planning to survey all 5 gyres worldwide.

Project Kaisei (“ocean planet” in Japanese) recently led an expedition that took pictures of plastic in the ocean and experimented with various cleanup efforts. (Much of the plastic in the world’s oceans has photo-degraded into pieces small enough to be eaten by sea creatures. How are we supposed to get rid of that? Pour the ocean through cheesecloth?)

Plastic Pollution Coalition: No, it’s not a nefarious plot to increase plastic pollution. It’s a website where people can get together to reduce the amount of plastic we throw away.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris page: self-explanatory.

How is this restoration?

Most of it is in the planning/research stages. Those steps are necessary: people could just go out in a boat and pick up trash. But it’s better to investigate the best methods.

There’s no getting around it: The Dirt is a great blog. I could spend all day reading it and learning about new contests and restoration projects. Here are the posts I selected from about 20.

Whitewashing Mountains to Save Glaciers

In an earlier post, I wrote about blankets for glaciers. Now the Peruvians are in on the act, but they’re whitewashing rocks near glaciers with funding from the World Bank, of all people. Who says geoengineering is crazy?

X Prize to Fund Oil Spill Cleanup Technologies

There’s a new X Challenge to develop better methods to clean up oil spills. The $1 million prize will be awarded in 2011.

And that’s only 1 competition/grant mentioned on The Dirt. Go check out the others.

Reusing Construction Waste

I was not aware that 40% of construction material is recycled or reused. Now people involved want that percentage to increase. They’re getting together at a conference in October.

A Park Grows in Brooklyn

Phase 2 of High Line park will open in Brooklyn, including the new flyover. Sounds cool to me.

That’s all for now, kids. Happy Monday!

Out of desperation, the state of Louisiana has decided to build up to 90 miles of berms to catch the oil from BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill. Some of these miles and miles of sand embankments would repair damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The berm plan, which President Obama approved last week, initially involves building about 35 miles of berms in six segments—the longest of which, off the Chandeleur Islands east of the Mississippi Delta, stretches 13 miles. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina walloped the string of islands some 50 miles long, turning them into shoals.

Nobody’s ever restored barrier islands on this scale before, and certainly not at the beginning of hurricane season.

One scientist, at the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of New Orleans, says the plan has some merit because it’s easier to clean up oil on beaches than in wetlands. Other scientists, however, aren’t so sure. The berms may not survive a hurricane, or they may alter wave and current patterns enough to increase erosion in other areas.

No one really knows, just as BP didn’t really know what to do with an oil leak of this magnitude. This situation makes restoration into a bitter joke that we tell because we don’t know what to do except experiment.

Source: “Gulf Oil Spill: Louisiana’s Berm Plan Bold but Full of Uncertainty,” by Pete Spotts, Christian Science Monitor, June 7, 2010

Through the federal Landowner Incentive Program, New York has expanded a program to get private landowners to protect habitat for certain species. The new beneficiary? Bog turtles, a small, chestnut-colored turtle popular as a pet. Here’s why the turtles need help:

Over the last three decades, bog turtles have disappeared from many of the wetlands they once occupied. The population is estimated at 10,000 to 13,000 in the Northeast, including New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Maryland, and 4,000 to 6,000 in a swatch of Appalachians from Virginia through North Carolina and Tennessee to Georgia. The turtle is listed as federally threatened and endangered or threatened at the state level.

Since about 95 percent of bog turtle habitat is on private land, the turtles and other rare animals, birds and plants that share their niche can’t be saved without the help of private landowners.

Involving private landowners is hardly a new idea, of course. The government has been doing it through the Safe Harbor program for years. (The Landowner Incentive Program is funded by royalties from the outer continental shelf oil and gas extraction. Hmm, do you suppose BP’s Deepwater Horizon well falls into that category?)

But it’s not enough just to get landowners to pledge to preserve habitat, or to buy land to preserve habitat. It must also be managed in the correct way.

Even where [New York] state has tried to protect bog turtles by buying land targeted for development, the creatures may vanish. That’s what happened at a 132-acre site the state bought for a half-million dollars in 1981, about 55 miles northeast of Manhattan.

Back then, the site had about 50 bog turtles. But the state didn’t manage the preserve to keep out invasive plants. Purple loosestrife and giant reed grass crept in, making the marshy meadows too shady and dense with vegetation for bog turtles to thrive. In the last survey, Breisch found only three adults.

That illustrates one of the downfalls of preserving habitat by buying it: If buyers don’t have the resources to also manage the land properly, the goal of protecting endangered species won’t be met.

Restoration is an ongoing learning experience for everyone involved in it. Maybe someday everyone in the world will know exactly what to do. But see yesterday’s post on randomness for another view.

Source: “NY Grant Aims to Save Rare Bog Turtles, Habitat,” by Mary Esch, Associated Press, May 29, 2010