Backyard Conversation
Connecting Community + Conservation
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Welcome to the Backyard Conversation! Each month we'll be sharing a conservation topic from a more personal viewpoint for our readers. To make this successful, I want to hear feedback from you! I'll include a poll at the bottom regarding our topic and share links to some of our partner organizations with similar messages. So, let's get to it!
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Steam Stewardship
Protecting your creek with "buffers"
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What difference do you see between these two streams?
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We do not generally think of creek as having "skin". However, the vegetation along a stream serves as such. This buffer protects the stream from pollution, much as our skin protects our bodies from bacteria and other things that could do us harm. When we mow to the edge of streams, build close to streams or, worst of all, pave to the top of the stream banks, we take away crucial protection from creeks—the vegetative buffers, their skin.
What to Plant?
These buffers ought to contain a variety of vegetation: trees, shrubs and non-woody, native perennial plants. Each kind of vegetation plays a distinct role. Among other things, they have different kinds of roots. Trees have large, woody roots, while non-woody native perennials have finer, stringy roots that can extend 14’ into the ground in contrast to the shallow roots of turf grass.
These roots help keep pollution out of our waterways and can remove pollution from the water flowing in our streams. In addition, vegetated buffers stabilize banks, keep the creek cool, reduce algae growth and provide food and shelter for aquatic organisms. They are more effective when they are free from invasive plants that can take over stream corridors, excluding other plants and providing limited benefits to the stream.
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Focus on planting native trees, shrubs, and grasses that can tolerate wet conditions. Trees such as cottonwood, eastern sycamore, red maple, swamp white oak, box elder, and riverbirch are great examples. Suitable shrubs include dogwoods (a personal favorite of mine), viburnums, spicebush or buttonbush.
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How do Plants Improve Water Quality?
Stream channels themselves also play a role in maintaining and improving water quality. Bacteria and other organisms living in the sand and gravel through which the water flows help clean water. The aeration in riffles both cleans and puts oxygen in the water. Natural processes that take place in pools remove nutrients. Vegetation growing in streams also help improve water quality, taking up nutrients and filtering the water through their root systems.
Streams need vegetated banks and healthy channels to keep clean. Protecting the buffers around streams provides tremendous benefits, benefits that are magnified when those buffers are planted with native plants. When channels have been degraded by straightening, high flow volumes and/or erosion, stream inserts can help restore the channel and improve the water quality of the stream. Small changes outside and inside the channels of our streams can make a big difference.
What to Avoid!
Fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides can contribute to poor water quality, especailly when applied incorrectly. It is important to avoid spreading fertilizer near a stream bank or on sidewalks and driveways which can convey the chemicals directly into your stream.
Make sure to also refrain from dumping yard waste. The placement of grass clippings, raked leaves, cut limbs, and other vegetative debris on the bank, or within the channel, contributes to stream bank erosion and poor water quality. Yard waste can also reduce available oxygen for our fish and other aquatic friends who call the stream "home".
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- Franklin Soil and Water has discovered that structure installed in streams that we call, “stream inserts,” can enhance aquatic life in our waterways as well. The inserts create gravel beds in which the water is treated. These beds also store water, maintaining stream flow in the creeks and increasing groundwater storage. Plants grow on the inserts that provide the benefits of instream vegetation, even as microorganisms colonize material used to create the inserts, providing additional water quality treatment. The structures have been installed to reduce erosion, a major source of pollution. They can also be used to create and/or maintain pools and riffles.
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Can you spot the stream insert?
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Are you a streamside landowner?
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Do you think streams and creeks are more or less beautiful with "buffer" zones?
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Next Month
August- Hazardous Waste In Your Home!
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Kristin Hilson
Marketing & Public Outreach Coordinator
Franklin Soil and Water Conservation District
1404 Goodale Blvd. Suite 100, Columbus, OH 43212
Connect with us online!
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Franklin Soil and Water Conservation District | (614) 486-9613 | www.franklinswcd.org
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STAY CONNECTED
to your Soil and Water District!
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