Douglas Spirea in a Willamette Valley riparian area. Photo by Jared Kinnear.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The health of fish and wildlife and the quality of the water they call home depend in large measure on the trees and shrubs that grow in riparian areas along streams and riverbanks.

Although the task is not easy, riparian areas that are damaged can be replanted. Six manageable steps are detailed in a comprehensive Oregon State University guide written by OSU Extension foresters Glenn Ahrens, Max Bennett and Brad Withrow-Robinson.

The new 27-page booklet, “A Guide to Riparian Tree and Shrub Planting in the Willamette Valley: Steps to Success,” is available free from OSU Extension online at: http://bit.ly/OSUESem9040

In healthy riparian areas, plants help control erosion and trees give shade to cool the water. Leaves and insects drop into the water to feed fish, and migratory songbirds nest in well-developed shrub layers.

Efforts to restore riparian areas in Oregon have become more common during the last several years, Withrow-Robinson said. But the success of riparian plantings varies widely, and some fail.

“Problems arrive because seedling survival and growth are often poor, competition from weeds can be high, soil texture can vary widely and animal damage is common,” Withrow-Robinson said.

To help landowners, watershed councils and others avoid the obstacles, the guide gives information specific to the Willamette Valley, Withrow-Robinson said. “The valley is particularly challenging because summers are hot and dry and streams run through agricultural and urban areas that have been modified.”

The guide explains how to understand a watershed and what it needs the most.

“In western Oregon, warm stream water usually is the primary water-quality issue,” Withrow-Robinson said. The authors recommend that landowners examine their site and identify specific challenges such as frequent flooding, poorly drained soils and types of weeds.

Information tables in the guide compare characteristics of several seedling and stock species that flourish in the Willamette Valley and which plants and trees have a high tolerance to flooding, drought and shade. Because it’s important that planting is done right, the guide gives specifics on how to handle seedlings carefully, plant during the winter dormant season and use proper tools.

It also specifies how to minimize erosion, control weeds, prevent animal damage and consider if irrigation is needed.

The report, which represents the most up-to-date, comprehensive assessment of wetland habitats in the United States, documents substantial losses in forested wetlands and coastal wetlands that serve as storm buffers, absorb pollution that would otherwise find its way into the nation’s drinking water, and provide vital habitat for fish, wildlife and plants.

“Wetlands are at a tipping point,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. “While we have made great strides in conserving and restoring wetlands since the 1950s when we were losing an area equal to half the size of Rhode Island each year, we remain on a downward trend that is alarming. This report, and the threats to places like the Mississippi River Delta, should serve as a call to action to renew our focus on conservation and restoration efforts hand in hand with states, tribes and other partners.”

“This report offers us a road map for stemming and reversing the decline,” said Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe. “It documents a number of successes in wetlands conservation, protection and reestablishment, and will be used to help channel our resources to protect wetlands where they are most threatened and reduce further wetland losses.”

The net wetland loss was estimated to be 62,300 acres between 2004 and 2009, bringing the nation’s total wetlands acreage to just over 110 million acres in the continental United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.

The rate of gains from reestablishment of wetlands increased by 17 percent from the previous study period (1998 to 2004), but the wetland loss rate increased 140 percent during the same time period. As a consequence, national wetland losses have outpaced gains.

The net loss includes a combination of gains in certain types of wetlands and losses in other types, especially forested wetlands.

“In a five year period, we lost over 630,000 acres of forested wetlands, mostly in the Southeast – an area equal to half a million football fields each year,” Director Ashe said. “We should all be concerned about the substantial loss of this diminishing resource, which helps ensure good water quality for local communities and provides vital habitat for a diversity of important wildlife species.”

The southeast United States, primarily freshwater wetlands of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plain, and the Lower Mississippi River experienced the greatest losses. Losses were also observed in the Great Lakes states, the prairie pothole region, and in rapidly developing metropolitan areas nationwide. The reasons for wetland losses are complex and reflect a wide variety of factors, including changes in land use and economic conditions, the impacts of the 2005 hurricane season on the Gulf Coast and climate change impacts.

This report does not draw conclusions regarding the quality or condition of the nation’s wetlands. Rather, it provides data regarding trends in wetland extent and type, and it provides information to facilitate ongoing collaborative efforts to assess wetland condition. Further examination of wetland condition on a national level has been initiated by the Environmental Protection Agency in conjunction with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal, state and Tribal partners.

Wetlands provide a multitude of ecological, economic and social benefits. They provide habitat for fish, wildlife, and a variety of plants. Wetlands are nurseries for many saltwater and freshwater fishes and shellfish of commercial and recreational importance. Wetlands are also important landscape features because they hold and slowly release flood water and snow melt, recharge groundwater, act as filters to cleanse water of impurities, recycle nutrients, and provide recreational opportunities for millions of people.

The report, Status and Trends of Wetlands in the Conterminous United States 2004-2009, is the most recent of the five reports to Congress reporting on the status and trends of wetlands across much of the United States since the mid-1950s.

Source: USFWS

Herb Robert is a common garden invader and problem for its ability to move around with garden soil, plants, pets and clothes. Photo by R. Emanuel.

Most gardeners are unaware that they often inadvertently play roles in the spreading invasion of noxious weeds. But they also can learn to avoid, guard against and eliminate plants that try to escape the boundaries of their gardens.

“Biologists estimate that between 30 and 80 percent of invasive plant species introduced to the United States originated as garden plants,” said Linda McMahan, one of the authors of a new Oregon State University Extension publication, “Invasive Species: What Gardeners Need to Know,” EM 9035, available online at http://bit.ly/pEGJVQ

“In Oregon alone, 21 designated noxious weeds cost approximately $125 million a year in production losses, fire damage and control,” she said. Researchers have determined that almost half of the 1,000 plants and animals protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act have been listed because of biological invasions.

Plant invasion occurs in three distinct phases:

Introduction. Gardeners can introduce and establish invasive species as they bring a new plant into their garden and perhaps share it with neighbors through plant or seed exchange. The plant population may experience a lag time in its reproductive ability, in which it will stay in a controlled situation such as a garden, forest or pasture. The plant does not appear to be overly aggressive. In some cases, the lag period can persist for decades.

Escape. During the second phase, an escaped plant appears to jump out of the garden into the neighboring landscape. Often this means a plant has overcome barriers that have kept it in check and prevented its spread. These barriers may include temperature, moisture, pests or competition from other plants.

Invasion. Eventually, the plant population shows signs of invasion. During this phase, the plant rapidly reproduces by sexual means (seeds) or asexual means (roots/rhizomes or creeping stems) and may spread over large distances.

The OSU Extension publication points out that gardeners can take control over the introduction and escape phases of a new invasion if they evaluate their potential plant choices first. “Responsible consumers can become informed prior to making a purchase,” McMahan said. Several websites can point the way (see below).

Sometimes a plant’s invasive potential can be arrested by watching it grow in the garden. When a plant starts to show an ability to escape the designated garden or landscape boundaries, the gardener needs to deadhead, trim or otherwise prevent the plant from escaping.

If someone gives you a start or seed, ask where the plant is from and if it is native to Oregon. How successful was the plant in the garden? Does the plant produce many seeds that sprout more than a few feet away from the original plant?

What are the alternatives to invasive species? The publication strongly recommends that they be replaced with Pacific Northwest natives and advises how to get rid of invasive species already in the garden. Many nurseries carry and order more native plants than previously, McMahan said.

Websites to help identify invasive species:

•   Oregon Department of Agriculture’s Oregon State Noxious Weed List is an authoritative listing of plants officially designated as noxious weeds in the state. http://egov.oregon.gov/ODA/PLANT/WEEDS/statelist2.shtml

•   Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Silent Invasion website provides a photographic list of invasive species of concern in Oregon. http://www.opb.org/programs/invasives/guide.php

• The United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service’s PLANTS Database allows the user to track plants for their occurrence in individual counties throughout 49 states. Users can use the website to determine whether a plant is invasive by referring to the Invasive and Noxious Weeds page. http://plants.usda.gov/java/noxiousDriver/

•   The University of Montana’s Invaders Database System allows users to search for invasive species by name, state or area in the five northwestern states or access lists of noxious weeds for all U.S. states and six Canadian provinces. http://invader.dbs.umt.edu

Creative rain garden downspout in SE Portland. Photo by Candace Stoughton, EMSWCD.

Clean water and vibrant communities go hand in hand. Urban areas are increasingly using green infrastructure to create multiple benefits for their communities. However, there have been questions whether strong stormwater standards could unintentionally deter urban redevelopment and shift development to environmentally damaging sprawl. Working together, Smart Growth America, American Rivers, River Network, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and NRDC commissioned a report by ECONorthwest, Managing Stormwater in Redevelopment and Greenfield Development Projects Using Green Infrastructure. Highlighting several communities that are protecting clean water and fostering redevelopment, the findings show that clean water and urban redevelopment are compatible.

To read the report:
http://www.americanrivers.org/assets/pdfs/reports-and-publications/stormwater-green-report.pdf

To read the executive summary:
http://www.americanrivers.org/assets/pdfs/clean-water-/managing-stormwater-executive.pdf

To learn more, River Network will host a webinar on this work by ECONorthwest lead researchers on August 17th, 1:00 EST/10:00 PST – to reserve a spot: http://www.rivernetwork.org/forms/rsvp-river-network-webinars

American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association 2011 National Conference

September 27 – 29
Clackamas, OR

Speakers:

• Kenny Kurtzman, Senior Partner, Booz & Company
• Billy Kniffen, ARCSA Lead Instructor and Education Chair

Session Topics Include:

• Research in Rainwater Catchment
• Agricultural Rainwater Systems
• Rainwater Harvesting and Low Impact Development
• Water Treatment for Potable Uses
• Stormwater Mitigation
• Rain Water Harvesting Education
• Codes and Standards
• Technical Tours to residential, large agricultural, municipal applications and more

Networking Opportunities – time is built into the conference agenda to encourage informal meeting with presenters and conference attendees. Hosted hospitality in the vendor hall, dinner at Skamania Lodge, food and beverage breaks with the vendors are great times to network with colleagues.

Rainwater Harvesting Training Opportunities:

• 100-Level Sept 24
• 200-Level Sept 25-26
• 300-Level presentations during Conference
• 300-Level Design & Construction Workshop Sept. 29 – Oct. 1

Poster Session to highlight new research as well as your most innovative and uniquely designed catchment system.

Registration is now open.  Visit www.arcsa.org for more information.

]]> http://h2oncoast.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/rainwater-harvesting-conference-comes-to-oregon/feed/ 1 h2oncoast http://h2oncoast.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/digital-smoke-and-mirrors-no-h2oncoast-has-really-moved/ http://h2oncoast.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/digital-smoke-and-mirrors-no-h2oncoast-has-really-moved/#comments Wed, 27 Jul 2011 03:34:36 +0000 H2ONCoast http://h2oncoast.wordpress.com/?p=1078 Continue reading →]]>

If you are a regular reader and found this blog by accident, you might be confused. Yes, it is H2ONCoast. Yes, the author is the same. No, it’s no longer hosted within Oregon State University’s corner of the blogosphere. But H2ONCoast has been in existence since 2007 and I’m not about to let it go away.

Update: I am moving from OSU to a new employer (and it’s not time to reveal that detail). I am very proud of my work with that OSU and Oregon Sea Grant Extension. But as John Lennon once sang “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”  Despite that, you will continue to see some OSU-related content here.

H2ONCoast is migrating into the private realm of the blogosphere. I’ll do my best to support it on my own. You might find things change a bit with time and situation, but I’ll do my very best to keep serving up all things water and watersheds from my new perch.

One thing that might change–I am now living in Portland metro area and not on the North Coast. So expect some more urban, Columbia River and Willamette Valley watershed issues to appear here.

Thanks for sticking with H2ONCoast all these years! –Rob

P.S. I’m trying to deal with the bugs with embedded code (re: Slideshare and video) that the move has created. Thanks for your patience.

Giant knotweed spreads in a coastal community in Oregon. Photo by R. Emanuel, OSU.

If ever a case needs to be made against introducing non-native plants to a new area, “woody knotweed” says it all. Like a sci-fi beast from outer space, woody knotweed seemingly wants to take over the Earth.

Imagine a weed that you can’t pull, cut or mow because you’ll encourage denser new growth.

Woody knotweed reproduces itself readily from small pieces of its own roots and stems and can contaminate the soil in which it grows. Knotweed-infested soil is considered a hazardous material in the United Kingdom.

A new Oregon State University Extension publication called “Biology and Management of Knotweeds in Oregon: A Guide for Gardeners and Small-Acreage Landowners” explains that the plant cannot be reasonably managed by non-chemical means. The publication is online and free of charge at http://bit.ly/OSUESem9031

“Knotweed is a huge issue in Oregon and Washington,” said Andrew Hulting, weed management specialist with OSU Extension Service and co-author with Robert Emanuel of Oregon Sea Grant Extension and Rebecca Koepke-Hill of the OSU Crop and Soil Science Department.

The publication aims to educate residents who are uncomfortable or opposed to herbicide use, Emanuel said.

“We want to give them the best research-based information so that weed managers, property owners, cities and counties can take the most cost-effective steps to address the infestations,” Emanuel said. “To be effective, timing, choosing the best herbicide and application rates are critical.”

The best time to treat knotweed with an herbicide is in the fall, from August to October.

Knotweed is the worst weed management problem in coastal counties, according to the number of phone calls and visits to OSU Extension offices and soil and water conservation districts. “For example, in the Nehalem River watershed, one of the largest on the coast, knotweed covers a sizable chunk of the riparian forests and gravel bars,” Emanuel said. “In some places at least three species coexist within a few feet of each other and dominate the stream banks.”

Woody knotweed is present in almost all Oregon counties. “It is widespread and mostly a riparian weed,” Hulting said, “But it shows up in weird upland sites once in a while as an escaped ornamental in yards, driveways and old building sites.”

Woody knotweed’s large rhizomes (underground horizontal roots) can puncture asphalt, concrete and brick to reach sunlight. The plant canes can be mistaken for bamboo and grow to at least 10 feet tall, with leaves up to 2.5 feet long. It’s becoming a serious issue for maintenance of roads.

The four closely related species of woody knotweeds are Japanese, Bohemian, Giant and Himalayan. Photos in the publication identify them.

Strange as it may seem, in their native habitats in Asia, woody knotweeds do not spread aggressively and eventually die back and allow other plants to establish.

“In North America,” Emanuel said, “woody knotweeds have a tremendous ability to upset the nutrient cycle in streams and endanger food webs on which salmon depend. That’s why control of knotweed is urgent and a priority above other weeds.”

US Fish and Wildlife Service have produced this video for helping show how easy it is to spread the mussels and how easy it is to prevent that spread into our state’s precious waterways.

To learn more about zebra and quagga mussels and programs aimed to prevent and detect their invasion, visit: http://www.100thmeridian.org.

The key issues with climate prediction are complicated at best but can boiled down to three important themes:

• Can we find the range of change that can be expected under various scenarios?  How warm can we get and where will that warming be most felt?  Will it be 1 degree Celsius or 7?  This is largely a question of understanding the physics of our planet, sun and atmospheric “skin.”
• Can we determine the sensitivity of the planet’s various systems to change?  This is a question of where warming will occur and how it will impact ecosystems, agriculture, oceans, or specific weather patterns.
• Can we get to climate prediction that balances appropriate scale against societal relevance?  This is an important question because most of the common climate change reports show results that are of fairly course resolution. That is to say, when you look at your home, community or even state on a climate change map, it is usually just a tiny dot on a big spot on the map that is different in 20, 50 or 100 years time.  Getting the spots–or more accurately, the grids–to be smaller is important for answering questions about local temperature, rainfall and other predicted changes. These grids have to be big enough, however, to encompass change information.

Answering these questions is done by modeling the climate system (solar energy inputs, clouds, heat-trapping gases, ocean absorption, vegetation, snow and ice, etc.) against the historical records–some really old such as ice core or tree ring data or more modern like weather records since 1870–and current trends in, for example, volcanic eruptions and greenhouse gas emissions. Until recently, most of that was done by enormous–”super”–computers that could make the millions–and billions–of different computations happen quickly and repeatedly.

But now you too can participate in this venture by lending some of your personal computer’s idle time to the effort. By doing so, your computer can be added to large banks of many thousands of other machines that run the computations.  If you are interested in participating, visit climateprediction.net. The organizers of this effort are very optimistic that it will result in some higher resolution (smaller grids), powerful models that help answer some of the big questions above.

The search for a single causative factor is often missing the larger picture, they said, and approaches to address the crisis may fail if they don’t consider the totality of causes – or could even make things worse.

No one issue can explain all of the population declines that are occurring at an unprecedented rate, and much faster in amphibians than most other animals, the scientists conclude in a study just published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

The amphibian declines are linked to natural forces such as competition, predation, reproduction and disease, as well as human-induced stresses such as habitat destruction, environmental contamination, invasive species and climate change, researchers said.

“An enormous rate of change has occurred in the last 100 years, and amphibians are not evolving fast enough to keep up with it,” said Andrew Blaustein, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University and an international leader in the study of amphibian declines.

“We’re now realizing that it’s not just one thing, it’s a whole range of things,” Blaustein said.

“With a permeable skin and exposure to both aquatic and terrestrial problems, amphibians face a double whammy,” he said. “Because of this, mammals, fish and birds have not experienced population impacts as severely as amphibians – at least, not yet.”

The totality of these changes leads these researchers to believe that the Earth is now in a major extinction episode similar to five other mass extinction events in the planet’s history. And amphibians are leading the field – one estimate indicates they are disappearing at more than 200 times that of the average extinction rate.

Efforts to understand these events, especially in the study of amphibians, have often focused on one cause or another, such as fungal diseases, invasive species, an increase in ultraviolet radiation due to ozone depletion, pollution, global warming, and others. All of these and more play a role in the amphibian declines, but the scope of the crisis can only be understood from the perspective of many causes, often overlapping. And efforts that address only one cause risk failure or even compounding the problems, the researchers said.

“Given that many stressors are acting simultaneously on amphibians, we suggest that single-factor explanations for amphibian population declines are likely the exception rather than the rule,” the researchers wrote in their report. “Studies focused on single causes may miss complex interrelationships involving multiple factors and indirect effects.”

One example is the fungus B. dendrobatidis, which has been implicated in the collapse of many frog populations around the world. However, in some populations the fungus causes no problems for years until a lethal threshold is reached, studies have shown.

And while this fungus disrupts electrolyte balance, other pathogens can have different effects such as a parasitic trematode that can cause severe limb malformations, and a nematode that can cause kidney damage. The combination and severity of these pathogens together in a single host, rather than any one individually, are all playing a role in dwindling frog populations.

Past studies at OSU have found a synergistic impact from ultraviolet radiation, which by itself can harm amphibians, and a pathogenic water mold that infects amphibian embryos. And they linked the whole process to water depths at egg-laying sites, which in turn are affected by winter precipitation in the Oregon Cascade Range that is related to climate change.

The problems facing amphibians are a particular concern, scientists say, because they have been one of Earth’s great survivors – evolving about 400 million years ago before the dinosaurs, persisting through ice ages, asteroid impacts, and myriad other ecological and climatic changes.

Their rapid disappearance now suggests that the variety and rate of change exceeds anything they have faced before, the researchers said.

“Modern selection pressures, especially those associated with human activity, may be too severe and may have arisen too rapidly for amphibians to evolve adaptations to overcome them,” the researchers concluded.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Other collaborators on the study were from the University of Colorado, University of Georgia, University of Pittsburgh, and Pepperdine University.