Johnson Ranch Open Space
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Project Goals and Objectives
Over the span of 3 years, Nature's Engineers is working with the City of San Luis Obispo on Johnson Ranch Open Space to build 30 BDAs on Dry Creek, which is a tributary to SLO Creek. There are active Steelhead Trout in the creek, so our goals are to improve the creek’s water holding capacity, and thus also improve the habitat for the Steelhead. Currently, much of the creek runs dry in the summer and fall, so we are eager to see if we can enhance the stream to continue flowing for longer into the year. This is part of a larger restoration project with the Yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe, performing hand-tended harvesting and seed sowing as well as low-intensity cultural burns with the aid of Cal Fire, SLO County Fire Dept and SLO City Fire. 300 Native trees will also be planted by Eco SLO to enhance the riparian area.
Structure Construction Elements
This build consists of 30 hand built, in-stream structures. There are 27 channel spanning Beaver dam Analogs (BDAs), 2 bank-attached structures, and 1 mid-channel structure. These features were built out of entirely natural, on-site materials, except for the mid-channel structure, which used natural fiber sisal rope to secure the woody material to the existing mid channel tree. The main woody materials used were fresh cut branches from onsite vegetation: mainly sycamore, willow, coyote brush and coast live oak. They were layered with soil dug from the bank upstream of each structure. Finally, rocks and gravel from the dry channel were placed on the top and back of the structures to add weight and strength. Dry Creek is a particularly rocky, flashy stream, so these BDA structures have a higher rock content than most traditional BDAs. These BDAs were also limited to 1-foot of structure height being built per year in order to minimize possible stranding of Steelhead Trout.
Project Photos
Cover Photo