Monte Rio Redwoods Upper Watershed Gully Restoration
Occidental Arts & Ecology Center WATER Institute Implementor
Project Goals and Objectives
Sonoma County Regional Parks worked with Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC), and North Bay Jobs with Justice to utilize woody debris from a fuels reduction project to implement LT-PBR in three Class III watercourses in the new Monte Rio Redwoods Regional Park. Project goals included: (1) utilizing slash from a shaded fuel break project to address incised channels and sediment erosion into Dutch Bill Creek, (2) training Sonoma County Regional Parks staff in LT-PBR techniques, and (3) addressing legacy impacts of logging by aggrading channels and rebuilding soil to retain more water to support healthy secondary redwood growth.
Structure Construction Elements
Slash material from a shaded fuel break vegetation treatment was strategically placed into portions of Class III watercourses where head-cutting and channel incision were occurring in order to reduce erosion and sediment delivery downstream. Conifer branches with needles (primarily Douglas fir and redwood) were interwoven into a dense matrix that was placed into channels both parallel and perpendicular to flow. The technique included thorough contact between biomass and the bed/banks of the receiving channel to increase filtration surface area. The end result was a densely packed but porous matrix that disperses the flow/energy of water while trapping soil and leaf litter particles, disallowing further erosion and incision of the channel and mitigating headcut migration. Once enough flexible, green biomass material had been placed to fill the bottom third of the channel, we placed larger woody material on top to compress and hold the structure in place. In some places, perpendicular logs and branches were held into place with vertical wooden stakes pounded into the soil to fix their location. In steeper and narrower channel sections, parallel logs were placed into the channel. In places where there was a more gradual slope and the channel was wider and more depositional, we placed woody material perpendicular to the channel in a semi-circle shape that spans the width of the depositional zone.
Project Photos
Cover Photo
2024-08-30
(no description)
2024-01-04
(no description)
2024-07-04
(no description)