Skip to main content

Before & After

Our most recently installed planting plot in May 2019 was a joint effort from multiple partners!

Planting plots and stream, before and after construction
This terrace, or inset floodplain, will be planted with native riparian plants. 

Planting Plots

Ten planting plots on the upper floodplain (shown below in white and yellow) are being intensively managed for weed control and planted with native species appropriate for the drier soil hydrology. In addition, terraces, or inset floodplains within the incised channel (shown in green below) are being planted with native riparian species suited for the wetter soil conditions.

Click to enlarge

This riparian planting plot includes plants that tolerate a variety of hydrologic conditions, and the reed canarygrass and thistle are smothered with cardboard and bark.

These planting plots may someday provide willow and red osier dogwood for beaver, and spruce that can fall into the stream to improve structure and habitat in the channel.

BDAs at High Water

Beaver Dam Analogue (BDA) #8 was installed up against the incised banks of Myers Creek. During high water of spring 2017, the stream pushed its force around the BDA and into the bank, widening and lengthening the channel as needed. This sediment was then carried downstream, where it was captured by other BDAs and settled on the streambed. As a result, the streambed is now closer to its floodplain!

The ultimate goal of this project is to reconnect the stream with its floodplain, and foster the ecological benefits associated with that connection. The following video is taken at the upstream end of the structures that our team installed in the summer of 2016.

Below you can see that large wood is changing the movement of the stream, causing it to spill out over its banks and inundate the floodplain in a broad area on both sides of the creek. This is the least incised portion of the project area, and thus the first to reconnect. It is very exciting to see this degree of success during the first high flows after in-stream construction.

Change Over Time: BDA 9

Left to right: summer 2016, initial construction; spring 2017, first high water; summer 2017, adaptive management construction; spring 2018, second high water

Click to enlarge

Change Over Time: BDA 14

Before, during, and after construction–the streambed is raised four feet higher in one year!

Click to enlarge

Deflector Dams: Bird’s-Eye View

A deflector dam (2018) pushes the stream against the bank to lengthen and widen the channel and recruit sediment for building the streambed higher.

The same view, 2 years later (2020).

Collaborative Team Works to Restore Wetland

On the western toe of Buckhorn Mountain, in a place called Triple Creek, a rich wetland once thrived. A productive great blue heron rookery overlooked large beaver ponds teeming with trout. Myers Creek spilled over its banks, keeping the soils wet so that animals from all levels of life could flourish – from dragonflies to frogs to birds of prey. In the late 1990’s, an unusually heavy rain-on-snow event changed everything…

Click here for the full article in the Okanogan Valley Gazette-Tribune

Go Back