Thoughts spurred by newly found blog...

Silver Fox over at Looking for Detachment posted about a newly found blog, Accidental Remediation. Short Geologist's posts are primarily about working in the HTRW investigation and remediation arena, a field I left about 10 or so years ago.

One of her posts talks about the "indentured servitude" of entry-level geologists (aka field grunts). This type of activity on the part of consulting firms was certainly a portion of why I left that field of work.

I had friends who worked for firms that would charge their clients for overtime worked, but not pay their employees for that overtime. They were on salary, right? I myself worked for a firm that had me work 5 months' worth of hours in 3 (I was working about 12-15/7) - unpaid overtime - and got a lovely $500 bonus that year. Other folks in my firm and other firms in the area were similarly overworked. I had one friend who got herself hooked on ritalin to accomplish the senior project manager work that she needed to get done (more 15/7). I've heard of firms that had a very "enhanced" (aka stimulant-laden) atmosphere to produce results from their junior and senior project managers. Not all engineering/geology firms are this way, of course. There are a lot of very good firms out there who treat their employees well and understand the relationship between sound product/reputation.

Regardless, about 10 years ago I decided it was nuts and changed fields within the environmental industry. Luckily, I had the background that helped me accomplish this transition. The consulting in my arena, wetland delineation, is much more sane and not as subject to that type of servitude. It's harder to get crappy work by the state and federal agencies as they generally need to field-verify the work firms are doing, which is highly visible and mostly above ground (except for those hydric soil indicators). Projects tend to be smaller, and when large, the clients tend to be savvy enough to understand that good data is necessary.

That said, the quote about consulting I continually tell people is "Good, fast, and cheap; pick any two. You can't have it all." And it's true.

Kids and science

I am quite proud of my 4-year-old daughter. She takes catching bugs to put in her bug box, my somewhat feeble explanations of scientific principles and processes, being taught minerals in stone countertops and my continuous absences for work (with or without her along) in stride.

Yesterday was one of those cases in point. On our way to that horrid bastion of low-cost consumerism originating in the south (aka Wally-world), she asked me very pointed questions about the difference between dry ice and regular ice. For background explanation, when we travel to larger communities with decent food stores (TJs and Whole Paycheck), I bring a large cooler and go gaga. The last time this occurred, she was along for the search for dry ice to keep the frozen things frozen and the rest well-cooled. [Note: In NM and AZ, Smith's almost always has dry ice. Occasionally, Wally-world will have it as well. Albertson's recently dropped selling it.]

It was interesting to see her reaction to the explanation, especially that carbon dioxide comes from air and is separated out and cooled from a gaseous state to a solid (ie., frozen) state.* It's a difficult concept for a small child, first that air that you can't see is actually made up of different gases, and second, that you can actually separate out one of them and cool it to a solid state.

The non-scientific world tends to think of ice in terms of frozen water; most preschool teachers and day care workers don't have a scientific background and have limited ability to present difficult scientific concepts to children of small age. It's one thing to explain to a child what you can see (trees, bugs, plants growing, rivers flowing); it's quite another to explain what you can't (and really don't understand yourself).

I've noted gender-related test score differences for verbal and math/science in the school district to which I will (hopefully) soon be sending my child. Girls lead boys in test scores in every elementary school in the district for both verbal and math/science until 4th grade. At that point, the verbal scores equalize and the girls' math/science scores tank (from about 95th percentile to 75th or less). In discussing this with friends who are both educators and mental health care professionals, we came up with several possible explanations, the most plausible being a combination of non-science background for the teachers and a male-oriented curriculum (scientific ideas and processes being presented in a way easier for boys than girls to grasp). Before you gasp about this statement, anyone with children of both genders will tell you that boys are very different from girls in the way they play and verbalize (certainly with ranges of behavior in each - my ex had his dolly along with his tonka trucks and my girl is not much of a girlie-girl). With the differences in learning abilities and behaviors, it is not a stretch to imagine that an elementary school science curriculum taught by a non-scientist could be easier for one gender to grasp than another.

I'm obviously very concerned about how well my girl learns math and science (and English - see May 15 post) in school. Occasionally, my fears are allayed and today was a case in point. She took the explanation of separate gases forming air and freezing one of those to make dry ice in stride. Her questions made it clear she grasped the basic concepts. Though she may have a bit of a difficult time verbalizing what she understood, I'm quite proud of her ability to understand the concepts, and grateful that she gets the opportunity to do so.

*[1. I left out the discussion of its liquid state existing at higher-than-atmospheric pressures and low temperatures. 2. She easily got that it was colder than regular ice.]

[As another aside, her 13-year-old babysitter can drive a backhoe and dress an elk with the same ease as sending a text message or doing her hair and makeup. I'm quite proud of her, too.]

Art and Architecture in Geology: Accretionary Wedge #10

As I am in the middle of redesigning a kitchen with my significant other and just spent many hours looking at hurking slabs of rock in near three-digit weather (I picked a garnet granite in the remnant yard), my contribution to this version of the Accretionary Wedge (#10) are two of the buildings in downtown LA that had some of my favorite geology in architecture.

The first is 601 Wilshire, or the Figueroa at Wilshire: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=1357
Construction was finished in 1990, and the architect was Albert C. Martin. As monolithic downtown office buildings go, this is one of my favorites. I spent many hours both inside and in the outer courtyard of this building, faced with pink granite apparently from Brazil (also used on the inside). My favorite building feature: the pink marble sconces in the hallways, sliced thin to be translucent and give a warm pink glow to the interior. I've craved marble sconces like that since, and just raved about them again to a friend, while discussing use of stone in the home.

The other is the Los Angeles Public Library: http://www.lapl.org/central/art_architecture.html
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Public_Library

I also spent many hours in this building, constructed in 1926 by architects Bertram Goodhue and Carlton Winslow in that quintessential southern California meets Egypt style, like many other buildings in SoCal constructed during that era. It apparently had an arson fire in 1986 and was restored to be called the Richard Riordan Library. Unfortunately, the websites don't have a discussion of the floor tile, a beautiful Devonian shale/slate apparently quarried in the British Isles. I don't quite know if this is correct, as I emailed the docents and received that info in reply. It is a beautifully calming dark green clearly showing the sedimentary structures contained within the stone. I've also craved a floor of this, to bring calm to home and a reminder of the ebb and flow of the tides and the seas.

Not my summer vacation...

I'm off to tribal lands tomorrow, to look at a proposed small ag dam rebuild location. Then I'm off to an unnamed location in NM, to make home decisions with my significant other. Then back home, a week of work, then it's off again to give two talks and do some field work on the way. The rest of the summer runs somewhat similar. In between all the travel, I need to organize my both my home and work belongings enough to be able to be schlepped to the above-mentioned unnamed location at the end of summer. And amongst, all of that, I need to take care of child, make child school decisions, regular work, home, meals, bills, and dog. phew. When's that lottery ticket gonna win?

Let it snow...in May?

This is the view out my significant other's back door yesterday. I'll be moving here in August. The elevation is close to 8000 ft. This was a somewhat freak system; there were slight accumulations at lower elevations across NM and CO from this event.

One of the little pieces of local wisdom I took to heart when I moved here is that the gambel oaks won't leaf out until after the last danger of frost has passed. I don't think that was the case this year. It's ten minutes to seven, and it's 33 F outside.

Regardless, I don't put out plants until after the oak leaves have shown up (that was around the beginning of last week). It seems as if the hummingbirds appear around the same time. I'm looking forward to the wildflowers this spring. More to come.

Go to the source before forming your opinion...

I somehow came across this http://womanscholar.blogspot.com/2008/05/do-you-know-what-your-government-is.html blog post this morning. I had not intended to get this political in my blog, but this post raised my ire.

The author is seriously misinformed and is using a quote from a politician to form her opinion instead of the actual text of the bills before the House and Senate, and the judicial, regulatory, and technical history of the issue. [Personally, I rarely form an opinion in direct response to a politician's quote, noting that there is almost always an underlying agenda. I form my opinions surrounding political issues based on fact, not party line.]

Due to the 2001 SWANCC and the 2007 Rapanos-Carabel Supreme Court decisions, the federal government has had isolated waters lacking interstate commerce and waters without a "significant nexus" to a navigable water removed from regulation. This has reduced the reach of the Clean Water Act and limited the ability of the federal government to regulated discharges of pollutants to the waters in question, ranging from prairie potholes and vernal pools, to ephemeral washes and arroyos in the southwest. In the absence of federal regulation, theoretically, states are supposed to fill the void. In reality, that only happens in the most progressive of states. Most states have limited ability to emplace new water regulation due to state and local politics and funding limitations, much like other sorts of regulation, like health care and education.

The persons who brought those cases to court and the supporting interests had the underlying interest to reduce the scope and breadth of the federal government's regulation and reduce the regulatory burden on the regulated community. Unfortunately, it has had the opposite effect, making the determination of regulation much more difficult, time-consuming, and burdensome on both the regulators and the regulated community. Where federal jurisdiction was once clear-cut, now it is fuzzy and takes considerable time and effort on everyone's part.

Personally, these two cases have made my work, my customers' work, and especially the work of regulators I work with much more time-consuming, onerous, and burdensome. It has also confused the cross-regulation of different sections of the Clean Water Act, making communication between several different branches and agencies of local, state, and federal government critical. A behemoth task.

The Clean Water Restoration Act mentioned in the above blog would restore the previously-removed regulation and effectively ease the regulatory burden [on the federal government, on states, localities and private interests] by making the geographic scope of federal Clean Water Act regulation crystal clear.

My office

The first is in uranium country in NM. The circle you see is a rock shelter structure. I haven't yet seen the archeological reports for this area, so I can't tell you who built it or when. I'm not giving out any details of the location (the photo doesn't, either). This is to protect cultural resource sites from unscrupulous people.

The second is an example of a culvert placement gone bad. Hyper border collie mix for scale. There are actually three or four more in similarly bad shape along this NM creek, effectively stranding the residents in this canyon as they need to keep their cars on the other side of this crossing in order to travel. Just outside of the picture, there is a footbridge across the creek the residents use (including children and older folks who have to walk several miles from their homes to the footbridge).

The last is the Rio Grande in Colorado. The structure is a rock structure designed to effect bank stabilization and create fish habitat by working with, instead of against, the river's energy. I sometimes have a problem with the aesthetics of these structures, but they're better than some of the alternatives (gabion baskets, riprap, channelization).

Another oldie but goodie...

I promised Tuff Cookie over at http://magmacumlaude.blogspot.com/ that I would post some text from my 1914 Handbook for Field Geologists by C.W. Hayes, Ph.D. (a former Chief Geologist at USGS)*. It's a second edition, the first being published in 1909 (?).

Some of my favorite selections come from the first chapter of the book, "Pre-requisites for a Field Geologist." Take this one:

"The first qualification is a good physique and a strong constitution, for sooner or later severe and long-continued physical exertion will be required, and a defect in ability to sustain this exertion will result in serious handicap [ADA was clearly not an issue then]. The second is adaptability. Few occupations present so wide a diversity in conditions under which work must be carried on as that of the field geologist. His [no her yet] surroundings may vary all the way from the luxuries of a summer resort hotel to the bare necessities which he can pack on his back, and he must be able to adapt himself with equal readiness to either extreme. If one cannot so adapt himself, but is dependent on any particular kind of surroundings, he should abandon the idea of becoming a field geologist, for he will find the occupation extremely unsatisfactory. A geologist must possess a practical knowledge of horsemanship, of boating, and of general woodcraft, so that he will equally be at home in the saddle, in the canoe, or on foot in a trackless forest. One is fortunate who has already acquired this practical knowledge, but if he does not possess it he must be sure that he has an aptitude for acquiring it quickly."

There are actually few geologists I know who have and regularly use horsemanship skills in the course of their field work (I've only known a few who needed pack animals and a muleskinner usually came with the mules/ponies/horses/burros - my grandfather needed dog-sledding, fishing, and hunting skills for his gold-mining in Alaska). Besides that and a little gender-bias, his words remain fairly true. At least a couple of profs I've known over the years have wanted to instill this understanding in their field-oriented students. More to come...

*Hayes, C.W., Handbook for Field Geologists, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York 1914.

More words that bug...

Geology Happens http://geologyhappens.blogspot.com/2008/05/words-that-bug.html and Callan Bentley http://nvcc.edu/home/cbentley/geoblog/2008/05/words-worth.html have asked for additions to words that bug you. My issues are more with grammatical usage. Having a four-year-old in whom I am trying to instill an appreciation for proper grammar (thus far not very successful), I am acutely aware of grammatical improprieties in my local area that make me cringe.

Without further adieu:

"It works good." "It plays real good." Any usage of the word "good" for "well" creates an immediate impulse for correction. I have actually hear this usage from one of the my child's pre-school teachers. My significant other is being continually subjected to this correction, much to his chagrin. We live in the southwest, we have college degrees, therefore there is no reason to subject your audience to this incorrect term usage. There shouldn't be a reason if one has graduated from junior high, yet it persists.

The action of ending a sentence with a preposition. "Where's it at?" "Where are we going to?"

"Anyways" There is no "s" on the end of "anyway."

"Located" as a redundancy, as in: "Where is it located?" I regularly strike out the word when used similarly by my employees or colleagues. True writing skill is getting the most across with the least amount of words.

Loss of definite articles, such as the British usage "He went to hospital." No, "he went to THE hospital."

Finally, a misspelling that is a clear indication of never having seen the correct spelling of the word. Examples I have seen recently: "Escavate" for excavate (the writer is first generation American of Hispanic origin and so I give him/her great credit for trying) and "spicket" for spigot. Enough said.

What worth ephemeral?

One of the questions with which I am repeatedly faced regards ephemeral streams, washes, and arroyos. These systems have an ordinary high water mark (a easily noted bed and bank), clearly convey flow, can be only a foot wide, but are dry most of the year, only run in response to a storm event, have no vegetation or upland vegetation only, and are written off by most consultants, regulators, and the general public as having limited to no value.

In the generally accepted classification schemes for wetlands and riparian habitats, we talk about functions and values. Functions are a fairly easily defined activity conducted by the aquatic resource, such as infiltration to the water table. Values are the socially-defined worth we give to that function or resource. My value can be different from your value, which is why we don't usually use values in the whole aquatic resource regulation scheme.

Clearly, headwater ephemerals do something. They convey water and sediment, they allow some infiltration. But what I find little of in the literature is any other function they conduct in the whole biogeochemical scheme of southwest aquatic systems (related to water quality and system function as opposed to strictly fluvial geomorphology). There is research that suggests (I don't have it at hand, otherwise I'd cite it here) that headwaters in wetter systems conduct some pollutant attenuation and act as a buffer between uplands and the perennial reaches, and there's plenty of research on biogeochemical activity in an intermittent-to-perennial stream system in AZ (Sycamore Creek) but I haven't seen any research in the southwest on strictly ephemeral systems, other than grey literature on what flood event to which the OHWM actually corresponds (Lichvar, et al, Corps of Engineers ERDC-CRREL). (Funding is probably an issue; Sycamore Creek is lovely and inviting, an ephemeral wash is not so much, what hypothesis to test, durability of equipment in the summer monsoons, etc.)

With such limited information, it is hard for consultants/regulators to have concern regarding the regulation of ephemeral systems, much less argue with clients/applicants that piping, wholesale filling, or otherwise constricting the inconveniently-located dry washes in their development is not a good idea. We've been trained to think "green is good, brown is not" in our aquatic values (inherent in Clean Water Act regulation - wetland is better and more precious).

I'd love to have a biogeochemical argument other than flooding/water conveyance as to why it is important to avoid/preserve our ephemeral headwaters here in the southwest. There's nothing I like better than to walk through a large wash in the lower Coloradan, Sonoran, Mojave, and Colorado plateau deserts on a spring day, with wildflowers abounding, birds chirping, and lizards scrambling away from the day's sunshine.

Attachment to place

I spent the last week in SoCal, and passed by a familiar landscape with which I had become intimately involved over a number of years by working on a long-term project in the area. I had become very attached to this certain landscape that is really quite trashed from anthropogenic activity, through many visits with a variety of colleagues, from hydrologists to ecologists, soil scientists to botanists. I had tears in my eyes as I drove through the area, once (and now barely) home to three endemic plant species (spreading navarretia, SJ crownscale, and threadleaf brodeia). Between the ag, previous recreational bulldozing in the waterway, sheep grazing, and sludge spreading, there is limited potential for restoration. Most of my work frustration in SoCal was related to this area, and the knowledge that this place had been a wonderfully functioning habitat for a variety of species that had perfectly adapted to the arid but occasionally very wet, alkaline but wetland, tectonically spectacular environment (the closest large fault system is around 700K years old and is one of the most active in SoCal). I really fell in love with the place, and shared that passion with some of my colleagues (a place only a mother could love).

Recently, I spoke with a coworker about the differences between where we used to work, and where we work now (somewhere in the southwest with not too much housing development, but lots of other activity). We both came from larger metropolitan areas, with precious aquatic resources in limited supply. We both realized in our conversation that it was only infrequently that we privately felt dismay and, frankly, heartbreak at the potential loss of these special places where we are now. Where we once felt this heartbreak on an all-to-regular basis, it only comes very infrequently in our current location. I'm lucky in that most of my work currently is focussed on repairing an already-impaired aquatic landscape or just dealing with legal or regulation-related minutiae, instead of watching the wholesale demolition of 200-1000 acres with no vestige of the former topography left (except perhaps in the development's name).

My significant other must have thought I was nuts, sadly proclaiming my attachment to a landscape that looks like mostly a trash dump and meth lab haven, a place only someone with intimate knowledge of its potential could love. I disparaged the sheep, the sludge, and once again, wished I'd win the lottery so I could just buy the floodplain up and return it to its former glory (along with a spa weekend, anywhere). I also realized that it's really kind of nice not to feel that heartbreak on a daily or weekly basis; that it is quite a drain on one's soul to live with that sense of landloss regularly.

Even though many of my recent conversations have centered around "no, using car bodies as riprap in designated critical habitat for endangered fish species isn't really a good idea...", I'm doing a lot of proactive, restoration-oriented activities, as well as assisting industries and local governments to buck up their maintenance and construction practices. It's satisfying in a way I didn't get to feel in SoCal. I'm glad I'm here.

Other places, other riparian habitat

Over the last month or so, it's been irrigation ditch, canal, and acequia clean-up time over the southwest. Much of the water in AZ and NM used for agriculture comes from surface irrigation supplies, especially in NM. The supply canals, ditches, and acequias are mostly unlined, so they end up supporting a wide variety of riparian and irrigation-induced wetlands. When it is clean-up time, the vegetation gets burned and the ditches get dug out. In some areas of CO that I've visited this spring (if you could call it that a month ago), even the freshwater marsh (i.e., cattails) that inhabits some of the low-lying swales gets burned.

We use these agricultural resources, and I understand the need to have a clear-flowing ditch or acequia to supply water to pastures and food/hay crops. Unfortunately, in many areas of the southwest, the acequia-induced habitat is most of what's left of the fairly vast riparian zones along the once-perennial or strongly-intermittent stream systems with occasional tenajas to supply water throughout the year. When the riparian habitat gets burned, there's that much less during the year for southwest critters to use as forage, nesting, and refuge habitat. One could argue that the riparian veg grows back, but the temporal loss still remains.

This all reminds me of the two months one summer (before the axis of evil) spent in the mountains of a central asian country, one with a very tall volcano. Like NM, the mountain villages (and the desert communities, too) have well-developed irrigation supply systems to provide their fields with water. The systems are called qanats (covered in the desert), some which have been in place for over a thousand years (or so I was told). I wasn't there during spring qanat-cleaning, but one of the practices I saw made me shudder all the same.

I was there as a tagalong with a more official research team. I was lucky enough to be looking at Neogene fluvially-derived sediments for a independent study-type project, of which there is a fairly large wedge in the local area. There are also springs in the hillsides of these sediments which support a diverse, fairly native (as far as I could tell) riparian habitat. There is little riparian along the creeks and rivers for both natural and anthropogenic reasons (primarily because the streams run big and carry lots of coarse-to-fine grained sediment - boulders to silts/clays - that blow out streamside veg). As such, the hillside springs support riparian veg that acts as forage, nesting, and refuge for the local central asian critters including these big, honking grouse-like birds that were about small turkey-sized. Each spring-fed riparian zone would house about 2-3 of these grouse, about half an acre in size. The locals would torch the zones to drive out the grouse-y birds, which they would then shoot for sport and dinner. In the area in which I was working, I recollect about three of these zones along one large stretch of hillside. There weren't very many, over all, and they housed what was left of the native habitat (probably having been grazed/flooded out centuries ago). I still think it was a shame to destroy those, even temporally, for one or two dinners, when a whole herd of goats and sheep were there to provide cheese, yogurt, milk, and meat on a very regular basis.

My other main recollection is that, like Europe, there is no place without people. I could not go about with my head uncovered, even in the mountains, as there was always the chance of coming upon a goatherd or another local, or even one of the religious police (yes, even in the mountains). I still think how lucky I am to live and work in the southwest, where I can always escape to fairly empty places, without a headscarf.

Not enough time on my hands...

The last month has been spent in plenty of overtime and lots of travel. Not much time to write then, but I now have a little space to play catch-up and put all the thoughts I've had over the last month or so to e-pen and e-paper. I've been all over the southwest this last month, from LA to Denver, from Redlands to Moab, and all sorts of places in between. It's really good to be home for awhile. I have lots to write about, so keep looking in to see what's new.

Need more education

I'd like to post more often, but the demands of job, parenthood, and now, dog-training, altogether too often take precedence. Add to that my wish to retain at least a modicum of anonymity by posting only from home, and getting the time to post is often difficult.

There's considerable discussion both in the news and the politico-econ blogs I frequent about the economic fallout from the subprime mess, as well as plenty of talk about how it started and who's to blame. What doesn't get discussed is the amount of environmental damage to the desert southwest and its aquatic resources (not to mention T&E species habitat) as a result of the overwhelming amount of development brought on by low interest rates, and quite frankly, the greed of the development industry and investment banking.

I've heard that some of the most heavily developed areas in the southwest, such as the Inland Empire of Southern California, the areas around Tucson and Phoenix, the greater Las Vegas area, and the Santa Fe-Albuquerque area have also had some of the most significant impacts to riparian habitat and T&E species habitat in the country in the last 10 years. Those homes that were constructed and now stand empty, were constructed in areas that hosted habitat for a number of species such as the southwestern willow flycatcher, the California coastal gnatcatcher, the pygmy owl, among other plants, herps, mammals and birds.

Riparian corridors are crucial in the southwest to provide cover, forage, and nesting areas for most of the desert inhabitants. I'll saved the loss of water for another discussion, but the funneling of species into degraded, suburban or urban channels is clearly to their detriment.

Part of the problem, especially in the more arid areas, is there is not enough public education as to the function and the value of intermittent and ephemeral waterways, including amongst regulators and consultants. I frequently come across colleagues in my industry who have little understanding of the functions of an arroyo, which include pollutant attenuation, water infiltration, stormwater and sediment conveyance, and cover and corridors for herps, small mammals and birds, amongst other functions. Other colleagues don't understand that an arroyo's banks are where they are because they do convey that much water on occasion (and it isn't necessarily a hundred-year event when it does, more like a 2- or 5-year event).

If educated biologists, geomorphologists, and other environmental professionals in my industry have such limited understanding of how desert fluvial systems work (or just haven't bothered to keep up with the literature), how can we expect the general public to have any?

First Post!

Welcome! Thanks for visiting my new blog, mainly focusing on natural resource issues in the greater southwest. I'll likely cover a variety of topics, ranging from geosciences, botanical and wildlife science, to environmental regulation, with an occasional rant on SW politics and women's issues.

In my first post, I'd like to give kudos to Dave Rosgen, Bill Zeedyk and all their philosophical adherents. These folks have done a lot to find ways of effecting bank stabilization and river/creek channel restoration without making it look like an explosion of concrete and rebar (or gabion baskets, just as bad in my book). I've seen at least a few of these structures get installed in AZ, NM, and CO and they seem to be working well to provide areas for riparian regrowth and increased fish habitat (where appropriate).

Zeedyk seems to be the only one that I know of (I'm sure there are more) who works on smaller intermittent and ephemeral systems. One of the nicest I've seen is along Ganado Wash near the Hubbell Trading Post in AZ. He used post and other structures in the wash to effect stabilization/aggradation which, in turn, provided ample opportunity for riparian revegetation. I'm pretty sure that the structures helped effect greater infiltration to the water table, as well. Aesthetically, the whole scene is very pleasing. Unless you know exactly what you're looking for, you would have no idea that any restoration had taken place in the wash. It's probably come fairly close to looking like (and more importantly, functioning like) it's pre-Columbian condition.

I like Zeedyk's general approach to restoration (and rural road building/maintenance for better/more natural water distribution to the land surface). He takes a low-tech approach, mainly looking for the easiest and cheapest ways to conduct the channel work, primarily using hand labor. Most of the restorations I've seen or read about were installed by hand using small structures or rock placement. I've included a link to the Zeedyk/Quivira Coalition's publication http://quiviracoalition.org/Detailed/QC_Publications/Field_Guides/An_Introduction_to_I..._82.html

Send me your favorite restoration, and I'll post a description and a photo here on OHWM. Please be sure to give credit where credit is due. We need to thank the folks who do this work and make sure to pass the word around so more restoration like this gets done!