Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Environment Podcast, where we explore the environment we see every day. I'm your host, Amy Lefringhouse.
Abigail: 00:14And I'm your cohost Abigail Garofalo.
Amy: 00:17Today we're here with Ryan Pankau and he's a horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension and he's gonna talk to us a little bit today about stream bank erosion and what kind of things we can do to identify what's going on in our stream, how can we work with nature, all those kinds of fun things. And, yeah, just welcome. Thank you for being here, Ryan. We're so happy to have you for the first time on our Everyday Environment Podcast.
Ryan: 00:49Well, thanks so much for having me on. I know I'm a fan of the podcast. It's a blast to come on it, and what a great topic. This is, you know, a topic that's kinda near and dear to my heart. Hydrology erosion, controlling erosion, all that kind of stuff. So so thanks so much. Glad to be here.
Amy: 01:05Awesome. And you come from the East Side of the state. Right? I'm on the West Side of the state. You're straight across from me?
Ryan: 01:12Yeah. I work as a horticulture educator, like you said, out of Champaign County. So I cover Champaign, Vermillion, Ford, and Iroquois Counties, kind of like on the Eastern Edge of Central Illinois. I grew up around here, so I'm from... Kind of from this area too.
Ryan: 01:29But to give a little bit more of my background, I actually spent a good chunk of my professional career in Southern Illinois. I went to grad school at SIU and studied riparian buffers. So that big fancy word just means, you know, the area of vegetation you have along a stream. So a stream would be a riparian area, you know, it's the the vegetation on the edge of that stream, how it functions, how water moves through it, what's... You know, what it does to filter pollutants and other things.
Ryan: 02:01And then following grad school, I worked for an engineering company doing civil engineering type work. Just different Designs of stream restoration and other things. Designs of drainage ditches, for lack of a better word, that are meant to just convey storm water to places. Following that and immediately before extension, I worked for about nine years for USDA NRCS.
Ryan: 02:25So the US Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service. I was the area forester for Southern Illinois. And so along with those duties, I did wetland restoration, wildlife habitat restoration, forestry practices, things like that. So a lot of this kind of stuff where, you know, NRCS is a conservation organization agency that, you know, they have very detailed practice standards of how you do stream bank stabilization, how, you know, how you restore streams and other things. So that was just a really great experience.
Ryan: 03:01I got to work, you know, basically the southern third of the state were the counties that I covered within NRCS. So... And then was interested in moving back kind of this... To the central part of the state. My wife's from here too.
Ryan: 03:12And got this awesome job with Extension doing, you know, I do a lot of tree related plant stuff, a lot of native plant stuff here at Extension from my past kind of restoration work, so. Cool. So, yeah, that's how I got to be here.
Amy: 03:26So what did you... What's your degree actually in, Ryan, down there as at...
Ryan: 03:31I guess my degree would be technically in forest hydrology, but it was part of the forestry department at SIU.
Abigail: 03:38Wow. It's so specific, forest... Yeah.
Amy: 03:41Didn't even know that existed. That's awesome.
Abigail: 03:44I always think about, like, now I'm like, oh man, I gotta add you to my list of like, when people reach out. Because people always reach out to the State Master Naturalist Coordinator with their natural resource questions, and I'm like, I could answer that, but also I know someone who knows a lot more about that than I do. So now Ryan, you're on my list for things.
Ryan: 04:05Well, and it's interesting though too, because within that realm of, you know, hydrology and forest hydrology, there's probably a whole set of folks that are more focused on the biological side of it, and stream ecology, and things like that. And there's a whole set of folks that are focused on like the physical hydrology, how erosion happens, how channels form. I probably fall more into, as a hydrologist, that physical hydrology set where that's more where a lot of my experience, you know, came from where, you know, some of the things we're designing were habitat. But if you, you know, we really got into the the details of the ecology of it and what little creatures use all these different habitat features, that's probably where I fall short on the hydrology side of things. But anyway.
Amy: 04:49Gotcha. Well, and if you think about it too, I mean, forest hydrology, and if you think about the state, like, all of our streams typically are surrounded by this, like, riparian zone, this forested area, so, you know, you wouldn't think like, oh, a stream and forests, like, being so interconnected, I guess, off the top of your head, but when you really, really dive into it, you're like, oh, yeah, most of our streams are surrounded by forested areas. The rest of the areas are either grassland, crop, agricultural working lands. So makes sense when you think about it.
Ryan: 05:30Yeah. Especially our larger streams, you know, and that's we know that going back to pre settlement, you know, information. Like, larger streams definitely forested. But, you know, as you get out to what we would call like the headwater locations, you know, where the streams really kinda meet that terrestrial landscape, there probably was grass lined streams in some of the prairies in Illinois. And when you start to talk about, you know, stream channel formation and how vegetation influences that, you would have different patterns of stream channel formation with...
Ryan: 06:03In a grassed stream bank system versus a forested. But I think one of the biggest takeaways I got from looking at all this in in grad school and in my personal experience is just that the the biggest amount of connection to the landscape happens in those headwater locations. So those really small channels. And like, here in Central Illinois, that's often probably something we would call more of a drainage ditch going into a Cornfield, is where that connection with the terrestrial landscape happens. And those are the areas that really need the most protection from sediment, from nutrient runoff, from all these other things where I know a lot of us think of, you know, a big... Like like in my neighborhood, the Sangamon River is the biggest stream
Amy: 06:49Yeah.
Ryan: 06:49You know, close to my house. A lot of us think of, like, the big trees on the banks of the Sangamon and all that being this protective riparian buffer zone, and that's true that it is. But really, most of your kind of pollutant load or the things that humans put into the stream are not flowing right over the sides of the channels of the bank, right into the big Sangamon River. You know, they're coming from way up in the headwaters. And that might be a crop field here.
Ryan: 07:14That might be an urban area in other places where, you know, you've got, a lot of impervious surfaces, concrete and other things where just... Not only is there pollutants coming out of the watershed in in that, you know, off of that landscape, but there's a higher amount of storm flow that happens faster. It just... We've really changed things in areas where we've added impervious surface.
Amy: 07:37That was one of my major moments aha in the watershed stewards class that we held over here on the West side of the state that... I don't know. It was over 50, I think, of the volume of water in Illinois is in those, you know, stream order one and stream order two, like you were talking about, the the headwaters, those first beginning, and then when another one comes in, that's stream order two, right? We've got order one, order two, and that over 50% plus were in, you know, of the volume of water in streams in Illinois is in those type one and two streams.
Amy: 08:22That was like, I don't know, just like mind blowing because I live on the Mississippi River, and so, you know, we're seeing a lot of water go by us over here. And just to think about that and just the impact that we can have in our farms and on our properties and our landscapes and things like that, it was just like, I don't know, it was like eye opening, jaw dropping to me.
Ryan: 08:48Yeah. That that is mind blowing, I had to think of. I mean, I think this is why I got so interested in hydrology. It's just that all these concepts that are just really hard to comprehend, and, you know, for me, it took, like, some study and learning about this. And but, know, one of the things that...
Ryan: 09:03You know, I grew up in Central Illinois, and so I'm used to the Sangamon River. I'm used to little creeks running through cornfields and forests and things. Gosh, when I got to SIU in Southern Illinois, the Mississippi River, the Ohio, those bigger river systems just absolutely fascinated me and blew my mind. Because that's that's something that's just totally different and was new to me. Not not, you know, as of...
Ryan: 09:25Growing up in Illinois, you see it, but to be there and live around it. And so I did a lot of recreation up around the Mississippi area, and we ultimately, for a good chunk of the time down there, lived just about five miles from the Mississippi in Union County.
Abigail: 09:41Very cool. So we were talking about pollution, pollutants that are coming from these headwaters, things like that. So there's a lot of water in those in those different pieces, in those those... What did you say, Amy? Like, level one is what you call them?
Amy: 09:58Mhmm.
Abigail: 09:58That's a lot of opportunities for introduction of pollutants, a lot of opportunities for erosion. Why might we be interested in all... Like, addressing them with these challenges with a nature based solution?
Ryan: 10:16Well, I always kind of think of it as probably the more sustainable route. You know, if we're looking at solutions of vegetation as opposed to, you know, the other things we do to limit erosion are rock and concrete and like, you know, big heavy structures that take a lot of time and money to engineer just to design, let alone put in. And then they have a lifespan where, you know, a sustainable vegetation... Vegetative community, it it has some management challenges, but... And you would probably get a different opinion whether you talked with, you know, a biologist versus an engineer on what's the most sustainable way to address these problems.
Ryan: 10:58But I think what I've seen in a practical sense for landowners, for folks that are trying to address this, is getting that vegetative community going and really stable is just one of the biggest steps in all of this. And and even if you need to look at, you know, some armoring of the toe of the slope of the stream bank, that's where we have the most erosion going on is right at the... Where the the stream bank meets the bed is the spot where a lot of scour happens and other things. You've still gotta have vegetation up the banks above that rock or whatever it is you're using to kinda armor the the toe of the slope. So in the end, I think that for me working with landowners on this and you know, also work with public agencies. We did a lot with the Forest Service in Southern Illinois and you know, one of the great things I could do with USDA was work with private landowners where the Forest Service is a federal agency but a stream doesn't follow property lines, you know.
Ryan: 11:53So we'd try and connect projects that went across those property lines. But for all these folks, know, it's gonna come down to that vegetative community and what you can sustain on those stream banks that are just gonna hold the world together because otherwise, it's too management intensive and you guys have probably seen in urban areas just entirely rock line channels. Yeah. You know? And I mean, that has its own pros and cons but obviously, it doesn't offer much, you know, diversity of habitat or plant life or animal, you know?
Ryan: 12:28So sometimes that has to happen because we've altered streams to a point where that's that's just gotta be the thing that goes in there, but then we lose all this other, you know, biological diversity.
Amy: 12:40Mhmm. Mhmm. So what characteristics... You talked about vegetative communities. So what makes plants so special and effective at, you know, controlling erosion or, you know, trapping nutrients?
Ryan: 12:55Well, there's a couple factors that, you know, your stream bank vegetation really puts into play. I mean, first and most obvious is the the root network that goes down and holds the soil particles or the soil profile together. So those roots kinda bind everything together. That's probably the biggest and most important aspect of your stream bank vegetation but another aspect is the actual drying of the soil from transpiration from plants, know, that's that's as your roots pull water from the soil profile up through the leaves. They they remove soil or water from the soil profile.
Ryan: 13:33So if that soil remains saturated and really wet, it's more prone to erosion than a drier soil profile. So there's probably number two. And probably the third thing that they do is add resistance to surface flow one way or another. But, you know, what we would call... They add roughness to the stream bank or to the watershed, you know, the rough, the above ground stems resisting the flow of water.
Ryan: 13:58Lots of people can probably picture that pretty easily, but there's definitely different ways those above ground stems interact, you know, with the with the storm flow or stream flow.
Abigail: 14:08I love that there's like there's like physics going on, right? So there's like physically slowing down of water, moving, and then also physically holding it in place, and then there's also like a biological component. I never thought about the whole like drying out of the soil thing, that's so cool. I like...
Ryan: 14:27Yeah, and I mean, hydrology is a lot of physics and I think that was something that I always liked a lot in college and school, but but I'm also a nature thing, you know, I really love nature. So to just go with hardcore math or something, that's not interesting. But when you start to add it in this, you know, with everything working together. So I took a couple semesters of soil physics. You know, I took some modeling classes which, gosh, back in, you know, 2005, what was a computer modeling class compared to now?
Ryan: 14:58Like, thank you so much. Yeah. I have to laugh at some of the things we were doing back then but but I like all those things, like, you know, measuring precipitation and seeing it transfer into the hydrograph, you know, the rise the rise of the stream stream flow over time, like, all that stuff is cool to me and so probably didn't mention this, but I did spend a couple years right after grad school kinda doing research still with SIU because I liked all this stuff so much and just Mhmm. Really had a great experience with the forestry department and my professors down there. Still friends with those guys to this day.
Ryan: 15:29So so that was cool. Those were my days of just absolute all out, like, measuring of everything. You know, that was the goal in grad school. Measure all the things that we can and figure out what they're telling us. So that was cool.
Amy: 15:42I love the old maps of riverbeds, like the old aerial maps of riverbeds and how they've changed over time and you can see the old scars of, you know, like, or even just, like, you can see it when you go out to a creek. Right? Sometimes you can see, like, old scars of where the where the bed used to be and where water finds a way, right, to go a different way. I think that stuff is really cool. Yeah.
Ryan: 16:10Well, brings up an interesting thing to talk about too, is just the normal path of streams in Illinois and how normal stream development would happen and what we have today. So, you know, most streams in a in a natural unhuman touch system are trying to reach some point of equilibrium where... And that's equilibrium between the flow coming down the channel, the size of the channel, the sediment load where usually think of sediment as a pollutant but every stream has a natural sediment load coming down it. And so, you know, I think the place where I got to see this the best and understand it and comprehend it the most was when we took a trip to Alaska, maybe gosh, was probably fifteen years ago. But to see, you know, to me that was like in Denali National Park, you're seeing all this unfold.
Ryan: 16:59You know, there's glaciers, there's stream formation going on, there's a newer landscape than we see here sometimes in Illinois. So that's hard for us to comprehend but with without human intervention, that equilibrium is usually achieved with the slope, the size of the channel, all those things. But what we've done in Illinois in a lot of places is straightened and deepened our streams. And, you know, for probably reasons that had to happen, to be able to farm it, to be able to drain urban areas effectively. There's lots of reasons why it happened, mean, and we didn't know all the things, you know, as the industrial revolution happened, the late eighteen hundreds to the early nineteen hundreds where we could really move the soil, you know, we didn't know all the things we know now.
Ryan: 17:45So regardless of why all that happened, it is really interesting, to look at, you know, especially headwater streams and if you can find signs and traces in aerial photography of where those went and then look at it now and it's a straight line that runs across Cornfield. You know, that's that's a big difference in water delivery and what what a lot of people don't think about is when you straighten that channel and make it a straight line versus a curvy line, you know, you've shortened the time it takes for water to hit... To move through that channel and it goes faster and all the physics are just thrown topsy-turvy of that equilibrium. Yeah. So that's what we see a lot in Illinois.
Amy: 18:24Mhmm. Mhmm.
Abigail: 18:25I think a lot about... This paper has stuck with me for a long time. I took a soils class with Ken Olson. He's probably retired by now, but he wrote this paper about how like Illinois borders, like he's a soil scientist, but he talked about how... He wrote this whole paper about how Illinois' borders were predetermined geological time scale because of the Mississippi shifting, right?
Abigail: 18:56Like there's like a a place of the Mississippi that's like bedrock as opposed to like muddy bottom, and he talks about how Illinois would have been a certain population lower because of the border differences and all of these pieces, and it just kinda sticks with me because it truly to me shows, like, how... Like, there's so many influences by our natural systems on our current, like, think we're so different. We're... Well, we're humans, we're different. We we determine our own fate, and it's like, actually, it was all determined a long time ago, and there were different political influences to the state's shape as well, but the Mississippi is a major, like, definer of the western part of our state and so it could have looked a lot different if we hadn't had certain, like, geological events, which is so cool.
Ryan: 19:46Well, is really cool. I've never thought about... I mean, I guess I've understood our borders are rivers, but when you think about... When you trace the perimeter of Illinois, I mean, it's really just kind of the north and the east. There's a little bit that isn't a stream that makes our border, so that's pretty neat Mhmm. Just in and of itself.
Abigail: 20:01Alright. So we were talking about plants, how effective they are for erosion control. Can you share some of some native plant species that are like top notch at that particular job?
Ryan: 20:15Yeah. Let's talk about that for a little bit. And and I always think about this. This is total NRCS practice standard terms and things, but when we would do stream bank restoration, we would divide it into three zones. If you're looking at a stream bank and big or tall, you know, stream banks, whatever, there's really kind of three zones.
Ryan: 20:35One would be the toe and we would usually call that kind of zone one starting at the bottom. Then you've got a little bit of a mid slope area that's a little different And then you've got the top end slope. Okay. You know, so you can pick... We all picture that.
Ryan: 20:48You know, the toe of the slope, you've got like, in some cases, 100% soil saturation all the time with perennial... A stream that has perennial flow or Right. Stream flow all the time. That mid bank location would have a little bit of drying, you know, but probably pretty good access to moisture because a lot of those plants could get their roots deep enough to get into some shallow groundwater. And then zone one on the top of the bank, it's not gonna have complete saturation, but it probably needs to handle inundation if the stream gets out of its banks.
Ryan: 21:19So you still... So you've got kind of different sets of plants for each of those. But, you know, when I think of like that zone one type vegetation that's really down to the bottom of the channel or lining the the toe of the slope, I'll start with maybe some grasses or herbaceous stuff. Switchgrass is a native grass. You probably I'm sure you all heard of that.
Ryan: 21:41There's a caving rock variety and that comes from caving rock down in Southern Illinois that is really, you know, saturated soil tolerant. That, I mean, when you talk about that plant and it's just dense stems, if you've seen a stainless switchgrass, oh my gosh, you talked about stem density. So that's a great one that handles that area that kind of has dense stems that also resists the flow. Another native grass is Prairie Cordgrass and this is kind of a weedy species, but this is kind of what you want in some of these spots.
Ryan: 22:17And I think what really left a mark on me with Prairie Cordgrass, well first off, it's really handles that saturation or wetter conditions well. It's not gonna probably grow in just all outstanding water, you know, so it's not gonna be in the channel. It's not aquatic vegetation, but just out of that line, around wetlands and other places. But it's one of the few plants that I've seen really compete with reed canary grass, which I don't know if you're familiar with this invasive, but, oh, man. It's it's statewide.
Abigail: 22:48We saw pulling it out physically for that.
Amy: 22:51We saw a funny video last night, was like, invasive reed canary grass and this guy's like pulling it out of the banks of this like stream, it was funny. But yes, yikes.
Ryan: 23:01So, you know, we need things that can compete with that and you know, I'm not saying switchgrass couldn't. I think it probably could too but I've seen instances with prairie cordgrass and you know, reed canary grass going head to head. I've also seen places where reed canary grass takes over an entire wetland restoration or an entire stream bank and just is, you know, not what we want. It's non native. It is just an ecological desert then when it takes over. It doesn't have the diversity we would want.
Abigail: 23:27I love that you're also thinking about not just like what can the hydrology handle, but about the ecology of that space as well. Right? So like, a lot of people tend to think about, like when, especially those who are like doing restoration, like as a volunteer activity, they're like, man, I hate goldenrod, or I hate this like particularly aggressive native, and it's like, no, that that species has a place because it's good at fighting other things, or it's essential for like, you know, basic, like, ground laying of restoration spaces. And so using native plants that have like those aggressive tendencies can really help fight those invasive species where, you know, their environments are also suited. I think that's a really great consideration that a lot of us forget about when we think about the plants that we don't want versus we want.
Ryan: 24:20Well, that's a great point, Abigail, and it took me a while to kind of get that into my head too that there's there's a time and a place for an aggressive native. You know, where... And nowadays, I work in much smaller spaces. I work in home gardens or, you know, master gardener projects and things where that's not a place for prairie corn grass. You know, that's that's not something we're gonna put there, but but even so, like in restoration type settings, like having that aggressive native where it needs to be to ward off the invasive.
Ryan: 24:49Mhmm. Great spot. The other ones that I I commonly think of are kind of our sedges and rushes. You know, that a lot of these kinda naturally occur in a stream system. So there's times that we would just would kinda let those happen in these spaces.
Ryan: 25:03But one of my favorites out of that realm is, Palm Sedge. I And don't know. I I use it in rain gardens now too. It's a little bit aggressive at times, but when you look at it's, just the dense stems it puts up and puts together, I love it at like an inlet to a rain garden or at the the toe of a slope and a stream restoration if I can promote it or if I can plant it and it's just one that I'm seeing like more and more available from native plant suppliers. Mhmm.
Ryan: 25:30You know, so some of it has to do with what you can find for what you can put or plant in the place.
Abigail: 25:34Sure, I have palm sedge in my garden. I didn't know it was particularly aggressive. That makes sense now that I'm seeing it grow and thrush. As I'm watching it, I put it under our spruce tree because I was like, I wanted to try out a a sedge garden and I wasn't sure how it would deal with like a conifer, you know? But it's doing well, in case anybody was wondering, so.
Ryan: 25:57Well, and really adaptable too from dry to wet, you know, I see it in even drier sites too, like under your pine tree, you know, I presume it's probably drier. A lot of pines that really love the wet feet. But yeah, just a wonderful little plant. I mean, it's pretty vegetative, know, you're not gonna have like a pretty flower or anything on it in the garden but you need those plants too. You know, it's kinda your backdrop, your green backdrop in the garden.
Ryan: 26:22But let's talk about woody plants a little bit then. And one of my all time favorites for that Zone 1 location is button bush. Are you familiar with that? Yeah.
Abigail: 26:31I have it is crazy right now.
Ryan: 26:34Yeah. But I mean, that is a plant that will grow in just all outstanding water. And, you know, you talked about, like, massive stream migration and old stream channels and things. Yeah. The Cache River in Southern Illinois is an area that is kind of the old, I I think it was the old Ohio Stream Channel, like, millions of years ago, you know, a long time ago.
Ryan: 26:57Mhmm. That created just this massive complex of wetlands. So when I did research at SIU, that's where most of my study sites were in that Cache River Watershed just because there's a lot of research going on there. But anyway, getting to the point here about button bush though. There's extensive button bush swamps there.
Ryan: 27:15And just one of the neatest things of all time is there's a canoe trail you can take that is through those button bush swamps and it'll remind you of the mangroves on a coast or, you know, just... So that's just a huge performer and Abigail, I'm sure you've appreciated the awesome flower on the plant.
Amy: 27:33Flower is so cool.
Abigail: 27:35The flower is so cool, although I... Somebody once told me and now I'm gonna ruin it for everyone else too is it's like giving COVID 19 I know.
Ryan: 27:45Totally.
Abigail: 27:46So now I'm like, I see it, but it's just... It's so... It's such a show stopper though, because it's so weird. Like, that's what I love about it, is like and that's what I try and sell native plants on people. I'm like, you want that flower or that plant that people look at and go, I want that one. That's different. I've never seen that before. Those are, like, that's what you're gonna sell people on, and I I love the button bush flower, so.
Ryan: 28:09Yeah. It's fun. It's really cool. Kind of one of a kind. Few of my other favorites.
Ryan: 28:14I gotta mention the willows and I'm sure you've heard of this type of practice where you... Willows propagate or root so readily, you can just literally stick sticks in the ground and they become plants. You know I mean? It's... Yeah.
Ryan: 28:29You gotta have a little more... Be a little more careful than that. But but they just perform so well at that from the toe to the slope all the way up the side bank and they're used in that fashion a lot of times. Maybe the downside of willows is that they are kind of short lived and they can start to die out or need some replenishment but you've got all the sticks right there in the canopy to start new little patches. A lot of times you will see willows added with at that toe location again where you have a lot of erosion with some type of hardened structure there in an area that's really eroding bad but then the willows are right on top of that and holding the bank together.
Ryan: 29:05They just kind of have an unmatched root system development out of the woody plants. They just really get that network together and hold the bank together. So...
Amy: 29:15I like those. I mean, I like that. I mean, I can just envision, you know, volunteers can just Just the planting of of willows is just, like, so accessible and easy to do, and, like, especially on, like, what do you call it? Zone 2. We're in Zone 2.
Amy: 29:31Right? Like, kinda like the slope up. Right? So it's kinda like not an area that's easily to get in there and, you know, install these plants, so those make it... Willow's live stakes make it, I feel like, easy, easier to...
Ryan: 29:46You know, and you you always wanna talk... Have to talk about the bad side of things sometimes. You know, there's... These can become problematic too. They are so... it illustrates their... How prolific they are. What I would... What we have problems with a lot in Southern Illinois is black willow developing on the inside of a pond levee. You don't really want tree roots going through a pond levee.
Ryan: 30:07Right. I own a pond at our house in Southern Illinois, have a pond that is suffering from this problem. You know, I don't want giant black willows developing on the inside of my levee, putting roots through the earthen structure that is the levee and potentially in this case, you can... When there's standing water behind that, you can have root channels develop and you can have the levee start to fail or... So there's good and bad with those black black willow root systems.
Ryan: 30:33So I always wanted to caution landowners about that too, know, maybe you don't wanna do that stretch of stream that is within wind blowing distance of the seeds from your pond levee, you know.
Ryan: 30:47So, but let's keep moving up the bank then. I think another grass that comes in once we get out of the kind of lowest point is Northern Sea Oats. You know this plant? Now these are all kind of aggressive ones I mentioned. Yeah.
Ryan: 31:03That's Like so big water. Yeah. They have really cool looking fruits. They do. Mhmm.
Ryan: 31:08Again, not... It's one that I've taken out of some gardens in a smaller space cause it is aggressive but you know, when you've got a stream system that you're trying to revegetate or get vegetation going on a stream bank and there's flowing water and things, that is a harsh environment to get plants to take and not wash away. And so these are some of the kind of plants you almost have to focus on, to get to get them going in those settings. So just to think about a couple of, shrubs that might go in this zone that are just... And again, I'm kinda hitting my favorites here.
Ryan: 31:40There's lots of other plants that fit these.
Abigail: 31:42That's what we're here for. I feel like everybody's like, yeah, I'm sure I could look up, but I wanna hear Ryan's favorites. Yeah.
Ryan: 31:47Yeah. The the cool ones. I really think an under planted plant is red twig dogwood and, you know, it it used to be a kind of boring one to me because I see it in the landscape a lot, but when you look at its ecological value, when you look at its versatility from shade to full sun to wet to dry soil and just all the places it can go and its adaptability, that just makes it a real winner in my opinion. Now this last one I'll give is just one of my favorite all time shade shrubs is spice bush, you know, our native spice bush. Mhmm.
Ryan: 32:26And it's, you know, you usually see it along stream banks and in wetter areas but another versatile shrub that can grow well in garden spaces as well but that brings up the topic of shade and you know, that can be... When we start to look at some of these larger restoration projects that span like private and public land and really doing a large area of stream and kinda stabilizing that bank, one of the things that came into play in mature forests is that those banks are really shaded you start to not really have some of the Forbes or the rushes, the sedges, some of the other stuff that could be on those banks.
Ryan: 33:08So that was an interesting concept. It was a forester, I wanna say it was from the the USDA region that covers like Alaska and the Pacific Northwest and that area came to the Shawnee National Forest and met with a lot of us agency folks and gave us some lesson lessons learned and he mentioned this. And so what what I'm thinking about though in this case is where you have a forested stream system that has an invasion of honeysuckle or something else that has this dense understory going.
Ryan: 33:38We started to look at those areas and say, hey, you know, just like with any good restoration project, invasive species getting out of here is maybe step number one. And there's even times where when you look at forest management practices and things, it was really counterintuitive to me to think about in that riparian zone ever cutting down some stems but we saw benefit from that kind of practice when it was planned well and when it was done with appropriate stocking staying in place, getting a little more sunlight in there to get a little more plant growth on your stream banks can be a benefit. And then what that also does is creates a more diverse stream bank vegetative community, more diverse wildlife use, all these other things. So it kind of all goes together but it's something that, you know, I'm careful. I was always careful to talk with landowners about this because we definitely don't wanna clear cut the stream banks.
Amy: 34:30Right.
Ryan: 34:30But when you can look at it and say, you know, 90% of your understory is bush honeysuckle or even a native we don't want, you know, 80% of this understory is shaded out by beach and we, you know, there's no oak trees coming back into this riparian area or some, you know, other desirable stuff. So that's something else to think about, not not having 1000% shade there can be a Yeah.
Amy: 34:55Like careful thinning of selective things where... So we're bringing that light light openings in there.
Abigail: 35:03Also makes me think about, like, the plants you're talking about too are a little bit, like, faster growers as well, like red twig dogwood's pretty fast. You kinda... Like, that helps a little bit. Right? Like, that these things are establishing fairly quickly, they're kind of giving themselves in because a lot of the times erosion, like, it's these, like, three seasons for establishment, like, we we wanna see the benefit of that sooner rather than later, because we're trying to prevent...
Abigail: 35:31It's... It can like be a feedback loop essentially, it's like, well, more erosion, less plants can establish, things like that. So trying to get that in there really quick is really helpful. One thing you also talked about too that made me think about is like, you know, yeah, you have these like essentially ecological dead zones where plants are growing, but it's like one plant that nothing else wants to go in. That's not super sustainable in the sense that like when you have a healthy ecosystem with like animals coming in, they're also helping reseed, they're helping, you know, the plants thrive to continue that, as well as, like, some even to, like, soil diversity going in there, helping with soil, stabilization, and also infiltration, right?
Abigail: 36:16All of those pieces are, like, going... Those are all going to be beneficial, right, as opposed to, like, just a stand of honeysuckle, or a stand of beach, so... It kinda makes me think about that, I guess.
Ryan: 36:28Well, you know, there's always been, even going back to my time in, you know, the early two thousands in grad school, there's always been this debate of grass versus trees and riparian zones and lots of research looking at different aspects of filtration or runoff, whether it's, you know, overland flow with nutrients coming across the land off of ag ground and what's intercepting the most or, you know, nitrogen can actually move down into the shallow groundwater, what's pulling the most out. And so there's lots of lots of research that have looked at this and you could go into a whole, like, giant world of this and just get lost. But when we kinda separated out to this physical hydrology aspect, I think the conclusion I've always found or came to is that it's probably a mixture if you can get it is the best, you know, going... Whether it's straight trees or straight grass. But some of the research does tell us some aspects of those root systems and how they bind together the stream bank better.
Ryan: 37:29And what what really the research has kind of showed is that trees tend to do better on taller, steeper banks and holding that together. They have kind of a deeper, more extensive, more coarse, you know, larger woody root system that can tie together that taller bank where grasses really do awesome on a short... On a shorter bank or on areas where there's more surface runoff coming in. So I think of headwater locations with shorter stream banks, like, that's where this grass community... A grass dominated community would maybe do better versus, you know, a really tall outside bend in a cut bank, you know, having a forest in place there.
Ryan: 38:11That's so when you really looked at this across the larger stretch of a stream and it going through maybe sometimes ag land, forest, you know, all these different types of land cover, having kind of those swaying the plant community in places where you know that root system is gonna work better. You know, with grasses you get and I think we can probably all picture this, just this dense matter roots right at the surface. So they're gonna really protect that soil surface better where then with trees, the difference is, gosh, you have some shade that maybe doesn't allow a dense bit of vegetation at the surface, but they're holding that bank together a little bit deeper and further down. So even kind of if you can get as targeted as, you know, having different vegetation types and different spots along your reach of stream where these different attributes and, you know, outside bins versus inside bins occur, then that would be like the perfect utopia, but, you know, it doesn't always work that way.
Amy: 39:09Yeah. Well, it's the same. It goes with any planning of any landscape, feel like it's like it depends. Like, the answer is always like, it depends. Well, what should I plant in my prairie?
Amy: 39:20Or, you know, what should I plant here, there, and everywhere? Well, it depends. It depends on the site. Right? So it's not always the answer that we wanna hear, but it is it is good to keep in mind though.
Amy: 39:30If you're looking at your own property and you're looking at your stream and where is it going and really studying and paying attention to it and just knowing that different areas might need different treatments and different prescriptions for those areas.
Ryan: 39:45And I would say one major challenge, mean, we've talked about invasives across the board, grass, trees, whatever, invasives are gonna be a constant pressure. But just with grasses in general, there's some type of manipulation you're going to have to do in Illinois to have a pure grass community exist. And, you know, pre settlement, that was fires, massive landscape level fires selected for grass over trees. We're in this weird spot in the country where we have enough precipitation to support tree growth, but I'm sure you guys have all read about the, you know, Prairie Peninsula phenomenon that we have a big chunk of prairie that naturally stuck into Illinois due to some drier conditions existing and grasses advancing. And so now we're left with this weird restoration challenge where any place you plant a prairie or a grass community, we have enough rainfall to...
Ryan: 40:32Trees take more rainfall than grass communities. And you're gonna have tree pressure coming in. So that's that's the downside and I had a lot of, especially folks that own streams and ag land and things that would prefer kind of that grass stream bank cover next to their ag field and things but it's... But you don't just plant it and walk away and I mean, farmers know this better than anybody. You're gonna have to mow, you're gonna have to do something and I mean, burning is obviously the best for our native species and things but that's another challenge.
Ryan: 41:07And I guess what I see a lot of in Central Illinois are really deep steep drainage ditches that we've had to put in to get that drainage corrected in in the ag fields. Whether that's tile drains have to come out deep, you know, to drain the... That groundwater or we just didn't have the slope to get the water off the field and had to dig this ditch deeper. Sure. I mean, I hate to say in like a lot of those situations, we're managing against trees when it's these, you know, deep grass slopes, a lot of drainage districts are trying to not have trees there because they're trying to maintain this perfectly straight symmetrical stream channel that again, when you put trees into this type of system, they they tend to fall over.
Ryan: 41:56Tend to pull a root wad out here and there. Where if you've got just a forest that's running through, who cares? You know, you can have the stream start to meander or scour out around a root ball. It's it's not that big of a deal when you have a large forested area around it. But when you're trying to have this thin strip of vegetation going through cropland or an urban area or something, that's something I always wanna mention with this.
Ryan: 42:17There's other places, you you may hear from your local municipality that we've gotta get the trees out of this ditch or stream because it's going to mess up flow. That's probably true in certain places but that's also because that stream system has been so manipulated and straightened and we didn't really even talk about channel incision but once you start to kind of dig out a stream somewhere that basically channels that all the streams get deeper above that because you've dug out an area and again, streams trying to reach equilibrium, running water has energy to pick up soil particles and when you dig out further down in the stream system, that increases the slope going up to the headwaters and that makes water run faster and soil wash away, you know. So it's just a never ending problem you kinda create when you start to manipulate things. So anyway, that that always comes into the grass and tree debate. But what about, you know, my really deep drainage dish that goes through this area?
Ryan: 43:17And, I mean, that's true. There's probably a time and a place where trees aren't great on those banks.
Amy: 43:21So we talked about some of the challenges. What are some mistakes that landowners make when selecting or planting vegetation near waterways? So we've kinda we've kinda gone into this a little bit, but what are some common things that maybe folks should avoid or, yeah, learn from, I guess, from the research?
Ryan: 43:45Well, I think I've seen a lot of a lot of just do it yourself kind of stuff. And I think that's probably something that is a big mistake at times and we do have in Illinois a lot of assistance for landowners. So there's local soil and water conservation districts. They're connected to the USDA, to NRCS, the agency I work for. Where there may not always be, you know, NRCS and the soil and water conservation districts have cost share funds available and even funding to help with this.
Ryan: 44:17You may not always have the funding available but there are folks there that you can ask for assistance or advice or, you know, depending on how many people there are in your county and how many staff there are, they they may not be able to get to you very quickly but there's places you can go to kinda get a little more advice than just trying what you think might work. And so I I think the biggest mistake in going like we've talked about, there's vegetation I I feel like is the basis for a lot of this that has to be in place. But going at it with vegetation when really you probably did need some more hard engineering or a rock type structure at this toe of that slope is gonna be set up for failure. And so I don't know, knowing when to ask for help, I guess, and and get some... Really you need probably an ag engineer type person to look at that and make an assessment.
Ryan: 45:12But one thing that is just I was just talking with my wife about this the other night and and she's done a wetland work and other things. We're kind of in a similar... We're in similar fields. But just the... And we got into this a little earlier that the difference in modeling from the early two thousands to now and what you can do is just on another level and and that's because of just some of the digital information we can collect and really lidar data, you know, really detailed elevation data for entire counties has really changed a lot of what we could do where back in the day when I worked for an engineering company, we were either trying to get our clients, which would sometimes be, IDOT and you know, agencies that were doing, you know, highway development or railroad development or other things to give us that lidar information.
Ryan: 46:03That's like free now for almost all counties and I'm sure they probably have every county done now. And so when you can, have this digital elevation model of the entire county and you can calculate a watershed in seconds, that's different than what we had to do in the old days looking at a topo map and trying to pick out how much water came into this drainage area. You you can even combine it with some land cover data that tells you this difference between grass and trees and there's all kinds of established research that tells us based on that surface roughness, based on infiltration rates, how that watershed changes with a different composition of grass versus trees or different land covers or urban areas to help tell you actually how much stream flow is hitting that spot that you're trying to plant Willow stakes at and whether it needs that stone toe protection or not. So I think just coming at it with a a guess or just trying to do the only thing that you think you're capable of versus getting that technical assistance Mhmm. I think is is the first big mistake I've seen a lot of folks make.
Abigail: 47:08Yeah. Yeah. And when... So you started introducing this idea of like engineering solutions that might need to be necessary, know. What are some of those and how do we kind of like balance using both of them?
Ryan: 47:25Yeah. So, you know, what I did a lot of is, I mean, technically I was the area forester for NRCS so I did a lot of forest management type practices. And so we would have folks that maybe were doing logging or maybe they were just putting trails through their woodland to just access it which I do think you should, you know. If you don't have a way to get into your woodland, you're not gonna go there and I think that's the biggest mistake is when landowners had never walked on that back 20 acres till I got there and bushwhacked back to all that area and found a giant honeysuckle infestation or garlic mustard or you know, whatever they just didn't know was sitting out there. So I think that's important but, know, so looking at some of these headwater streams and woodlands, really there's act, you know, just doing some things to maybe sometimes slow down stream flow with what we call like small check dams.
Ryan: 48:17Some of those are made out of rocks, some of those are as simple as piling some brush in there to kinda catch a little bit of the stream flow so it's not going really fast. That comes into play with your trails because you definitely wanna really carefully plan every point that a trail crosses a flow path. Whether that's the tiniest thing or the biggest. A lot of folks understand this, but, you know, make some extra trail if you have to go around something as opposed to taking the straight path there because twenty years from now, you'll thank yourself for having that trail that follows the contour a little better than going straight up a hill. And I think some of the worst erosion I've seen created are from skidder trails or from human made trails just for access Yeah.
Ryan: 49:01That turn into a stream channel over time and or constant battle. So I think that's kind of the lesson in forested areas is like lay out your trails well if you're gonna impact forest that way and put them in. But then that... So that's... Those are some real easy things.
Ryan: 49:16Just some check dams. Slowing down the water. We've used rock for those. And if you look up that concept of check dam, that's kinda something easy to do. You know, when we talk about just the protection of that toe of the stream bank, it's it's simply adding some rock to some of those areas and there's a couple ways you can do that with grip wrap type stuff.
Ryan: 49:40And again, we probably would takes... It's not just dumping it on the side of the stream bank. It usually needs a geotextile fabric underneath that. So something that's on top of the soil surface, it's gonna resist the scouring under the rock of continual stream flow. So there's a little more to putting it in then that's a mistake I've seen too.
Ryan: 50:00Really common thing is folks have a bunch of chunks of concrete that they need to use or get rid of or or find or acquire from a neighbor for this purpose and just dumping that onto the stream bank is not what you wanna do. It needs to be planned out a little better. If you get a little more fancy, there's gabion baskets, which are big wire baskets that you fill with rocks and you set into the stream bank. And that's another engineering practice that can help with that. So that's getting on to a little bit bigger streams in your headwaters that you might be able to handle with kind of some check dams or other things.
Abigail: 50:37I feel like I've seen that actually on Lake Michigan.
Ryan: 50:46Yeah. They're just really resilient. I mean, they're heavy. They kinda soak up the energy of wave action on a on a lakeshore. You know?
Ryan: 50:54That's... Again, anytime water's moving and has velocity or energy and it hits soil or sand, it has the power to erode it. So you... So that's what the rock is doing is absorbing that energy of the flow and trans... The the bad thing is sometimes it translates it downstream and creates a problem further down the channel.
Ryan: 51:14So when your neighbor has an out... Outside bin and we can probably all picture this that has a really steep bank and they go and harden that with rock, put put in riprap all up and down it, then that bounces that energy further downstream and that's why we started to look at in Southern Illinois projects that involve the forest service and landowners and, you know, where these streams cross multiple areas because then we could engineer and think about all of that across the system as opposed to each little, you know, 200 foot stretch of stream doing its own thing. And and why that was important down there is a lot of those lakes are water supply lakes we're focused on. So you wanna keep sediment out of the drinking water essentially.
Abigail: 51:55Well, in, like, instead of, like, just transferring energy, you're absorbing it. Right? Like, there's a little bit more.... interesting.
Ryan: 52:05And so then, you know, even larger stream systems have structures that actually it's, you know, keep it really simple, it's kind of a pile of rocks that comes out into the stream channel at different orientations to again kinda direct absorb energy and direct it away from that tall cut bank. We lived on Hutchins Creek way down in Union County that is... It's actually an interesting geology... Geologic area that's actually part of the Illinois Ozarks. So the Ozarks Of Missouri extend into Illinois and have a little range there.
Ryan: 52:39So it's limestone geology, it's gravel bottom streams, it's a lot of stuff that moves around a lot. There would be what we would call a lot of bed load in these stream systems. And so the forest service came in along Hutchins Creek and put in, what what I would call a bin way weir or little things that stick out into the stream flow and they slow it down around outside bins and then they accumulate stuff behind it because when the water slows down, you know, we can all probably think of maybe a backwater around a bin where you can get in a little spot where the water slowed down. Yeah. And so I've seen those in place now for about ten years or so and been able to observe them and it's really cool to see that stuff accumulate behind the rocks then and start to create new habitat right there. So while it is this hard, hard engineering, you know, practice, it has a habitat benefit and you kind of actually let that bank just kind of slough in behind the rock and create its reach equilibrium back there essentially and kind of start to vegetate again. And in those cases, there's not really vegetation added. It's, it happens, you know, with natural stuff that seeds in and it is aggressive.
Amy: 53:50Awesome. Those are some really great opportunities. Ryan, just to think for landowners, to think about how to think about, you know, what is the right solution for them. And then there are are lots of different, I guess, considerations to make, but different options to use to focusing on those, you know, early headwater streams that are smaller that you might be able to make a difference in. And then, you know, asking for help if you have another...
Amy: 54:25You know, if you have more complex areas or larger streams or whatever on your property, or even, like, multi multi multiple ecosystems that it's running through or maybe even different goals, know, landowner goals. You know, those are really great options to think about and just really the tip of the iceberg. I mean, I I bet, Ryan, you could talk to us for days on all of these different different solutions. But we thank you so much for just talking with us today about how to, you know, look at our streams and if we have problems with erosion, how we can maybe work with nature and, you know, work with some vegetative solutions and and, you know, strike that balance. So we appreciate you.
Amy: 55:10Thank you so much.
Ryan: 55:12Oh, yeah. Thanks. Really enjoyed the conversation today. Really fun.
Amy: 55:16Well, just like every single episode, we are going to finish today with an everyday observation where we highlight the mundane and normal of our environment that is actually really interesting. So Abigail, I'll have you start us off with your everyday observation.
Abigail: 55:32Yeah. So all my observations this season have been trying to stay, like, really close to home, like truly every day. And one that I've noticed is, you've all heard me talk about, like, our business park that we pass through on our way to daycare, and there's a lot of ponds in that area, and a couple of weeks ago, I saw a snapping turtle that, like, just for like, visually for everybody, if you were to like, grab your hands and kinda like, lock them together and make like an o with your arms, like, that's how big that snapping turtle was. And I live in a very suburban community environment, like more urban than suburban kind of space, and so I was like, woah, this is a giant snapping turtle, and I actually had to stop and get my kids out of the car to go look at it, because I was like, we cannot keep going to school, we have to look at this. Yeah.
Abigail: 56:28And it was huge, and I've never... We kept our distance just for snapping turtle safety and things like that, but it was just so cool, and so we've been just kinda monitoring the snapping turtle throughout our community. Thought again one day, and I didn't get to get out of the car because my daughter really had to go to the bathroom, but other parents noticed it too, they were like, did you see the snapping turtle? So now, like, you know, it's our it's our snapping turtle now with our community. So we're really digging it and loving it.
Abigail: 56:56So, yeah, that's fun.
Amy: 56:57Yeah. Snapping turtle watch.
Abigail: 57:00Yeah. We go. 2K20 snapping turtle watch.
Amy: 57:04Don't pet. Don't pet the snapping turtle. Yeah. Mm-mm.
Amy: 57:07What about you, Ryan?
Ryan: 57:09Well, I'm I'm kind of in this... Still in this world of hydrology and flooding and things, and so I guess one of the things that I just... I don't know. I I love what I hate is flooding. You know, I I love watching...
Ryan: 57:20Like I... Whether you realize this or not, there's USGS gauging stations along streams that measure in real time the depth of the stream and you can follow this. And so I live close to the Sangamon River. I'm always following it going up and down and my family likes to paddle and get out on the river and things. But when it starts to flood and it's really raging down the channel, I feel like that's a little bit dangerous especially for kids and things.
Ryan: 57:43So one great solution to that that we found just as one of our favorite things to do now is to go to a local park that has a lot of flood water that comes into it and paddle down what would be a trail. And and so we did that on Sunday. That was like kind of our fun Father's Day thing is went out and it was... Yeah. There's just about four feet of water over the normal river trail we would hike and just paddle down it.
Ryan: 58:04And so... But my observation on that is just... It is so incredible to see how the... I wouldn't even call it stream flow, but how the floodwater interacts with the floodplain and moves in different spots. And there's places where it's so weird.
Ryan: 58:20It's almost like the the flow of the... All this flood water that's spread out really far is going in opposition to the direction the stream goes because of the way the vegetation has it move and there's old sloughs and other things. So just to observe, you know, that physical hydrology happening on the flood plain across a wide area was just really interesting and fascinating. So...
Amy: 58:43That's cool. Yeah. I remember when... I mean, flood ninety three was very, like, impressionable in my mind with Mississippi River, and it was like that too. We had a cabin, or my grandparents had a cabin, and you couldn't even tell which way the river was flowing just because the water is is kind of just moving in different directions than it normally would go.
Ryan: 59:04It's just another one of those mind boggling hydrology things, you know?
Abigail: 59:07For sure. Alright, Amy.
Amy: 59:11Alright. So last night, I'm searching on my swamp milkweed to find, you know, monarch caterpillars. I'm like trying to find a little one, so I'm looking for leaf damage. I find this like weird little thing that looks like what I would describe as like a slug or something, but it was like super tiny. It was like gray and kind of squishy and whatever, but it had these like dots, these like very symmetrical dots on the side of it.
Amy: 59:42So of course, I took a picture of it because I was like, what is thing? I don't know what this is, whatever. Turns out it's actually a swamp milkweed beetle larva. So that was kinda cool. I'd seen milkweed beetles before but I'd never heard of like a specific swamp milkweed beetle.
Amy: 01:00:00And this was the larval version. So it was kind of this gray mushy with black dots on the side. Just kind of a neat thing. Turns out to be a beetle that's kind of like a red and black, you know, like a like a normal milkweed beetle, but smaller. But anyway, that was really cool.
Amy: 01:00:16That was kind of a neat thing that I saw. Again, things that you find that are weird if you look really hard at, you know, your plants.
Abigail: 01:00:24That's so special though.
Ryan: 01:00:26It was really cool.
Amy: 01:00:28It was really cool. It was neat. I don't know. I I have never... I had never seen it before, so that was that was cool.
Amy: 01:00:34Well, thank you guys for sharing. Always awesome to hear everyone's everyday observations, and thank you Ryan again for being on this episode with us. This has been another episode on the Everyday Environment Podcast. Check us out next week where we talk with Laura Payne, and she will talk to us about the benefits of parks.