Episode 016 - Restoring Streams with Drew Altland

Drew Altland is a Senior Manager of Water Resources at RK&K. I saw him talk a few years ago on stream restoration and was fascinated by his historical perspective on streams and wetlands in Eastern North America. We talk about stream conditions prior to European arrival, about the impacts of the colonial area, about reading streams in the present day, and various restoration methods. I never thought about streams the same way after hearing Drew talk and I hope this podcast is just as revelatory for you.

“Before European settlement, streams were small anabranching channels within extensive vegetated wetlands that accumulated little sediment but stored substantial organic carbon. Subsequently, 1 to 5 meters of slackwater sedimentation, behind tens of thousands of 17th- to 19th-century milldams, buried the presettlement wetlands with fine sediment. These findings show that most floodplains along mid-Atlantic streams are actually fill terraces, and historically incised channels are not natural archetypes for meandering streams.” From Walter, Robert C., and Dorothy J. Merritts. "Natural streams and the legacy of water-powered mills." Science 319.5861 (2008): 299-304.

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This podcast is brought to you by Wild Ridge Plants, where we grow native plants from locally collected seed and offer them for gardeners and restoration projects. We grow a lot of woodland species which are fundamental to forest understories but not commonly available as nursery-propagated plants. Just yesterday we potted up bloodroot, blue cohosh, spring beauty, and woodland sunflower. Spring is here! The busy season but so exciting at the same time...

I've been working on a bunch of tunes for a future Horse Graveyard album. What you heard at the beginning is a snippet, a sneak preview, a demo track if you will, of a piece I'm calling Arroyo for the time being. Seemed like an appropriate piece for a podcast on stream systems. You can find more Horse Graveyard on Bandcamp.