2-23-11

Two field days in a row! I couldn't ask for more. Today we met up with someone from Fish and Wildlife, 2 people from the Salinas NRCS, and 2 people from the RCD. We drove out to Watsonville to see a farm area I remember making the soil map for. There is a program for funding to turn your field into a wetland and put it into an easement. The property we went to see was already mostly inundated, as it is for 9 months out of the year. The reason we were all out to look at the field was to find the best way to create the wetland. Did we want islands and ponds or a series of streams to create riparian zones? The most benefitial design would be to create the most habitat for the most amount of species. It was really interesting to apply what I had learned from my restoration ecology class. I have always enjoyed learning about wetlands because they are such a complicated feature and always in danger of being destroyed, so it was great to see someone deciding to turn farmland to a wetland again.


The next property we looked at was a series of multiple farms and property owners with a flooded field. The difference between this one and the previous land we looked at was that this was much larger and deeper. It appeared much more as a lake than a flooded field and it was also a lot deeper than the other field. There was also a stream running through it when it isn't flooded that had steelhead salmon, making it a possible habitat for salmon. Its also drained every year with pumps so it is possible to remove all the water. This is most likely not a property that can be in the wetlands program because it is too deep to create uplands habitat.