Restoring Streams in Cities: A Guide for Planners, Policymakers, and Citizens - Softcover

Riley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1559630426 ISBN 13: 9781559630429

Verlag: Island Press, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

Conventional engineering solutions to problems of flooding and erosion are extremely destructive to natural environments. Restoring Streams in Cities presents viable alternatives to traditional practices that can be used both to repair existing ecological damage and to prevent such damage from happening.

Ann L. Riley describes an interdisciplinary approach to stream management that does not attempt to "control" streams, but rather considers the stream as a feature in the urban environment. She presents a logical sequence of land-use planning, site design, and watershed restoration measures along with stream channel modifications and floodproofing strategies that can be used in place of destructive and expensive public works projects. She features examples of effective and environmentally sensitive bank stabilization and flood damage reduction projects, with information on both the planning processes and end results. Chapters provide:

• background needed to make intelligent choices, ask necessary questions, and hire the right professional help
• history of urban stream management and restoration
• information on federal programs, technical assistance and funding opportunities
• in-depth guidance on implementing projects: collecting watershed and stream channel data, installing revegetation projects, protecting buildings from overbank stream flows

Profusely illustrated and including more than 100 photos, Restoring Streams in Cities

includes detailed information on all relevant components of stream restoration projects, from historical background to hands-on techniques. It represents the first comprehensive volume aimed at helping those involved with stream management in their community, and describes a wealth of options for the treatment of urban streams that will be useful to concerned citizens and professional engineers alike.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ann L. Riley is executive director of the Waterways Restoration Institute, where she works on the design and installation of stream restoration projects. She is involved in the evaluation of national water policy for the National Research Council, the Institute for Water Resources, and federal task forces.

A Video Tour of Ecological Restoration Techniques Led by Anne Riley (Video documentary - 61 min) is available from www.urbanstreamrestoration.com.

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Restoring Streams in Cities

A Guide for Planners, Policy makers, and Citizens

By Ann L. Riley, Luna B. Leopold, Stefen, Dennis O'Connor

ISLAND PRESS

Copyright © 1998 Ann L. Riley
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-55963-042-9

Contents

About Island Press, 
Dedication, 
Title Page, 
Copyright Page, 
Table of Figures, 
Acknowledgments, 
Introduction, 
CHAPTER ONE - The Basics, 
CHAPTER TWO - The Urban River Planners, 
CHAPTER THREE - The Environmental Professionals, 
CHAPTER FOUR - River Scientists, 
CHAPTER FIVE - Hydraulic Engineers, 
CHAPTER SIX - Restoration Is Ancient History, 
CHAPTER SEVEN - Managing Floodplains, 
CHAPTER EIGHT - Citizen-Supported Restoration Activities, 
CHAPTER NINE - A Survey of Urban Watershed and Stream Restoration Methods, 
Glossary of Terms, 
Index, 
About the Author, 
Island Press Board of Directors, 

CHAPTER 1

The Basics

Basics on Streams

Streams are a resource generally taken for granted or completely ignored, but we all live in a watershed. To begin learning about your local streams, become familiar with the watershed they run through and the history that comes with them.

What Is a Creek?

It has been very much a surprise to me that the most common question phoned into my office has been "What is the difference between a creek and a stream?"—or "How do I tell the difference between a stream, a brook, and a river?" No one has quantified the differences between brooks, creeks, gulches, washes, and rivers, and these mostly loosely defined terms represent cultural and regional customs more than they define or "standardize" a geographic feature.

Look at a U.S. Geological Survey map of your area and pick out the names of the drainages. If you are living in the northeastern part of the United States, you can see a number of "brooks" on your topographic map. In the Adirondacks, I hiked along Johns Brook, Wolf Jaws Brook, Calamity Brook, Black Brook, and Deer Brook. In the Boston vicinity (eastern Massachusetts and New Hampshire), you may live near Lubbur Brook, Meadow Brook, Bachelder Brook, Bull Brook, Muddy Run, or Frost Fish Brook. In Virginia in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., you may walk along South Run, or you may live along Stony Run, Roland Run, or Whitemash Run in the suburbs of Baltimore. In Washington, D.C., along the Potomac River, you can walk along Rock Creek or the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. A map of the Carolinas shows widespread use of the word "creek." You may live along Buffalo Creek in Greensboro, Bolin Creek in Chapel Hill, Jefferson Creek or Crabtree Creek in Raleigh. Creek also appears to be the preferred nomenclature for waterways in Iowa and Wisconsin. In Duluth, you may live along Dutchman or Bluff creek. North and South Dakotas' maps also show a preponderous use of creeks for the waterways.

A Wyoming map shows common usage of creek but also shows the use of the term "fork," as in Hams Fork, Blacks Fork, and Henry's Fork, tributaries to the Green River. Different branches of the same creek are also sometimes called fork, such as the North and South forks of Owl Creek near Thermopolis. Draws and gulches appear on topographic maps near Pinedale, Wyoming, with names like Millie Draw, Clarke Draw, Nutting Draw, and Horse Draw and Coyote Gulch, tributaries to the Hoback River. North Hay Gulch, Big Draw, and Brodie Draw are tributaries to the Green River. Deadman Wash, Table Wash, Alkali Wash, and Pine Creek Wash flow near Rock Springs, Wyoming. In New Mexico near Roswell, Rio Penasco, Rio Bonito, and Rio Hondo flow into the Pecos River. Arroyos and washes abound in Arizona and New Mexico, including the well-known Indian Bend Wash flowing through the middle of Scottsdale, Arizona. Dreamy Draw Wash flows through Paradise Valley.

What someone in Wyoming calls a draw, or in New Hampshire a creek, someone in Florida, Alabama, or Louisiana may call a rigolet or bayou. Bayous are also known as backwaters off main channels of rivers or streams. Alaska maps show similar backwaters as arms. "Slough" is another synonym for creek, such as Dead Horse Slough, a tributary to Big Chico Creek in Chico, California, and Mercer Slough, which is located in Bellevue, Washington, as a creek and backwater of Lake Washington.

Creek is a generic term for a small stream and originated in New England, where it retains its original meaning as a tidal inlet. In the rest of the country, creek has evolved to mean a flowing stream smaller than a river. When a creek or a stream becomes a river is anyone's call. We can probably find some relative correlation between greater flows and drainages named rivers, but there are also creeks on topographic maps that contain greater flows than so-called rivers.

Brook, another word for creek or stream, also has its origins in English culture and dominates New England. Arroyo is Spanish for "brook," but in the southwest landscape, where we find the use of this word, we see it being used to describe not constantly flowing perennial drainages, but channels that are often dry and have occasional, seasonal, or intermittent flows. Gulch, gully, ravine, and draw, terms used commonly in the western United States, seem to be relatively interchangeable. Rigolet, derived from the French rigole, or "ditch," is used occasionally in areas of American-French influence. Fork generally designates a branch or tributary of a stream.

What this definition problem tells us really is that creeks, brooks, streams, rivers, and the rest are important components of our landscape history. There can be much colorful folklore associated with drainages—large and small—and the researcher of a local history can start with the names of drainages to learn about an area. An example of a folk name associated with creeks is Troublesome Creek, a name given by the general population in an area because of historical local events. Descriptive names such as Stinking Spring, Roaring Run, Rushing Water Creek; incident names such as Murder Creek, Earthquake Creek, Stray Horse Gulch; and exclamation names such as Helpmejack Creek and Goshhelpme Creek all have stories behind the names. Of course, some local drainages are named for the native people who once lived along them or for the early settlers who displaced the native people.

The question of what a creek or stream is in a geographical or geologic sense must be answered in the context of what a watershed is.

Watersheds and the Hydrologic Cycle

Everyone lives in a watershed. The hydrologic cycle of water falling to the earth in the form of rain, snow, sleet, and hail, then running off the land into creeks, rivers, ponds, lakes, marshes, storm sewers, and human- made channels and ultimately into oceans happens everywhere. Some of the water that falls is caught by tree leaves, some soaks into the ground, some runs off pavement, rooftops, and lawns, and some is collected into small rills on the hillsides that collect more water into gullies and channels as creeks, rivers, and desert arroyos. Some of the water from streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, reservoirs, and oceans evaporates and then falls to the earth again in some form of precipitation.

A watershed is the land area drained by a particular stream or river. We can think of a watershed or water basin on the scale of the Mississippi River, which drains with the help of many tributary rivers and streams about 1,250,000 square...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Island Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1998
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1559630426
• ISBN 13: 9781559630429
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 448
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar