Riparian Interpretive Trail Guide

Acknowledgments Original project written and designed by: Ernest Keller Director Lackawanna County Conservation District Riparian Tim Eichner Keystone Graduate Trail improvements provided by: Interpretive Shaun Arbaugh, Andrew Shaffer 1998 Trail Projects Coordinators Additional enhancements were made possible by an Trail Guide additional Growing Greener Grant. Project Director: Professor Howard Jennings Growing Greener Project Coordinator: Tim Eichner Revision of Trail guide: Deanna Haluska 2009 Trail & Guide Revisions by: Samantha Watkins Keystone Graduate Edited by: Nora Dillon, Assistant Director Keystone College Environmental Education Institute 52 Conclusion When you return to the Nokomis Suspension Bridge you will have completed Keystone College’s Riparian Trail and Demonstration Project. We hope it has challenged and expanded your thoughts regarding streams, watersheds, and the lands that impact our water. Knowing more about these streamside environments will not only enable you to take appropriate action in your community but to teach others how to respect our earth’s natural resources. Keystone College Riparian Trail Sponsored in part by the Lackawanna Heritage Valley Authority in partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the National Park Service. 2 51 mighty Susquehanna elcome to the Keystone College Riparian Trail. This 1.5 mile loop trail begins behind the Miller River, the largest W Library, leading you on a streamside interpretive hike contributor to the into mature woods, meadows, and a steep mountain Chesapeake Bay. ravine. This station-numbered guide will help you Research has shown that understand the natural resource functions of water quality streamside or riparian ecology. Maintaining water in the receiving estuaries quality is perhaps the most important natural resource (like Chesapeake Bay) issue facing communities right here at home as well as depends on how well we worldwide. You will learn first-hand the important treat the land in the interface between the management of land and how it watershed. When dirt, impacts the water. Forestry, recreational, agricultural, oil, litter, pesticides, and and urban land uses are also observed during your trek. Keystone College’s beautiful Creek-side Campus nutrients wash off the The Chesapeake includes more than one mile of the South Branch land, they not only Bay Basin Tunkhannock. pollute our local waters, but eventually collect in the Chesapeake Bay. The Estimated time: 1 hour 30 minutes with interpretation. Bay is like a big shallow sink where water 25 minutes total walking time movement is slow and pollution lingers and settles Remember, wear sturdy shoes and stay on the trail. to the bottom. This non-point source pollution has significantly hurt the fish and wildlife resources that were once plentiful in North America’s largest Leave Only Footprints, estuary. Take Only Pictures 50 3 Table of Contents ⇒ Provides shade that moderates water temperatures in the nearby stream. Station # Page # ⇒ Plant roots keep the soil porous so water is 1. Riparian………………………………...……………….7 absorbed which can reducing flooding 2. Forest Succession……………………………………….49 potential. 3. Management & Maintenance of Riparian Areas…....48 ⇒ In-stream food web is enhanced by adding 4. Clean Water Action…………………………………….47 twigs, leaves, fruit seeds, and organic debris to be consumed by insects and bacteria. 5. Greenway……………………………………………....46 ⇒ Birds, mammals, and other animals find food, 6. Steep and Stony Soil…………………………………...45 water, nesting sites, and corridors for moving 7. Ravine, Forces of Nature…………………………...…45 about between areas. 8. Wetlands………………………………………………..43 Station 32 9. Ferns Living Near Wetlands…………………………...42 From Here to the 10. Log, Root-wad & Boulder Revetments……………….41 Chesapeake 11. An Invasive Species……………………………………..40 Locally known as Nokomis Creek, the 12. Riparian Shrubs, Tree Seedlings, & Volunteers ……..38 South Branch of the Tunkhannock Creek collects 13. Soft Armor Stream Bank Repair ................................37 and transports water to Chesapeake Bay 300 14. Seaman’s Farm Silo……………………………………...36 miles downstream. Moreover, this stream is very 15. Three-Zone Buffer………………………………………34 important to the local residents who use its high 16. Soft versus Hard Armor…………………………………32 quality waters for fishing, swimming, irrigation, and enjoyment. Flowing downstream through the town of Factoryville, the creek ultimately makes its way to Tunkhannock, where it joins the 4 49 Station 31 Table of Contents Riparian Forest Buffer You are standing in a riparian forest buffer Station # Page # separating the developed portion of Keystone 18.Planting & Stabilization…………………….…………...30 College from 18. Canopy Makes a Difference……………………….…..29 Nokomis Creek. 19. Riparian Shrubs…………………………………….…...27 In addition to 20. Urban Stream…………………………….……………..25 many large trees, 21. Framework of Roots……………………..……………..25 the understory contains shrub 22. Bailey Field…………………………….………………..24 and herbaceous 23. Gravel Bar………………………………..……………...23 vegetation that 24. The Amphitheater…………………….………………...21 forms layers from 25. Tree Identification………………………..……………..18 the ground level 26. In-stream Trail…………………………..……………….17 to treetops. This forest buffer serves many 27. Suspension Bridge………………………..……………...16 valuable functions: 28. Ponds and Groundwater…………………..…………...14 ⇒ Traps and filters sediments, therefore, seedlings can grow under the canopy of other forest 29. Stream Ford………………………………..…………….11 trees for a century or more. 30. Eastern Hemlock………………………..……………….10 ⇒ Anchors and protects streambanks with soil- 31. Riparian Forest Buffer………………..……..…………...9 holding roots. 32. From Here to the Chesapeake…………………..……...8 ⇒ Healthy organic forest soils support beneficial microbes that convert and hold nutrients like nitrogen. 48 5 Station 1 that marks most conifers, it Riparian has a feathery airiness with flowing branches, and its All waterways including creeks, streams, top shoot bends gracefully and rivers, are surrounded by land. The with the wind. Young waterway, along with the adjacent land, is known open-grown hemlocks as the riparian zone. A healthy riparian zone have a dense pyramid- provides benefits of high water quality for people Eastern shaped crown with lower and wildlife. Riparian comes from the Latin word Hemlock branches that nearly touch meaning bank or shore, and simply translated, it the ground. Older trees in the forest develop tall relates to those lands along a body of water such shaft-like trunks like the ones you see here. A as the streambank, floodplain, and upslope areas, long-lived tree, hemlocks reach maturity at 250 to which vary in width. This area is the vital link 300 years, but they may live much longer! between land and water. Although settlers sometimes used the coarse A buffer is a vegetated area between different reddish brown wood for construction lumber, it areas of land use that isolates or mitigates the was often cut and stripped of its valuable tannin- rich bark. Logs were left to slowly decay where they were felled. (Tannin, a natural chemical, was used to tan leather, softening and preserving the material). Cool shady ravines and valleys of rushing mountain streams are home to the hemlock. Hemlocks are extremely shade tolerant, 6 47 loving and found exclusively along streams and in negative impacts one might have on the other. swamps. In North America there are four Therefore, riparian buffers serve several important imports, including Weeping Willow from Asia, functions. which now reproduces in the wild, hybridizing Station 2 with our native species. Forest Succession Regardless of size, willows as a group share The Yellow Birches at this station are a distinctive than broad. They are attached young because, until the late 1940s this area was alternately on the twigs. A pair of ear-shaped flooded to form the popular Lake Nokomis. The growths called stipules can be seen at the base of lake was created by a large dam a few hundred the leaves and sometimes are so prominent on feet downstream near the new shoots they often are mistaken for leaves. Yellow Birch present water treatment In addition to producing many tiny seeds, plant. Swimming and reproduction readily occurs by sprouting from fishing were very popular. roots or branches torn from plants following The backwater was deep storms or flooding. This ability to sprout from cut enough to boat at least as stumps or pieces of branch make the willow far back as the especially useful in streamside planting for erosion amphitheater. In the early control. years of the Academy the Station 30 “boating club” Eastern Hemlock maintained a boathouse and three boats. But Almost everyone will agree that the Eastern when the decaying dam was finally removed, Hemlock is one of the most attractive of our water levels dropped and natural succession native trees. Instead of the stiffness of character began again. 46 7 Forests are always changing - sometimes long-lived tree is distinguished by its glistening rapidly, sometimes slowly. Two major processes white branches and strikingly mottled trunk. The always at work in a forest are "disturbance" and outer bark peels off in large flakes, leaving a "succession." A disturbance is any event that alters patchwork of colors from white and brown to vegetation. Disturbances can be caused by ice or greenish-gray. Sycamore fruit is ball-like, hanging wind storms that topple trees, or by fires or from long slender stalks, giving the

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