There's nothing better than tromping!

To be specific: There's nothing better than tromping around in the mud! In fact, this is such a wonderful past time that I decided to get A DEGREE IN IT! That's right people, we're talking fabulous, mud and water filled, desperately-needing-restoration, wetland tromping! Specifically, today, I'm talking about the Klingel Wetland!

I've mentioned my tromping before, when I posted about getting my first-ever, pair of galoshes, but I've never really told you what its all about...
 

 Do you remember now?

I was made aware that the Klingel Wetland existed just three short months ago. I was invited out by the Great Peninsula Conservancy, to "come take a look, because we have a proposal for you." So I did, I went out, tromped around, got the history of the property, heard about the on-going citizen science project, gathered some data for it, then of course... fell in love. The property is BEAUTIFUL! Maybe not to an untrained eye... but even under the decaying mats of reed canary grass and the lurking stench of rotting eggs/sulfur... I saw the most beautiful landscape. A place that had been badly abused in its past and needed a facelift - I saw Klingel for all it could be.

This is what Klingel looks like now...

This is how she should look in a few decades....

(This is Klingel's sister wetland, just on the other side of the dike) 

Which is exactly what they wanted.... exactly how they KNEW I'd react. So then came the proposal: how would you like to take over the ongoing data gathering and run the monitoring project? I'll let you guess how I reacted...

HELL YES!

This is what is being removed, which will reintroduce the ocean water (to the left) to the wetland (to the right).

 

So that's how it started. That's how it came to be February and I was back on the wetland, again, but this time showing others where to go and what to do. Luckily its a pretty fun project - see GPC wants to remove an old levee, thus re-introducing salt water to the presently (and unnaturally) fresh-ish water marsh. Doing this should do quite a few things, change the elevations, modify water channels, provide better habitats, but most importantly/interestingly change the plant species. Currently the land is over run with invasives (scotch broom, reed canary grass, nooka rose) which have overgrown and out competed all the natives, but luckily they are not salt water tolerant... so the hope, introduce the salt water and the native (WAY COOLER) species come back. To monitor this progress, we go out to four designated areas of the wetland (areas that represent a change in vegetation, thus elevation), take some pictures, determine the absolute coverage of the different plant species present, then go back to the office and crunch some numbers. The goal is to do this as close to monthly as possible.

One of the monitoring sites. 

This is such a wonderful project! I love everything about it - planning the days, doing the research, taking people on the field trips! Finally using the education I spent four years getting!