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Check out this great interactive map and find out more about your local stream conditions! The County has recently completed a highly informative interactive map that allows you to fill in your address and find out answers to questions such … Continue reading
The Benefits of Streamside Vegetation
1. Woody vegetation and tall grasses along streambanks shade the water, helping to maintain cooler water temperatures many aquatic organisms require to survive.
2. Native plants provide food and cover for wildlife. Nesting, breeding, and roosting sites are common in riparian areas.
3. The roots of trees and shrubs not only stabilize stream banks, thus preventing erosion and stream bank failure; they also take up excess nutrients entering the stream from the surrounding lands. This root material also slows the velocity of a flooding stream thereby decreasing damage and allowing greater groundwater infiltration.
4. Fallen leaves and other plant debris provide food and shelter for many organisms.
Taken from The Delaware Riverkeeper Network’s Restoration Program,September 2003.
In the name of science, 23,190 bugs were sacrificed during the 2009 Loudoun County Stream assessment project which included collecting benthic macroinverterbrates at 200 sites in the county. The aquatic insects were identified to the family level. The bugs were collected using nets in the streams and later identified in the lab at Versar. Continue reading
Not only do students from Smart’s Mill Middle School in Loudoun understand watersheds and riparian buffers – they’re doing something with that knowledge. Many students have sent letters to their supervisors, urging them to adopt the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Ordinance (CPBO) in Loudoun. Jada Iraia and Ilian Burgos, eighth graders at Smart’s Mill, wanted to speak before the Board of Supervisors at the June 21 public input session, but the meeting conflicted with their final band concert at school. Instead, with the help of one mom, they shot a video next to Tuscarora Creek, their neighborhood stream, urging the Board to adopt the CBPO.
As Ilian puts it, “we should strive hard to keep our environment clean and healthy so future generations can appreciate what we have.”
