Dry Creek Dam Removal Restoration Planting, November 2024
Just as the first major atmospheric river system of the new water year landed in northern California, SSI joined with intrepid volunteers to plant a diverse selection of 344 native plants and several dozen willow stakes along Dry Creek at the Beale Lake Dam removal restoration site. Over the course of three planting days, nature essentially “watered in” the plants in the most optimal way possible.
Employing process-based restoration through revegetation, the plant selection and placement aims to reduce erosion, create streamside shade, increase biodiversity, provide wildlife habitat, and support culturally significant plant communities. SSI restoration staff propagated all the planted species using locally harvested material, except one, in an on-site greenhouse.
Process-based restoration (PBR) methods involve working hand in glove with nature to recover degraded ecosystems by removing impediments to physical and biological processes while harnessing the system’s fluvial and biological energy to do most of the restoration “work.”
SSI and volunteers also utilized the live staking PBR technique by placing 75 living, locally-harvested willow stakes in targeted areas to revegetate and stabilize eroding banks. Quickly growing willow roots add new root structures, helping decrease bank erosion, while their growing vegetation helps slows water velocity and capture sediment.
This restoration planting is one part of a watershed-scale approach to create spawning habitat for anadromous Chinook salmon and federally threatened Central Valley steelhead. Other components include the removal of Beale Lake Dam in 2020, gravel augmentation, and the upcoming removal of another fish passage impediment (a low flow river crossing).
To learn more about the Beale project, click here.