Tag Archives: wetland restoration

Photo of the Week – November 16, 2012

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I really enjoy photography, but I’m glad I don’t have to make my living doing it.  For me, photography is something I get to do for fun – grabbing opportunities when they arise, instead of having to record a particular event at a particular time.  I have incredible respect for journalistic photographers who show up and make beautiful or powerful images out of very challenging photographic situations.  I’ve done that kind of photography a few times, and found it much more stressful than enjoyable.  It’s much more fun to pull my camera out of the bag only when the light is good and I have some time to wander.

Restored wetland habitat at The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, Nebraska. The sun was just nearing the thin edge of a big cloud bank, bathing the scene in warm diffused light – perfect conditions for photography.

Yesterday morning, I arrived at our Platte River Prairies field headquarters a little early for a meeting.  As I was driving in, I was enjoying the beautiful light being produced as the sun neared the edge of a receding cloud bank.  Since I had a little time, I turned onto a short trail road, parked, and hiked into one of our restored wetlands to see if I could find anything to photograph.

As I walked up to the edge of the water, I flushed a great blue heron and a dozen mallards, and listened to several flocks of cranes passing overhead.  During the next 15 minutes or so I walked the edge of a wet swale with my camera – until the sun finally emerged completely from behind the clouds and the light became too intense for my liking.  I packed up and headed for my meeting… and arrived right on time.

Deadline-free photography – it’s a wonderful thing.

An Update on a Wetland Project (Remember the Sludge?)

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Several people have asked me to provide an update on the wetland restoration project I posted about last November.  At that time, we’d just completed our second (last?) phase of the dirtwork to convert sand pit lakes to a stream channel and shallow wetlands.  I wrote that we were trying to figure out what to do with a lot of sludge that had floated up from the bottom of the sand pit we’d filled in.  

Beggarticks (Bidens sp.) flowers accent a wetland swale that was part of the first phase of the restoration project back in 2001. The 2011 restoration project surrounds that initial phase.  This photo was taken last week.

Well, let’s see…  Since November, the wetland has been very interesting to watch.  We’ve seeded the site a couple times.  Most of the non-sludge-covered area was seeded during the winter and then again in the summer, after many of the smaller wetland channels and pockets off of the main stream channel – that allowed us to get seed into areas previously under water.  We’re starting to see a few plants come in as a result of those seedings, although the dominant vegetation in the most recently-restored portions of the wetland is still mainly annual plants that colonized on their own. 

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