'Ecostewards' find ways to keep earth from sliding away
-
Carrying a roll of jute netting, participants in the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy workshop in Urban EcoSteward Erosion Control Training make their way through snow-covered Riverview Park on Pittsburgh's North Side Sunday morning. -
Brian Dolney, left, leads the placement of netting on a slide area of Riverview Park. The netting aids in re-establishing vegetation.
Share with others:
Amid blowing snow Sunday in Riverview Park, 20 Urban EcoStewards installed what field ecologist Brian Dolney called "a low-tech solution" to erosion.
The field workshop, which attracted current and newly minted stewards, was one of a continuing series sponsored by the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association, Frick Environmental Center and Mount Washington Community Development Corp.
The volunteer group's task was to bolster a steep slope along a new trail with jute netting and horizontal logs set into cradles dug from the soft and slippery earth.
From a Norway maple that was cut down in the park on Friday, the volunteers cut twigs and branches and pegged logs in place using sawed branches. The logs act as water and sediment catchers and the jute snags what's on it and keeps it from sliding down hill.
In the spirit of the conservancy's effort to make their erosion control measures blend into the natural order, the group disguised their hourlong work by strewing forest detritus -- grapevines, leaves, bunches of twigs and small tree branches -- over the netting.
"The highest compliment you can pay a trail worker is, 'Gee, I didn't notice anything,' " said Josh Nard, program coordinator for the Student Conservation Association. In the summer, the SCA joins the conservancy's efforts by bringing its high-school volunteers into parks.
Mr. Dolney pointed out several gullies in the park in which SCA volunteers had placed logs in a step-down design to keep water from rushing headlong into the road below.
After the workers had tramped up and back several times carrying twigs, branches and logs, the base of the hillside looked like a huge chocolate fudge caramel sundae and everyone's boots were bulbous with mud. But the earth above "isn't going anywhere now," said Mr. Dolney. "How about a round of applause. That's wonderful."
First Published March 7, 2011 12:00 am
