Restoring Riparian Buffers in the Chesapeake Bay
Working together for clean water, healthy streams
The earthy smell of early spring and the sound of rushing water hangs in the air along the banks of Beaver Creek in western Maryland. A group of volunteers on a service-oriented Spring break don work gloves and fan out along a 50-foot-wide swath of open streambank. They work steadily downstream, through pastures and cornfields, planting seedlings in the soft soil. Another group follows closely behind, affixing plastic tubes around the seedlings as protection against marauding deer that feed on vegetation.
In the mid-Atlantic region, Spring fever and planting season has reached this group of young volunteers. They chat amicably as they put young trees and shrubs in the ground to grow between streams and farm fields. These plantings are one of the most effective methods the USDA Forest Service and partners like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation use to improve water quality in the bay watershed.
“These natural buffers between farmland and streams have an immediate effect on water quality, and buffers benefit the landowner and the ecosystem,” said Rob Schnabel, a restoration scientist with the Maryland Chapter of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “In the case of Beaver Creek, the root systems of these trees have kept the stream from washing away the soil on the farmer’s land. As the trees have grown larger, their canopies shade and cool the stream. In just a few years, these streamside buffers have had such a profound impact that native, cold-water trout have reestablished themselves here.”