Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
increments and did not look like traditional landscaping, which also did not allay the
mistrust of neighborhood users. Persistence and time have carried the day, however, as
the student groups doing restoration and the staff maintaining the site have aggres-
sively offered information to other users of the site. Every class has placed signs de-
scribing their projects. Every maintenance activity has been explained using interpre-
tive signs. Students have been encouraged to talk to people walking the trails by their
sites. Managers and students have gone to neighborhood community meetings to ex-
plain projects. Every opportunity to publish an article in a newsletter, the local news-
paper or any other mass media outlet has been pursued. This has been effective in
building support for restoration of the site, as well as a great learning experience for
students who have found that there is a whole social dimension to restoration that they
may not have considered.
At the site we have created prairie ecosystems on old, gravel parking lots (local
prairie is found on gravelly glacial outwash), we have done wetland restoration (since
the site is sinking, wetlands form continually; there are currently twenty-seven wet-
lands, not including the shoreline of Lake Washington). We are continually con-
fronted with the problem of a massive infestation of our worst invasive species, Hi-
malayan blackberry, and with a stressful environment. The landfill cap is thin, and
Northwest summers are dry and even hot for a couple of months; die-off of restoration
plantings is common. Bare root materials are very flexible and inexpensive, so our na-
tive plant production output usually augments bare root shrubs and trees that we or-
der from local nurseries.
The common mode of teaching at the site is to create teams of five or six students
from our restoration classes, and then assign to each team a specific plot of land in the
natural area to be restored. Student teams must remove invasives, mulch the site, or-
der plant material, install the material, then add any surface obstructions, wildlife
habitat elements, shade structures, or other finishing features, such as signage. This
work is always done in fall and winter, so it is often cold and raining. In general, stu-
dents may start out not really liking the prospect of all of this work, but they become
very attached to the site and their work. It is common to encounter former students in
the natural area, looking for their old restoration plots to see how they are doing.
North Creek Floodplain Wetlands at UW Bothell
In 2000, the UW completed the initial construction and opening of a branch campus
in Bothell, Washington, fifteen miles northeast of the Seattle campus. This campus is
located in a rapidly urbanizing zone of the Seattle metropolitan area and is home to
many industries related to science and technology. The campus site was a 127-acre
ranching and farming operation along North Creek, a salmon-bearing stream. The
stream had been highly altered, with its course straightened, its channel dredged, and
flood-control dikes constructed along its banks. The floodplain had been plowed for
planting with invasive grasses and ditched to control surface water.
The UW and the State of Washington undertook a major ecological restoration of
the fifty-eight-acre stream channel and floodplain portion of the campus, while the
