Chop & Drop program in PA streams

rrt said:
Not sure about all of this. I have seen trees fall and block the water from flowing; instead, the water flows out around the deadfall, with little water actually backing up and no tumble hole below the deadfall. I would think the would be detrimental to the stream and its trout.
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And, I've seen on numerous occasions, where a tree falls across a stream and the water flows OVER it, creating a nice pool just below it. I believe it can work both ways.
 
Swattie87 said:
I know with this crowd of Large Woody Debris (LWD) fans...
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Being a fan of large woody debris is like being a fan of clean water.

It's being a fan of the normal, natural condition as opposed to being a fan of the damaged condition.

It's normal for streams to have a lot of large woody debris. Little or no LWD is an abnormal, damaged condition, and the trout populations are greatly limited by it.
 
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troutbert said:
Being a fan of large woody debris is like being a fan of clean water.

It's being a fan of the normal, natural condition as opposed to being a fan of the damaged condition.

It's normal for streams to have a lot of large woody debris. Little or no LWD is an abnormal, damaged condition, and the trout populations are greatly limited by it.
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I’m fine with the naturally occurring LWD, and don’t support its removal.

I think making it artificially, in Class A forested freestone systems that have the capability to make it themselves, is silly. And the resources expended would likely be better allocated in other ways.
 
I will say that chop and drop projects may not be appropriate every where. However, many 1st, 2nd and 3rd order streams in pa are severely laxking large wood. In some cases ash and wooly adelgid hemlock mortality is accelerating large wood addition, but it often pales to what old growth conditions would have been. Then, take into consideration historical modifications like splash dams, rail road and road grades that have resulted in straightened channels in otherwise pristine watersheds along with the history of being clearcut 100 to 140 yrs ago. Alot of our streams including our "best" class a streams are far from their historic conditions
 
Hopefully this technique is not
Increasing sunlight on the water.
 
I'm a fan of naturally occurring LWD...

As long as it is somewhere I don't fish...

The bad news for me is I don't and won't fish where I find excessive LWD because while it MAY be good for the fish and armchair biologists, I'd rather watch cartoons than try and fish in and around it...
 
I think the fact that these are planned and designed falls makes the whole, "I seen a tree fall and..." argument irrelevant.
 
Swattie87 said:
A lot of the ones I’ve seen in the Kettle watershed are barely in the water at “average” flows. Some aren’t at all. I know it’s not an exact science as to where they land when you’re felling trees, but many are stretched across the width of the stream and laying on each respective bank. They make nice stream crossings for bobcats and the like probably, but the water is just flowing under them.

I guess I’m more of the opinion of just leave the stream alone. If it ain’t broke, don’t F it up by trying to make it “better”. The Kettle watershed (other than the mainstem below Oleona) is basically all Class A already. Cross Fork and Little Kettle are Class A too, but that’s another discussion for another thread.

Leave it alone IMO. If a bunch of trees fall for some reason then so be it. There’s a stretch of LBYWC below Shingle Branch that had some kind of localized wind event (microburst probably) go through a few years ago. It’s a jungle gym to fish now, and I just plain skip it, but I acknowledge it’s probably good for the fish. Again, leave it alone.
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I'm in total agreement. It takes a great deal of time for a tree to establish itself along a stream. I say let it live out its full life. At some point it will fall into the stream. There are too many streams in PA where there is still no riparian buffer (due to grazing). Spend the time, energy, and money on those issues first.
 
Oregon

With Chesapeake Bay mandates and addition MS4 requirements that local entities have to establish plans to reduce sediment and nutrient runoff, I would safely say that there is $100 million if not more a year spent on streambank stabilization, restoration, riparian buffer plantings, ag crossings and other ag bmps. These projects are mostly occuring on heavily ag influenced streams and urban streams. Trout habitat is often not a goal for those projects.
 
lycoflyfisher said:
Oregon

With Chesapeake Bay mandates and addition MS4 requirements that local entities have to establish plans to reduce sediment and nutrient runoff, I would safely say that there is $100 million if not more a year spent on streambank stabilization, restoration, riparian buffer plantings, ag crossings and other ag bmps. These projects are mostly occuring on heavily ag influenced streams and urban streams. Trout habitat is often not a goal for those projects.
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Also, the two things are just located in different places. Chop and drop is being done mainly on public forest lands. These lands already have forested riparian areas and floodplains. What the streams are lacking is pool and cover habitat. The reasons for that include loss of large woody debris. And also include historic channel straightening, consolidation of multiple channels into single channels, stream relocations to the edges of floodplains, and separations of streams from their floodplains by logging railroad grades, forest roads, berms, and rock walls, and legacy sediments from splash dams.

Riparian buffers are being done in farm country mostly, and also grass and lawn conversions to forested buffers in exurbia/suburbia. The limitations on buffers are not due to a lack of money. There is no requirement to create forested riparian buffers; it is voluntary. Many landowners don't want to do it.
 
troutbert said:
It's normal for streams to have a lot of large woody debris.
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Are you certain that this is true for all streams and forest types? My suspicion is that is true for coniferous riparian forests with shallow root systems and weak limbs that break during storms, including hemlock now and in the past, and white pine in the past. I’m not so sure that it’s true for deciduous forests where naturally felled trees in and across streams are comparatively infrequent. The limited amount of woody debris in many streams could be due to changes in riparian forest types after the harvest of the old growth forests and changes in predominant tree species. For example, “tough trees” like sycamore aren’t dropping many limbs, often the sizes of other tree species’ trunks, into the water and felled sycamores are not very common despite this species frequency of occurrence along streams. Additionally, conifers/hemlocks tend to be vulnerable to windrowing ( when one tree falls it starts a trend of nearby trees falling) which is not the case for deciduous trees. With windrowing you can see high densities of felled trees across and in streams within relatively short stretches of stream lengths.
 
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Just one more example of humans trying to help mother nature rather that just leaving things be. We try to "fix" problems that we continually cause . . .

I can think of a great example on Little Lehigh where a tree fell in the stream and that summer created a great fish holding area until the parks department decided it needed to be removed. Uugh.

On Valley, conversely, I recall what was a 400 year old tree that fell in the water maybe 5-6 years ago or more and it is still there among many others. It is breaking apart and moving to different locations in the stream bed over the years through the various floods, but I see the remnants still and the holding water it creates. A++ for the NP to not remove that tree. Same with other areas that many trees fell and the conservancy that manages the land leaves them be.

Tress don't need to be old to fall. Wind, undermining of roots, floods, bugs, all kill tress and they fall. Even in new growth areas.

The only time a tree needs to be removed is when it blocks a culvert/bridge/pipe and could cause flood water to back up.
 
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CLSports said:
Just one more example of humans trying to help mother nature rather that just leaving things be. We try to "fix" problems that we continually cause . . .

I can think of a great example on Little Lehigh where a tree fell in the stream and that summer created a great fish holding area until the parks department decided it needed to be removed. Uugh....
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If the tree you are talking about was the one in the pool just below the "Kiddie Pool," that tree caused a LOT of problems during heavy rain events, backing up the creek and washing out part of the trail and both banks.

Considering it IS a city park for anyone to utilize and the city is responsible for maintenance, it was fiscally a good decision to get rid of that tree.
 
Bamboozle said:
If the tree you are talking about was the one in the pool just below the "Kiddie Pool," that tree caused a LOT of problems during heavy rain events, backing up the creek and washing out part of the trail and both banks.

Considering it IS a city park for anyone to utilize and the city is responsible for maintenance, it was fiscally a good decision to get rid of that tree.
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No, two that I can think of. One still has the stump in place at bottom of fly zone. Other was down in lower park maybe a few hundred yards past the foot bridge at the white barn. These two posed no issues to anyone except the people who see them as an eyesore.
 
The problem with it being a city park is that they feel it needs to be overly manicured.
 
CLSports said:
The problem with it being a city park is that they feel it needs to be overly manicured.
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Those who maintain a public park also don't want the responsibility for someone (or someone's unattended kid) falling off a down tree when using it for a bridge.
 
I can't speak to the trees mentioned by CLSports or the reasons for their removal, but I can tell you the Little Lehigh and the Little Lehigh Parkway got its a$$ kicked with flooding in the last 20+ years...

Those events caused a massive amount of damage and more or less ended Park Drive being a through road from Oxford Drive to Jefferson Street.

I can imagine the Allentown Parks Department and the City of Allentown not wanting to have giant logs rapidly cascading down the creek during subsequent floods and potentially wiping out other bridges, structures and property in the park...

Versus worrying about having some LWD just to keep angler's happy...
 
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Bam's Post #39 reminds me of other things that can happen. One flood in the not-too-distant past had piled dead logs against bridges from an abandoned railroad that had once operated along it. Since there was no one to maintain the railroad or its bridges, damage has occurred from the LWD in the creek that piled against the bridges. Anyhow, a later flood was dammed by the logs on several bridges, and in one case it caused the creek to divert and to flood a cottage that was well above the flood plain. Later, a farmer got heavy equipment and removed that logjam; but over time it has re-established itself from all the dead wood that has washed down. The cottage is again in danger. Another bridge's damage is so bad that half of it has fallen into the creek.

These problems were all due to abandoned bridges and naturally occurring LWD that deposited itself in the creek.

I guess LWD can be helpful -- but not all of the time.
 
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