By Hannah McKeown:
Our Restoration Ecology class took a field trip to the Laguna de Santa Rosa on November 17th. There we met some of the Laguna Foundation staff: Brent, Hannah, and Paul. This was our second visit to a part of the Laguna this semester, and this time we started out with a tour of the Education Center and historical hops drying barn.
While learning about the old hops barn – a building that dates back to the Civil War era – I pulled Brent aside and asked him about what plans they had for the building. He told me they were turning it into an informational historical site where the community could come learn about the barn’s history, and purpose. I had recently learned that native indigenous women of California had a central role in the hops industry, so I asked if he was going to include that information in what was offered to the public. He said he had not looked into that particular aspect of the barn’s history, but that he would do so as restoration of the barn progresses.
We then walked across the road with our guides and they showed us where we would harvest the plants to be transplanted later in the day. what plants we were targeting to propagate with shovels into buckets.
We were taking Juncus out of patches growing alongside the road. We used the shovels to cut a square around each clump we pulled out and made sure to not pull too many out in the same area. We loaded the buckets back into the truck and walked back to the
creek to have lunch.
After lunch, our class grabbed buckets of Juncus and planted them along the creek as part of the restoration project. We did this to help support native vegetative growth with a species that is known to do well and is resilient in outcompeting other species.
0 Comments