Riparian Corridor Restoration:
Oak Mitigation in The American River Parkway

Riparian corridor restoration projects are occuring all along the American River. Many non-profit orgainizations recruit hundreds of volunteers
each year to help restore, protect, and preserve this unique ecosystem. One project in particular is known as the Oak Mitigation Project.
In an effort to evaluate the success of this project field surveys were conducted, data stored in ArcMap and a georelational model was produced.
The results have been relatively inclusive but considered valuable and beneficial for future analysis.

In the Spring of 2009, I chaperoned my daughter's 6th grade science field trip to Rossmoor Bar, a section of the American River Parkway
located in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova. I worked along side twenty-eight 6th graders as we dug holes, formed burms, cut and assembled
fencing for cages, and planted and caged acorns for hours. It was science at its best, hands-on and dirty. We felt proud to be an integral part in
helping the ARPF meet their goal of planting 1200 new oak trees along the American River Parkway. By the end of the day we had prepared and planted for
73 trees. It didn't take much to convince my family that we could do more to help so we volunteered to adopt the site we had helped start. Our site is
known as Elmanto Grove. It is just one of many groves being monitored and restored by ARPF volunteers. This particular site was chosen because it
had existing water access and it needed canopy.

In the early days of Sacramento history, when goldminers and farmers were first settling the area, Rossmoor Bar was very popular.
Livestock grazing, timber harvesting, and urban sprawl played a devasting role in destroying much of its riparian buffer zone. Fortunately,
in 1960, Sacramento County began to acquire land and formalized this area as a regional park and the American River Parkway was born.
However, it wasn't until 2007 that ARPF began its Oak Mitigation Project.

The Oak Mitigation Project has a two-fold purpose: to restore the riparian corridor to its pre-settlement condition and to enhance the quality of
this unique ecosystem. As volunteers, we have spent hundreds of hours over the last 3 years caring for our grove. It has been very labor intensive.
Maneuvering a 200 foot hose around 3 ft high medal cages and thousands of star thistle plants is much harder than it sounds. And at times our work has
been heartbeaking. For example, last year, a group of young teenagers started a fire in our grove and we lost at least half of our trees. But more commonly
it is the predators living amongst our trees that cause us the most anxiety. Young oak trees are no match for deer nibbiling on their leaves or California
voles sawing their roots in half. In fact, the grove seems precariously close to failing all the time. So I cannot help but wonder if all of our hardwork
is worth it. Are we making a difference when each year we seem to be starting from scratch again? I think GIS can help answer this question.