Â
Stream corridors and the flood plain buffers along each side of the stream serve as multi-purpose green infrastructure, providing area needed to stabilize and maintain stream channels, allowing for the installation and maintenance of infrastructure, and offeriing community enhancing amenities such as trails.
Once streams banks are allowed to erode they can be difficult and costly to fix. Especially in an urban setting, where streams are fragmented by residential lot ownership making it difficult to get full cooperation for a project that treats the stream as a “system."
Stream channel stabilization is a complex undertaking involving a comprehensive survey and engineering design for successful stabilization. However, there are some basic aspects involved in stream corridor stabilization. Down cutting must first be stabilized; eroding banks need to be peeled back to a stable slope and re-vegetated. Once those two steps are complete protecting the lower part of the bank is recommended by preventing erosion at the toe (bottom) of the slope.
Â
GREAT NEWS WORTH SHARING:
REAP - IDNR funds shoreline restoration at Gray's Lake in Des Moines.
Â
