Terra Technologies designed and is performing construction oversight, marketing, and monitoring of a 68-acre Wetland and Stream Mitigation Site located northwest of Kansas City in rural Leavenworth County, Kansas. This location will provide compensatory mitigation for future impacts to wetlands and streams within an area that includes virtually all of Leavenworth, Wyandotte, Jefferson, and Jackson counties as well as parts of Nemaha, Brown, Atchinson, Johnson, Shawnee, Osage, Wabaunsee, Pottawatomie, and Douglas counties.
Scientists with the firm characerized the site, which had been in row crop production for decades, as relatively flat floodplain topography with poorly drained hydric soils and a favorable position in the landscape for wetland development. This topographic uniformity will be conducive in facilitating the establishment and restoration of several small wetlands across the site in minor drainages to establish a variety of wetland habitats across the parcel.
The design of the site took advantage of its location surrounding a 24.5-acre pre-existing approved mitigation site that itself includes riparian buffer widening and channel improvements along more than 2,000 linear feet of Little Stranger Creek and the restoration of 1,400 linear feet of a floodplain ephemeral stream that had been eradicated by decades of agricultural disturbance. Together, these mitigation sites will function as a single unit to improve the water quality and wildlife habitat along Little Stranger Creek.
The immediate floodplain of Little Stranger Creek will be returned to its historical state of riparian buffer and a mixture of forested, scrub-shrub, marsh, and wet prairie wetlands. Most of the site's 21 acres of wetlands will be located in the northeastern and southern portions of the site, some of which will be hydrologically connected to local ephemeral stream flows . More than 19 acres of prairie will be established next to the site's wetlands which will buffer the wetlands from the adjacent agriculture and low density residential land uses. This site's combination of wetlands, forested areas, streams, and prairies will provide a valuable mixture of ecosystems for numerous species that use both wet and dry habitats for different parts of their life cycles, particularly amphibians and water birds.
This project includes numerous in-stream habitat improvements. An eroding portion of Little Stranger Creek stream bank will be stabilized using a longitudinal peaked stone toe which will help provide continuous bank protection. Also, approximately 1,380 lineal feet of a channelized intermittent stream will be restored to its historical alignment and appropriate channel dimensions. Additionally, about 1,400 lineal feet of two ephemeral streams that were partially or entirely removed by agriculture will be re-established. Wide riparian buffers will be planted with diverse native trees, shrubs, grasses, and forbs to replace the existing degraded riparian corridors.
This mitigation site was approved in 2016 by the US Army Corps of Engineers and substantial completion of construction is expected in Spring 2017. For more information about mitigation services, contact your local office of Terra Technologies. |
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