Water diversion and erosion control
Anna B Stockstad: All right. Hi! Everyone. I'm Anna Stockstad from University of Minnesota Extension.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: and I'm. Dave noly from the Minnesota logger education program
Anna B Stockstad: in Today's podcast episode. We'll be talking about water diversion and erosion control practices, and we have the opportunity to get some really unique perspectives from the southeast to you guys want to go ahead and introduce yourselves.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: So, Johnson Johnson, logging. That's Rob. So whisky with okay forest products.
Anna B Stockstad: So you guys have unique perspectives on water diversion and erosion control. Since you both work in southeast Minnesota, and it's obviously a very different landscape in southeast Minnesota compared to the northern part of the State.
Anna B Stockstad: So what are some of those unique challenges related to erosion control that you face in southeast Minnesota? Is there a greater risk of erosion in the southeast.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: Yes, there is.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: Most of our harvest. Sites are on slopes up to 35% grade
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: and those slopes around a quarter quarter of a mile long or longer.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: and along the slopes they're inundated with lot of wash areas, dry wash areas. a residual from the glaciation period when it eroded everything.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: and they are now all forested. So we have to work around all these ditches and ravines and crevices and and rock out croppings on these.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: on these 35% slopes.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: So we do have a significant issue with soil erosion in our in our area.
Anna B Stockstad: So I heard you mentioned dry washes, and, like you said, that's a very unique situation, or it's very unique to southeast Minnesota compared to the northern part of the State, and I think you gave a really great definition of dry washes. And so it's a goalie that forms from precipitation over time on these steep slopes, and is a major risk for erosion.
Anna B Stockstad: So what are some of those precautions that you take when you are operating near dry washes
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: what operating near the dry washes. If we do have to cross on, try and select the lowest spot. Course it's gonna cause at least a lot of damage.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: Watch what you're cutting for the trees around them to try and mitigate any more erosion going on
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: when possible for working around like a farm edge or something. We'll put tops in on the on the top of the fields to help sold the water down and cause any more further erosion.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: So, guys, I grew up
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: that the along the Mississippi River, just a couple of 100 miles south of here, down down down near St. Louis. Actually the the town of my that my family immigrated to down there is referred to as black walnut.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: Don't really remember seeing much in the way of of timber harvesting down there a lot of ag ground lot of farming, some of the neighbors, you know it seemed like they would farm right up to the Missouri of the Mississippi, whichever whichever grandparents farmer is on
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: is that is that still the case here that that we'll see Ag.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: you know Forested ground turned and turned into Ag or Ag returning to forestry to
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: a little, both
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: depending on the soil conditions if it's. In. In my opinion, if the soil is is productive. the
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: more productive the the egg people are going to tend to want more of that. So there will be some clearing of the forested areas on those soil types.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: There's a lot more strip time to reform it here. Now. Then there was years back which has helped quite a bit as far as holding the soil on the top of the slopes.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: As far as reforestation goes. I don't personally see a lot of reforestation going on in our hardwood forest. They planted a lot of conifers 30 or 40 years ago.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: hoping that we would have a market for the conifers, but there is no market for them, so
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: not in in our area. So they really aren't being
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: managed as they were intended to be managed when they were planted. But our hardware resource
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: is, is, is what is the most important to us in our economy. So i'm. I'm hearing 2 things. One is making sure that the hardware markets are are still accessible to you. And I said 2 and i'm, i'm actually gonna give you a 3 here, you know, keeping keeping force to ground as forest to ground that you can actively manage
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: 2. Being aware of the unique erosion issues, dry washes and such, and then 3 the opportunity for you know, if you're if you're harvesting in lowlands of the the unique access that you have to have
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: to getting into selectively harvesting those
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: those areas. Anything else that i'm missing?
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: That seems pretty spot on. Well, we didn't talk about erosion structures of any type on some of these skid roads and skid roads. So yeah, yeah, what do you do after the fact that well, all these sites, like I said, are are reasonably steep. So
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: when the roads are constructed to access some of the some of the timber we have to go back in and water bar
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: or put in soil, diversion structures every 30, 40, 50 feet on the slope reced them, and and to keep that water from running down the the slow
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: hold it back as much as we can, so it down. Hold it back. Yeah, try and go on. Not so much up and down the hills, but at angles to help slow it down to with this good trails.
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: and I suspect that that would that would also apply in in other parts of the State, although they may not have that those other parts might not have the
Dave Nolle - MN Logger Ed Program: the the slopes, or the amount of elevation change. The the strategies that you use here could apply in other parts of the State as well for slowing down the water movement
Anna B Stockstad: mit ctl. And yeah, and talking about how we're going to implement erosion control practices on slopes is only going to keep continuing to be really important with climate change, because with climate change, we know we're going to be getting these large precipitation events that are increasing in frequency one.
So that means our risk, for erosion is going to keep going up. So in the southeast, where there's already a high risk for erosion, we really need to make sure we're on top of controlling erosion on those steep slopes to protect our water quality and our soils.
Anna B Stockstad: and I mean, I really enjoy talking about erosion control. I'm both a for soil, scientists and a Forrester by training. So I really enjoyed hearing both of your perspectives here today about erosion control.
Anna B Stockstad: And with that that's really all the time that we have for today's podcast episode. Dave, were you going to say something? I don't want to cut you off. Yeah, thank you both so much, and we'll be back in the next episode to discuss stream and wetland crossings. And please stay tuned for updates related to our field workshops in the fall upcoming.
Anna B Stockstad: Thanks so much.
