Background
Riparian areas provide significant ecosystem services such as wildlife habitat, water quality and quantity, and carbon sequestration at higher rates than surrounding uplands. They are also critical areas for management, with the potential to provide important water and forage resources to agricultural producers, even in times of drought.
The Challenge: Knowledge Gaps
Science doesn’t yet understand how carbon is sequestered in different areas of the riparian zone in semi-arid rangelands.
The Opportunity: Large Impacts
On western and central U.S. rangelands, riparian areas are widely degraded. This provides a significant opportunity for restoration and management.
The Project
WLC is teaming up with the Lein Lab at the University of Arizona and Rio Grande Return to quantify ecosystem service benefits of low-tech process based restoration.
Restoration Techniques
Beaver Dam Analogues (BDA) and Post Assisted Log Structures (PALS) are low-tech riverscape restoration techniques that kickstart natural processes (beaver dam structures and woody accumulation).
These structures slow the flow of streams, reconnecting floodplains and filling in damage from erosion.
Photo from Rio Grande Return
Soil Carbon Sequestration
WLC is researching changes in soil carbon storage in restored riparian areas. This work will involve field sampling of soils in degraded and restored riparian areas across AZ, NM, and UT, lab work to analyze carbon sequestration rates associated with restoration, and analysis and reporting of results.
Project Updates
Summer 2024
Boots are on the ground in New Mexico! Dr. Kendall Beals, our amazing project lead, has been to New Mexico three times this summer for preliminary scouting trips, setting up transects, and the first round of sampling! She spent the summer honing in on the experimental design of the project: where to sample, how many samples, what to measure, and how to analyze data. With a sound experimental design, Kendall will analyze soil carbon along streams in varying states of restoration. Her study will answer questions about how long carbon it takes for carbon to sequester along these streams, if restoration techniques allow riparian areas to sequester more carbon, and if there are carbon hotspots within riparian areas.
We have some big questions to answer! Check back in for more updates about this project.
