Haskell Peak Meadows Restoration Project: Second and Largest Year of Implementation Completed this September

SYRCL, in partnership with the Tahoe National Forest, completed the second year of project implementation on 229 acres of meadow, fen, and meadow edge habitat within five high priority meadows in the North Yuba Watershed: Haskell Headwaters Fen, Chapman Saddle Meadow, West Church Meadow, Freeman Meadow, and Bear Trap Meadow. 

Meadows are important ecosystems for sequestering carbon, they serve as habitat for threatened native species, and act as a “water bank” by holding snow water as it melts then slowly releasing it through the summer.  

As temperatures rise and precipitation shifts from snow dominant to rain dominant, the resiliency of these meadow ecosystems is increasingly threatened. While existing habitat degradation in these meadows was initially caused by a variety of historic human impacts, this degradation is expected to worsen in response to the impacts of climate change without intervention.  

The objective of our restoration efforts in these five meadows is to reconnect stream channels with their floodplain. This will support the following ecosystem benefits: 

• increased groundwater recharge, 
• increased stream flows later into the summer
• increased capacity for long-term carbon storage  
• increased habitat for aquatic species. 

This September, in Freeman Meadow, we addressed an undersized culvert that disrupted meadow hydrology by acting as a pinch point, increasing flow velocity. Increased velocity in meadows causes erosion and leads to deeply incised channels and further degraded meadow systems. This dysfunctional culvert was replaced by a low water crossing that has been armored with locally sourced rock. This feature allows for the dispersed, more natural flow of water.   

These are pictures from Freeman Meadow. On the left you see the before image with an undersized culvert that disrupted meadow hydrology by acting as a pinch point to increase flow velocity. On the right is the final product of our 2024 construction.

Prior to our restoration efforts, West Church Meadow was bisected by a relic road. This road was no longer in use and was altering the meadow hydrology.  To address this negative hydrologic impact, we decommissioned this road through decompaction of the 0.04-mile earthen road base, removing stumps, and matching the elevation to that of the meadow floodplain. After restoration, the former road base matches that of the meadow surface and soils have been intentionally left loose to support natural revegetation.   

Here we have before and after shots of the relic meadow bisect road in West Church meadow.. Notice that in the after shot earthen material and stumps have been removed so that the former road base matches that of the meadow surface and soils have been intentionally left loose to support natural revegetation.  

Next Steps for the Haskell Peak Meadows Restoration Project:  

• Ongoing Monitoring:  Ground and Surface Water Monitoring, Plant transect data, Conifer re-establishment/encroachment transect data  

• Adaptive management next year & one more year of using beaver dam analogues (BDAs) — manmade structures that mimic beaver dams– and post assisted log structures (PALS) to assist the system in aggradation — the process of sediment accrual that naturally occurs in healthy meadows via slow flowing waters that deposit sediment — and floodplain reconnection. BDAs and PALS are low-impact tools that have been proven to be effective at promoting floodplain connectivity and complexity, increasing habitat heterogeneity, and increasing ecological resilience