Photo at right is the forest at the headwaters of the Huron River Watershed.

You may have heard the term “natural area” in the news recently. More and more people are realizing that the remaining forests, prairies, fields, and wetlands not yet converted into shopping malls or subdivisions are precious resources that deserve protection.

Why all the interest in restoring and protecting natural areas?

Natural areas provide a host of "ecological services" that help keep our lands and waters healthy. Natural areas intercept and store rainwater and snowfall. Instead of rushing directly off the ground and into surface water, as it would in developed areas, this water percolates through the soils and down into the ground to replenish groundwater supplies. This groundwater eventually flows into streams, lakes, and wetlands, keeping their water clean, cold, and constant. Forests and prairies provide us with clean air to breathe. Wetlands filter pollutants from water as it flows into streams, rivers, and lakes. They also absorb excess water, preventing flooding. They provide habitat for wildlife and plants. And, of course, natural areas give us places to relax, recreate, and enjoy nature.

Natural areas provide a host of ecological services. Photo at right shows a natural area providing habitat for this Northern Leopard Frog.

The Huron is the cleanest urban river in Michigan. This is mostly due to the substantial amount of natural areas that remain throughout the Watershed - about 44% of it is open space.

MAP OF NATURAL AREAS IN HURON RIVER WATERSHED
In order to provide local communities, land conservancies, and other interested organizations with information about the location and value of our remaining natural areas, HRWC has completed a map that ranks the areas based on the ecological services they provide. The map encompasses all of the communities in the Huron watershed. HRWC staff spent 2 years digitizing the areas on a computer, using digital aerial photographs taken over Oakland, Livingston, Wayne, Washtenaw, and Monroe counties. We drew boundaries around areas on the photographs that appeared to be woodland, wetland, or open field, and ended up mapping nearly 1,700 sites, for a total of 237,000 acres (out of about a million acres of total land) in the watershed. Once the map of the areas was complete, staff worked with faculty and students at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment to develop a computerized model to rank them.

The ranking criteria include:
• Size
• Whether wetlands were on the site
• Whether rivers or lakes were on the site
• The potential for the site to contain groundwater recharge areas
• The potential for the site to harbor a high diversity of ecosystems (determined indirectly by measuring diversity of the site’s geology and topography)
• The potential presence of high value remnant ecosystems such as lakeplain prairie

Map at left shows remaining natural areas in Dexter Township.

Efforts to preserve natural areas are nearly always limited by funding. The map provides one tool for prioritizing funding to preserve the best natural areas first, before encroaching development engulfs them forever. Programs like the City of Ann Arbor’s Greenbelt millage, where communities are attempting to save the best natural areas through purchase of development rights or outright acquisition, will find the map useful. Other communities have used a similar map that Livingston County Planning Department staff adapted from the HRWC map to enact ordinances to require a permit before development in the areas occurs.

Photo at right shows a kingfisher. Kingfishers hunt and live along the river system.

The Natural Areas Map can be downloaded as a pdf file (2.4mb) from this website. {NOTE: The map is a pdf of a poster-size map of the watershed. With Adobe Acrobat, you can zoom in to see the detail in your area of interest by using the magnifying glass icon on your Acrobat toolbar.} If you are interested in the map and are not able to download it, please contact Kris at 734/769-5123 x16 or kolsson@hrwc.org.

The Table of Scores and Rankings lists all the Bioreserve Sites, their total score and scores for each ecological criteria, and how they reanked overall and for each ecological criteria.
     Table of Scores and Rankings, xls file, 656kb
     Table of Scores, pdf 259kb
     Table of Rankings, pdf 187kb

Bioreserve scores explained, 2007 59kb, explains how HRWC created the scores and rankings.

RAPID ECOLOGICAL ASSESSMENTOF NATURAL AREAS
To allow us to obtain more information about these sites and to further identify those of the highest quality, we created the rapid ecological assessment method. The first phase of this method is a roadside survey, where volunteers visit a site and answer general questions about the potential ecological quality of the site just from what they can see from the road. Results from the roadside survey will help us determine which sites we should target for the more involved field assessment.

The second phase is an on-the-ground field assessment of a natural area. HRWC adapted the method from assessments performed by professional ecologists at the Michigan Natural Features Inventory (MNFI), making it general enough that volunteers with a half-day of training and a field guidebook will be able to complete, but detailed enough to glean meaningful information about the ecological quality of the site. Volunteer teams walk the site and fill out separate forms for wetlands, forests, grasslands, and creeks. The forms include questions about the kinds of plants growing on the site as well as vegetation structure (e.g. tree size distribution, percent cover of native vs. invasive plants), soils, and signs of human disturbance.The information from the forms is then inputted into a database, which computes scores for ecological integrity and levels of human disturbance for each site.

Over the spring and summer of 2008 more than 25 volunteers performed more than 90 field assessments through woods, swamps, and fields on more than 40 different properties throughout the watershed. Our next training session will be May 2, 2009, at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. (Co-sponsored with the Huron Arbor Cluster of the Stewardship Network)

NEXT STEPS IN THE BIORESERVE PROJECT
In the next year, we plan to

1. Recruit and lead volunteers in performing assessments on the natural areas;
2. Collect, analyze, and report on the information gathered; and
3. Work with conservancies, parks and land use planning officials to develop strategies to protect these natural areas.

Volunteer and training opportunities
HRWC invites hose interested in learning about field ecology and getting outside to help create and test the method and begin inventorying natural areas.

Volunteers are needed to help with the following:

• Participate in our roadside survey of the 1,700 natural areas in the watershed, starting this winter. This involves driving to the natural areas and completing a short form that asks very general questions about the site. The purpose of the survey is to screen out sites that program staff can easily tell are not worth taking the time to perform the field assessment on. This survey will take place throughout next winter (2009-10). Contact Kris at 734/769-5123 x16 or kolsson@hrwc.org if you are interested. Also check out the volunteer web site at www.hrwc.org/bioreserve, which includes all the instructions and forms you will need to participate.
• This spring and summer we will form volunteer teams to perform field assessments on the natural areas the roadside survey has determined have potential for being of high ecological quality. Our second field season will begin in May of 2009 and continue throughout the field season (through September 2009). Contact Kris at 734/769-5123 x16 or kolsson@hrwc.org to find out more and get on the list for the next training session.

PARTNERING WITH LANDOWNERS
Take a look at the Bioreserve Map. Are portions of your property on the map? Do you think they should be? HRWC would be delighted to help you find out more about the natural areas on your property. This information can help you make decisions about maintaining your land, including developing options that could provide tax incentives for conserving high quality areas. An assessment will give you a base knowledge about what natural features exist and the benefit they may provide.

Please contact Kris if you are interested in learning more about your property

PARTNERING WITH COMMUNITIES AND CONSERVANCIES
HRWC is seeking partnerships with local governments, conservancies, and parks departments to actively pursue strategies to permanently protect high quality natural areas. HRWC will work with partners in recruiting volunteers to assess sites, holding training sessions, and developing ordinances and policies to protect natural areas.

Please contact Kris if your community or organization is interested in working with HRWC to protect natural areas.

Last Updated: January 2008