Lesson 3 - Tips For Maintaining Watershed Functions And Avoiding Higher Peak Flows Information Sheet

Acknowledgement: Taken from "Living on the Land 2001"

1. Retain vegetation of the type that covers soil and protects it from raindrop splash or accelerated erosion.
2. Don’t concentrate water in or on roads, ditches, gutters, drains, gullies, rills, or pipes.
3. Disperse water from roads, ditches, gutters, drains gullies or rills and pipes.
4. Retain natural fire frequency. Prevent the accumulation of fuels that enhance the risk of very hot fires.
5. Manage the land to encourage vegetation that will prevent frequent fires. Frequent fires prevent woody plants from successfully reestablishing and reproducing. Each fire exposes bare soil to erosion.
6. Retain and manage riparian vegetation and coarse woody debris (logs, branches, roots etc.) that provides roughness and stability to stream channels.
7. Retain meanders in a channel or otherwise prevent channel incision. Any event that causes a stream to lose access to its floodplain greatly increases water velocity, erosion and downstream flood peaks.
8. Avoid compacting the soil with intense grazing when soils are moist, or by driving on meadows, off-road, etc. Compacted soil reduces infiltration and soil water storage.
9. Eradicate invasive weeds when the first invader is noted and before populations expand and become problematic. Some weeds will not adequately protect soil. Invasive weeds compete with native plants that are important for soil stabilization.

Make sure watershed management decisions are handled by an interdisciplinary team that considers at a minimum the soil, hydrology and vegetation interactions.

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