Our Site:

(See also our Riparian Forest Link)

Map:

Descriptions:

1. Site one is the first place which our downstream group observed and commented on. This site is located next to a local farm which during our frequent trips to the Winooski Valley. The site's physical aspects are a steep bank of about a sixty degree incline from water to the top of the bank. The site also contains a small riparian buffer that helps to prevent erosion during flooding and the daily meandering of the Winooski River. The riparian growth upon the banks ends abruptly and becomes an agricultural field that before it is hayed it is habitat for bobolinks, red-winged blackbird, song sparrow, chipping sparrow, American crows, and herring gulls, ring-billed gulls, mice, snails, frogs, snakes, deer, crickets grasshoppers and other insect species.

2. Site two is where we spent most of our time. Here we set up transect lines to determine if tree age increases as distance increases from the point of deposition. Deposition is the process where the Winooski River drops sediments( sand, silt, and small stones), these sediments create a point bar that continually grow from the deposition and formed our point bar that is shown on the map as point 2.

The forest at the very point of the bar was comprised of Cottonwoods, Silver Maples, Box Elders, Green Ashes, and Elms. The forest floor is coated with sumac, raspberry, and juvenile cottonwoods, and various ground cover species, including but not limited to nettles(which do sting when you come in contact with their stems), jewel weed(which supposedly counteracts nettles and poison ivy), grasses.

Our activities on the point bar varied from tree coring, identifying the height of the trees, digging soil pits, collected data on the dissolved oxygen in the water, velocity of the river's current, the depth and width, and with this data we calculated the volume of water that passes through the point bar site.

3. Our third site is a repaired riparian bank, which is also described by a separate page which explains it in an excess of detail. But briefly the erosion caused by the river often invades domestic sites and in attempt to halt or slow the process of the erosion, plants and trees are planted along the area of erosion in hopes the roots may hold the bank together longer. Click here for the repaired riparian growth page.

4. Site four is the base of operations for the field site of the Governor's Institute of Vermont's Science and Technology program. This is an historic site that was once home to Ethan Allen and is now a protected park. This served as a meeting point, a restaurant, recreation area, technology update center, theater and a great place for hiking. We would like to thank the people who staff the park and the homestead.