Category: habitat

Frog Taxis & Wildlife Ways

Jason Kingcase study, ecology, habitat, lakes, landscape, oregon, places, portland, rivers, watersheds, wetlandsLeave a Comment on Frog Taxis & Wildlife Ways

In Northwest Portland, Oregon, red-legged frogs living in Forest Park face a dangerous commute in the fall and winter, traversing from their upland homes down to the spawning grounds adjacent to the Willamette River. The species typically is found in conifer hardwood forests that have an aquatic-terrestrial connection to ponds and wetlands as part of their life cycles.

Northern Red-legged Frog

The degree of landscape changes inherent over time is seen in a series of maps spanning the previous century and a half of urbanization, centered near present-day Harborton, the location of a critical habitat connection for the frogs. From the original surveys in the 1850s, the area was lightly developed, and the areas noted as โ€œTimber, Fir, Cedar, Maple, Hemlock, Yew, etc.โ€ showing the zones that would become modern Forest Park and the uninterrupted upland to lowland connections along the Willamette River.

1855 General Land Office Survey Map (via BLM)

By the 1900s and the mapping from the USGS Topographic Survey, some development was happening along the water in the early town of Linnton, and the rail lines were built that started to sever these historical ecological connections.

1897 USGS Topographic Survey (via TopoView)

The current aerial image shows the clear line marking upland to lowland as separated by roadways and more impervious industrial development located along the Willamette River, reducing the amount of shoreline habitat.

2024 Aerial Image (via Google Earth)

The historical upland to lowland conditions has been radically disturbed along the entire margin of Forest Park. We could infer from the series of maps that historically, the frogs had significantly more habitat options along a much larger zone (and even more if you look at maps south of here showing additional lakes and wetlands), and that over time, a series of human-made linear barriers (railroad, roads) and urbanization cut off connections while reducing overall shoreline habitat. This ultimately resulted in a severe decline in several species populations, including the red-legged frogs.

As you see from a zoomed-in area, the major impediment for the frogs is a gauntlet, including a four-lane Highway 30, another smaller side road, and railroad tracks that prevent frogs from safely accessing the breeding area around the Willamette. Described by many as a real-life game of Frogger, the result is documented mass killings of frogs that attempt migration to these zones in rainy seasons.

Frogger (via Atari Age)

As a response to the negative impacts of the species, an intrepid group of volunteers has implemented what they call the Frog Taxi. Starting in 2013, as documented on the site Linnton Frogs, the group has mobilized annually to collect frogs from Forest Park, transporting them across Highway 30 and other roads and railroad tracks to get to the breeding around along the Willamette, and then relocating them back across the roadway to the upland. You can see some stats of the groupโ€™s work from 2013-2021. The work has continued, and Oregon Field Guide recently did a story on this yearโ€™s Frog Taxi, which provides a great overview of the process the volunteers undertake to save this remnant population of red-legged frogs.

Taxi to Where?

Making it across the barrier alone or via taxi only solves one part of the equation. To fully connect the life cycle, viable habitat conditions need to be provided for suitable breeding conditions on the waterside. The landscape of the entire edge of the area used to include the multiple connected ecosystems lakes along a long riverfront edge, including Guildโ€™s, Kitteridge’s, and Doaneโ€™s, which is notable as their surrounding wetland margins have been impacted.

Once the frogs can reach the site, the original habitat must be restored to provide suitable conditions. Currently owned by PGE, the taxi โ€œdrop-off’โ€œ site is the locus of additional restoration efforts, as noted from the PGE site related to the Harborton Habitat Project:

โ€œThe site is one of the largest known breeding grounds for northern red-legged frogs, an amphibian species classified as โ€œsensitiveโ€ by the state of Oregon and a โ€œspecies of concernโ€ under Federal listing status. Additionally, the property is situated where the Willamette River meets Multnomah Channel โ€“ a perfect spot for juvenile salmon to rest and find food on their way to the Pacific Ocean.โ€

Harborton Habitat Restoration (via PGE)

The overall goal is to move from taxi service to more uninterrupted connections from the upland forest to the pools to eliminate the game of Frogger, as well as eliminate the need for volunteers to fill the role of taxi drivers. The next iteration involves increasing overall habitat mobility through an amphibian tunnel that will funnel the frogs along the edges and allow them to move under the roadways and rail lines, connecting Forest Park directly to Harborton. As noted, the Harborton Frog Crossing Project proposed this new connection:

โ€œIn an effort to save the dwindling frog population, local wildlife officials and the Oregon Wildlife Foundation have proposed to build a highway underpass to grant the amphibians safe passage. The project calls for a concrete culvert beneath Northwest St. Helens Road and Marina Way to help the frogs reach their preferred breeding grounds.โ€

Other studies are helping pinpoint more specifics related to the locations and magnitude of the problem. There is funding to assess the mortality of the frog populations is underway by Northwest Ecological Research Institute (NERI), and funded by the Oregon Conservation & Recreation Fund Projects and the Oregon Zoo. The specific goals hope to inform the amphibian tunnel, as they state:

โ€œA wildlife undercrossing and/or creating improved wetland spaces that do not require road crossings are the primary proposed solutions. These are expensive, infrastructure-based solutions, and more data is required to find the most appropriate path forward. Specifically, increased data on the rate and location of frogs being killed at road crossings will inform timing and movement patterns to find the best solution.โ€

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Wildlife Ways

The Oregon Wildlife Corridor Action Plan (ODFW, January 2024) notes that there are naturally occurring barriers to wildlife movement, but the most critical are human-caused barriers that block movement. Within the context, they also discuss how barriers are relative to species, as quoted:

โ€œThe most readily apparent human-caused barriers to animal movement are the physical structures that impede or outright prevent connectivity, such as buildings, fences, roadways, solar developments, and dams. The response of wildlife to structures varies by structure type and by species. For example, a fox may be able to make its way around a large industrial complex, whereas for a frog the complex might represent an impassable barrier. While not all physical structures will completely block animal movement, these features are often associated with increased risk of mortality for wildlife due to collisions, entanglement, entrapment, and persecution. Two of the most prevalent physical impediments to wildlife connectivity are roadways and fencing.โ€

Wildlife crossings, in general, are gaining momentum with various overpass and underpass options that direct and funnel species from habitat areas and provide safe passage through dangerous areas. The focus is often on larger species, specifically deer and elk, here in Oregon, moving between fragmented parcels of land. There is also the potential to reduce vehicle-wildlife collisions, with specific action plans to provide more solutions. These are dynamic opportunities to connect large habitat patches but come at a steep price.

Wildlife Crossing (via Caltrans)

The types of crossings also need to be adapted to the species’ needs. My favorite is the Crab Bridge on Christmas Island in Australia, which provides an almost vertical climb and spans over a roadway to facilitate the migration of red crabs.

Crab Bridge (via Christmas Island National Park)

Another analog is the work being done for fish passage, including strategies for repairing culverts to provide better access for fish, installing tidal gates to better allow movement up and downstream in fluctuating water cycles and implementing fish screens to limit access to certain waterways while providing access to certain areas necessary for the species to thrive. These are less visible than the larger wildlife connections; however, they also come at a significantly smaller cost and can be localized to specific species migration corridors.

The amphibian connections are a microcosm of these types of projects. More modest in scale, but growing in popularity, there are numerous examples around the globe of different types of passages that work for different amphibian species. The hope is that these will continue to do some of the necessary repair work for the severed connections between critical hydrological habitats, hopefully helping the Harborton Red-Legged Frog populations survive and thrive and give the taxi drivers a break.

Amphibian Crossing example from Doรฑana National Park, Spain (via Research Gate)

If you are aware of other examples of strategies being used to allow amphibians or other species to facilitate movement in fragmented landscapes, particularly those that are disconnected from historical waterways via development, I would love to hear about them.

BONUS: HIDDEN HYDROLOGY READINGS

Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 12/11/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.

Water Kinship

Jason Kingart, creeks, cultural, ecology, explorations, habitat, landscape, language, literature, oregon, places, rivers, sensesLeave a Comment on Water Kinship

The article โ€œReaching the Light of Dayโ€ (Orion, May 23, 2024) is compelling if youโ€™re interested in hidden hydrology. Author Corinne Segal recounts some of the larger themes and projects around โ€œghost streams,โ€ including work in New York, Baltimore, Auckland, Istanbul, and a handful of other locations. Beyond some of the projects they note, the article poses a larger question regarding our ancient โ€˜kinshipโ€™ with water. This struck me as essential to the conversations around hidden hydrology, so took this as an opportunity to explore further. Various nuances and definitions of kinship span from biological to sociological. For a reference point, I grabbed this quick definition:

kinยทship /หˆkinหŒSHip/, noun. blood relationship; a sharing of characteristics or origins.

One could make a case for both parts of this definition. While weโ€™re not technically related, there is a physical biochemical connection between our bodies and water, as our lives ultimately depend on water for our existence. Thus โ€˜blood relationshipโ€™ takes a literal dimension: healthful when we talk of life-sustaining properties; harmful when we talk about, for instance, toxicity due to water pollution. The negatives are often of our own doing, caused by abuse or neglect of our โ€˜kinโ€™ impacting our bodies in negative ways with disease. It is a kinship of reciprocity, reflecting a link between our treatment of our โ€˜kinโ€™ and how it is tied physically to our survival.

The second definition here is most compelling, diving into our deeper emotional relationship with water. The โ€˜sharing of characteristics or originsโ€™ resonates powerfully with our relationship with water. This summer I read the 2023 posthumously published dialogue with Barry Lopez and writer Julia Martin titled Syntax of the River: The Pattern Which Connects. Much of the discussion focused on how Lopez engaged that kinship early in life through language, as a way to know, only later in life, expanding the relationship through a deeper dive into โ€œsyntaxโ€ to develop understanding and attain wisdom.

An excerpt from his elaborates on this idea:

โ€œI think when youโ€™re young you want to learn the names of everything. This is a beaver, this is spring Chinook, this is a rainbow trout, this is osprey, elk over there. But itโ€™s the syntax that you really are after. Anybody can develop the vocabulary. Itโ€™s the relationships that are important. And itโ€™s the discerning of this three-dimensional set of relationships that awakens you to how complex this is at any one moment.โ€

The only way to develop these three-dimensional relationships is through consistent contact, which requires occupation of and awareness of place. As he visits and revisits his local McKenzie River, he partakes in constant unfolding. He notes some of these observations: โ€œThe water has a slightly different color during the four seasons, depending on how much snow and glacial melt is in it. And the parts of the river that are not visible in the summer are visible in the winter, because of the loss of leaves of deciduous trees.โ€

This connection with water, as Lopez describes it, requires spending time physically interacting with these environments, and conducting actual visits with our โ€˜kinโ€™ to deepen ties. The wrinkle here is how we adapt this approach for the โ€˜lostโ€™ or โ€˜forgottenโ€™, those hidden streams and buried waterways that no longer have a discernable physical presence. The relationship is no longer about observation in the present but about memory. This perhaps is similar to thinking about our lost kin, to think of lost streams in terms of death. In this way. This could be a way to reframe the relationship as grief and loss, allowing us to draw from the deep well of resources to rethink how we remember and celebrate those lost relationships.

Holy Spring in Istanbul – via Orion Magazine

Iโ€™m reminded of one of the origin stories of Hidden Hydrology, with author David James Duncan recounting a tale in his fabulous book โ€œMy Story As Told By Waterโ€, of the death of one of his favorite fishing spots in his stomping grounds east of Portland:

โ€œAt six-thirty or so on a rainy April morning, I crept up to a favorite hole, threaded a worm on a hook, prepared to cast โ€“ then noticed something impossible: there was no water in the creek. โ€ฆI began hiking, stunned, downstream.  The aquatic insects were gone, barbershop crawdads gone, catfish, carp, perch, crappie, bass, countless sacrificial cutthroats, not just dying, but completely vanished.  Feeling sick, I headed the opposite way, hiked the emptied creekbed all the way to the source, and there found the eminently rational cause of the countless killings.  Development needs roads and drainfields.  Roads and drainfields need gravel.  Up in the gravel pits at the Glisan Street headwaters, the creekโ€™s entire flow had been diverted for months in order to fill two gigantic new settling ponds.  My favorite teacher was dead.โ€

It is sometimes challenging to think of hidden hydrology through the lens of grief, but you can feel Duncanโ€™s pain at the loss of this urban creek. Itโ€™s one cut in the death of a thousand cuts that makes up the global tragedy โ€” the devastation wrought throughout the world on waterbodies in the name of progress. However, the impact is muted for several reasons. First, we, unlike Duncan, are often not around when most of these creeks and streams existed in the first place, so we donโ€™t comprehend what we lost. Second, there are remnants and surviving resources that we can still connect within our cities, so the erasure is not complete enough to equal extinction. Finally, these places fade from memory, and, out of sight, out of mind, we forget as we trod over their buried pipes and filled depression blissfully unaware.

When we lack a strong presence of these historical remnants, we tend to feel greater disconnection, the subtle traces not sufficient for us to feel a connection. This drives our need to reveal and reconnect using a variety of methods: artistic, metaphorical, and ecological. This is hidden hydrology as a practice: the reason for us to study old maps, trace the lines of old creeks, and attempt to restore kinship.

Baltimore Ghost Rivers – via Orion Magazine

Hidden hydrological features, unlike humans, can physically be restored and brought back to life in a sense. Beyond just memory, we have the potential for rebirth, through our creative endeavors: historical ecology mapping, painting the routes of streams on roadways, ecological restoration, and daylighting. โ€œBack from the deadโ€ seems a morbid way to think of the processes of restoration, but it gives us the ability to reconnect and restore.

Several other themes can intersect and expand this idea. I recently re-read a portion of Braiding Sweetgrass, where Robin Wall Kimmerer talks of the Grammar of Animacy. I am struck by the similar themes of kinship, as she discusses how we relate to and reference these ecological systems. An excerpt from an Orion article from 2017, โ€œRobin Wall Kimmerer on the Language of Animacyโ€ hints at this idea:

If itโ€™s just stuff, we can treat it any way that that we want. But if itโ€™s family, if itโ€™s beings, if theyโ€™re other persons we have ecological compassion for themโ€ฆ Speaking with the grammar of animacy brings us all into this circle of moral consideration. Whereas when we say โ€œit,โ€ we set those beings, those โ€œthings,โ€ as they say, outside of our circle of moral responsibility.โ€

We connect our morality to things we understand. Another theme that this also evokes is the writings of Robert Macfarlane, particularly when he speaks of language and how words connect us to the natural world, another form of โ€˜kinshipโ€™. I wrote eons ago about this lost language of nature, including Macfarlane and Anne Whiston Spirn, both of who also have written about lost rivers. Along with Lopez and Kimmerer, these authors prod us to rethink our ability to connect with our kin, hidden or visible, degraded or pristine.

Iโ€™m curious to hear your thoughts on how we can develop and expand these relationships, our โ€˜kinshipโ€™, specifically with places no longer visible and viable. Are there good examples you know of where lost relationships have been reestablished? Do you feel a kinship or even see this as a goal, with other species or with the wider landscape?

Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 11/06/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.

Vancouver Rainways

Jason Kingart, city, climate, creeks, cultural, daylighting, design, ecology, habitat, history, infrastructure, landscape, maps, parks, places, precipitation, streams, vancouver, watersheds1 Comment on Vancouver Rainways

The Pacific Northwest has long been one of the innovation hubs for green infrastructure solutions. Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver have been leaders for over two decades in developing innovative options to manage stormwater in urban environments, creating decentralized solutions such as green streets, rain gardens, green roofs, and permeable pavings that have now become standard solutions and spread widely to regions.

In places with high rainfall, the initial drivers for these solutions were managing stormwater and reducing combined sewer overflows (CSOs) where rain and sewage mix in pipes, which, in extreme events, overflows into waterways creating pollution issues. The importance of green infrastructure has grown to include multifaceted outcomes, helping mitigate climate impacts by reducing flooding and providing shade to reduce urban heat, and providing โ€˜greenโ€™ solutions over โ€˜greyโ€™, increasing habitat and helping minimize biodiversity loss.

Thinking strategically about where these solutions are built is key to success. Looking beyond site-specific and one-off strategies, the goal is to provide larger overarching frameworks for how these strategies are planned to work together to achieve holistic results, and ways to plan for these interventions. โ€œHow Rainways Could Restore โ€˜Raincouverโ€™โ€ (The Tyee, August 24, 2023) highlights some of the recent work in Vancouver. What they refer to as โ€˜Rainwaysโ€™ are the green infrastructure interventions that have been proposed by City and community groups going back to 2012 built around water in the city and ways to discover and celebrate it.

St. George Rainway illustration (City of Vancouver, The Tyee)

The St. George Rainway is another precursor to some of the work. It was studied and determined that true creek daylighting would be a challenge, due to infrastructure and costs, however, there were other ways to functionally and metaphorically restore the essence of buried creeks through green infrastructure and art. Neighbors have implemented several interventions, including street murals that follow the meandering route of the old creek.

St George Rainway Street Mural (St George Rainway Project)

To further visualize the potential benefits, the team here are some good before and after visuals on the site, transforming asphalt into rain gardens with pathways and plantings.

Visualization of Rainway along 12th Avenue to Broadway (St. George Rainway)

Rain City Strategy

For a deep dive, the Rain City Strategy is a comprehensive document published in 2019 to celebrate water and address environmental and social challenges. The basis is green infrastructure in the city, using streets and public spaces, buildings and sites, and parks and beaches. The overall goals are water quality, resilience, and livability. This includes the management of stormwater to protect and increase water quality, facilitate infiltration, and become more adaptable to climate impacts by mitigating flooding. Beyond function, creating spaces that provide equitable access to nature and benefits to the community are inherent in solutions, assuring they arenโ€™t just solving one problem but many.

Rain City Vancouver (City of Vancouver)

The report includes references to the original buried and disappeared streams that existed before urbanization. These maps build on the work going back almost 50 years to research done by Sharon Proctor in her book โ€˜Vancouverโ€™s Old Streamsโ€™, published in 1978 with a sweet hand-drawn version of the map below (read more about this in my 2016 post โ€œVancouverโ€™s Secret Waterwaysโ€).

The execution of more formal St George Rainway design concepts is available from 2022, showing how the concepts are applied to the segments of St. George Street, with plans and sketches illuminating the proposed condition.

Concept Design – St. George Rainway (City of Vancouver)

The holistic proposal of looking at the macro-level buried rivers as the genesis for these community interventions. The benefits of the designs are manifold, as noted in the project summary:

  • Reduce street flooding
  • Treat rainwater pollutants from roadways
  • Reduce combined sewer overflows into local waterways
  • Enhance climate resiliency
  • Increase biodiversity
  • Cool the neighbourhood during summer heat

CODA

Itโ€™s great to see this connection between hidden hydrology and innovative stormwater solutions take shape in such an intentional way. In the past, cities have looked at these buried stream routes in locating facilities and creating smaller sub-watersheds. For some background, in a presentation back in 2006 at the National ASLA conference, I did a presentation entitled โ€œNeighborsheds for Green Infrastructureโ€, where I made a case for using the routing of buried streams as a framework to implement green infrastructure solutions in Portland, Oregon. Iโ€™ll dig up some of these ideas and repost them, as they may be worth revisiting, in the meantime, I mention it in part of my introductory โ€œEcological Inspirationsโ€ post at HH (see image below). Stay tuned for more on this.

Neighborshed Diagram from 2006 in Portland (Jason King)

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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 05/03/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.

The Lost Suburbs of Los Angeles

Jason Kingarchaeology, case study, city, creeks, cultural, ecology, habitat, history, infrastructure, landscape, los angeles, maps, research, streams, watershedsLeave a Comment on The Lost Suburbs of Los Angeles

Strong connections exist between hidden hydrology and the larger work of historical ecology, in terms of methodology and the work to piece together complete stories from fragments of disparate sources. Often the traces of historical waterways inform the larger ecological patterns of places to establish baseline conditions, and historic vegetation patterns, and begin to establish markers to document change. The overlay of indigenous occupation is an additional element, however, it is often hard to reconstruct due to a lack of physical documentation. Examples of projects successfully implementing this type of work are valuable case studies.

A recent article, “Tribal leaders and researchers have mapped the ancient โ€˜lost suburbsโ€™ of Los Angeles” (Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2023) explores a successful process, highlighting work by groups using these techniques to study six village sites in the greater Los Angeles region. These โ€œlost suburbsโ€, in this case, are the original settlements and villages within the LA Basin, where, as noted in the article, “…culture thrived here for thousands of years amid a landscape of oak and walnut woodlands riven with waterways teeming with steelhead trout and prowled by wolves and grizzly bears.”

Ancient routes and key village locations (LA Times)

Three tribes, the Chumash, Tataviam, and Kizh-Gabrieleรฑo collaborated with diverse interdisciplinary academic researchers to piece together a tapestry of inhabitation, as noted in the LA Times article by one of the project leads, UCLA’s Travis Longcore: โ€œWe had to dig deep for evidence of the great society buried under our modern empire of terraced and graded slopes, rivers sheathed in concrete, industrial development, freeways and sprawl.โ€ 

These provide a trail of evidence to follow for appropriate ecological restoration and responses to climate change. Hidden hydrology is one essential key to the understanding of these ancient places. From the LA Times: “One map reveals the locations of streams, wetlands, vernal pools, and tidal flats that were buried or drastically altered to accommodate urban development.”

Comparison of development impacts on waterways (LA Times)

This is a part of the full historical ecology of the region discussed in the following section. Understanding the pre-colonization waterways allows for restoring places informed by an authentic indigenous history. As noted by Matt Vestuto, one of the collaborators from the Barbareno/Ventureno Band of Mission Indians:

“…the mapping project offers hope for a long overdue reappraisal of Native American history… Almost overnight, we were disenfranchised from the landscape โ€” but our people are still here… now, the challenge is to restore the environment, and rebuild our nations.โ€

The project is part of a larger Los Angeles Landscape History project, with a report published in 2023 outlining the details of this analysis of the Indigenous Landscape of the city. A key component of the analysis is mentioned in the Executive Summary:

โ€œDescriptions of the historical landscape patterns and function have led to a conclusion that this landscape and region cannot be understood without listening to the stories of Indigenous people who managed this land and thrived for thousands of years before the arrival of European settlers.โ€

A key part of the work is cartographic regressions, which include reconstruction of the topographic history and hydrological patterns using old maps, aerial photography, and other archival sources, like texts, drawings, place names, historical accounts, and archaeological work. The analyses look closely at trade networks, historical flora and fauna distributions, and their impact on habitat, and provide the blueprint for future restoration. As noted in the Executive Summary:

โ€œThis project is unique because a commonly shared, detailed map of the historical ecologyโ€”the flora, fauna, hydrology, and landforms, that evolved within Southern Californiaโ€™s Mediterranean climate over millennia and supported human populations for 9,000 years, has never been developed.  Individually and cumulatively, the results of this research are vital resources to all regional and local planning efforts involving sustainability, habitat restoration, and preparing for climate change.โ€

Story Maps

An interactive Story Map is also worth checking out, providing a visual executive summary of the report. Focusing on the section related to Historical Water Features, the team traces stream routes in intervals, including 1896-1903 and 1924-1941, with the ability to compare, via slider, the two time periods as shown below, and highlights the radical change of regional hydrological patterns as the city developed.

Historical Water Features 1896-1903 (LALAH Story Map)
Historical Water Features 1924-1941 (LALAH Story Map)

The citywide mapping of vegetation types is directly related to these original historical waterways, and an interactive map, based on the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS), using a 1km grid, to provide map data in cells of potential natural vegetation (PNV). This is described in the Story Map as the โ€œโ€ฆvegetation that would develop in a particular ecological zone or environment, assuming the conditions of flora and fauna to be natural, if the action of man on the vegetation mantle stopped and in the absence of substantial alteration in present climatic conditions.โ€

Map of Hypothesized Potential Natural Vegetation of the Los Angeles Region (LALAH Story Map)

The connections between hidden hydrology, historical ecology, and indigenous occupation are more than just understanding the past. As the researchers point out, the ability to employ this data for solutions to loss of biodiversity, climate change impacts, and other challenges, while celebrating the cultural legacy of place, is key. Thereโ€™s a wealth of information worth studying this model in more depth, to better understand the Los Angeles Basin ecology and hydrology and to refine and adapt this approach to other regions, specifically centering Indigenous stories as a key component in historical ecology work.

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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 05/01/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.