A Whale on your plate?

1 Mar, 2012 Author: Glorianna Davenport

When you see a whale's tails on a Massachusetts license plate as you drive down the highway, do you wonder how it got there? Do you wish you could have such a cool license plate on your car?

From time to time, this blog will feature the great work of our sponsoring organizations.  Today, we would like to thank American Rivers and The Massachusetts Environmental Trust (MET) for their support of the restoration project.  You can add your support by becoming a member of American Rivers and/or by purchasing one of the awesome license plates from the MET.

As a proud partner in the restoration of Beaver Dam Brook, the MET is helping us help the community by contributing to the restoration of Beaver Dam Brook. A program of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the MET makes grants to nonprofit organizations and municipalities statewide that are working to protect and improve water resources. All of the funding for these grants is generated by the sales of three environmental license plates –

In addition to the Right Whale, you can purchase MET license plates with the image of a Brook Trout or the Blackstone Mill.

It is easy to get a plate. Just go to http://www.mass.gov/rmv/express/plates.htm and click on your favorite. The Registry of Motor Vehicles website makes buying your new plate a snap. No RMV visits required!

The plate costs less than you might think. An environmental plate is $40 in addition to standard registration fees every two years. That breaks down to $20 per year or $1.66 per month. Special plate fees are tax-deductible and support the Massachusetts Environmental Trust.

This year, the MET will pay out over $1 million in grants to help improve the water resources of Massachusetts In addition to the Tidmarsh Farms/Beaver Dam Brook restoration project, other MET partners are rescuing entangled whales, restoring habitat for herring and eels, researching invasive species, improving trout fisheries, preventing pollution and much more. By choosing to to support the MET through the purchase of a license plate, you not only help "Preserve the Trust" but you also help spread the word when you are on the road!  

More Data

5 Feb, 2012 Author: Glorianna Davenport

(see more pictures below)

Survey base station in field of little blue-stem grass

Neighbors are asking: What is happening to Tidmarsh? What will the property become? Behind these questions lies a nagging anxiety: how will the change (negatively) impact me? We all understand that the promise of change can be unsettling, particularly when it is imminent, close by, and lacks predictability.

Unfortunately we do not have a pat answer. Tidmarsh Farms is a large property; it encompasses one-tenth of the watershed and 1/2 the length of Beaver Dam Brook. With some caveats, we are looking toward making a major portion of the property into a nature preserve that will provide people with access to a natural landscape for quiet enjoyment; diverse habitats for wildlife including plant, bird and fish populations; and a protective flood plain to moderate the unpredictable events that nature provides. As always the devil is in the detail.

To move on to detail, we plan to restore the waterway and flood plain.  For almost 200 years, Beaver Dam Brook has been manipulated, first by entrepreneurs who needed water power to run a grist mill and cotton factory, both located where the brook exits the Tidmarsh Farms property on Route 3A; and later by others who believed they could reshape the waterway for the purpose of farming cranberries.

The original dam that was built to run the mills and the factory in the mid-1800's backed water up on the Tidmarsh flood plain, creating an oddly shaped pond, which you can see if you look at the old map on the wall of the Plymouth Library.  When this land was converted for cranberry farming, the waterway was dramatically altered. Cranberries are grown, with the help of controlled water levels, sand and sunlight, as a mono-culture. The first step was to build the bogs: in the process water was held back in reservoirs, the bog surface was flattened, ditches were created to allow surface water to evenly reach the roots, and a significant quantity of sand was applied across the entire surface allowing the runners to easily root. As the best practice evolved, 1/2 inch of sand would be applied across the bog surface every three years, and recommended doses of fertilizer, herbicide and, pesticides were applied as required.  Meanwhile, winter floods reduced winter kill, and, by mid century, harvest flooding created significant efficiencies.

All these manipulative practices created stress to the natural movement of water, sediment and micro-organisms.  The restoration is focused on relieving this stress: reconstructing a meandering brook for the natural flow of water, where possible removing sand, filling man-made channels, planting some native species as appropriate and eradicating some invasive species.  Once this work is completed, the waterway and flood plain will be left to evolve naturally.

Before we can design this restoration, we need to know more about the landscape. Rather like a human medical exam, we need to probe and sample the elements. How much sand sits on how much peat?  How does the ground water flow?  How deep is the channel, and how high is the bank?  Much of this sampling and probing was done in January. Once the collected data has been analyzed and used to model the hydrology of the site, we will articulate and discuss design options with our partners and our neighbors as well as with the town and other regulatory agencies. If you are a neighbor and wish to meet with us directly, prior to our holding public forums, please email us at tidmarshfarms.com

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Collecting the data: Jan 19, Jan 24-27, 2012

Nick digs a sample hole; David peers in to see if ground water is collecting

Nick collects sediment sample in Arm

Nick directs survey of the red maple swamp

Manny sets height

Franz hustles in to the phragmites to mark top and toe

A robin supervises

Kim  checks in after completing stream flow measurements

Greg hustles across the bogs; 2500 data points per day!

Franz measures depth of refusal in the Arm

In some places, a push is better than ores

Thanks to the whole team

Coming next: the Ground penetrating radar survey!

Probing the reaches

11 Dec, 2011 Author: Glorianna Davenport

On November 28th-30th, we hosted a kick off meeting at Tidmarsh farms for representatives from the partner organizations. The goal of this meeting, organized by Marty Melchoir of Interfluve, Inc., was to discuss performance criteria and to brainstorm about the Living Observatory with the participants. At the start, Alex Hackman of Division of Ecological Restoration and Brian Graber of American Rivers addressed the need to understand the biophysical template of the land in order to holistically identify and remove stressors, restore aquatic and terrestrial connectivity and encourage biodiversity. These ideas resonated in the round robin session on performance criteria that was led by Marty Melchoir.  Following a short lunch break, three students from the MIT Media Lab working with the Living Observatory presented their work on sensors and visualization. This led to an animated group discussion about what might be possible to sense.  The meeting closed with presentations by Irina Kadis, co-founder of Salicicola, on plant species (native, invasive and otherwise) found on the property and by Eric Walberg of Manomet Center for Conservation Science on global warming.

In the two days following the meeting, many of the participants volunteered their time to explore, probe and sample the site. On Tuesday morning, we made our way up the channel connecting the property to fresh pond.  Later that day, a rented mini-excavator was used to dig a number of test pits that allowed the team to examine and sample the layers of sand and the underlying peat across many of the reaches.

While much remains to be done, by Wednesday afternoon both Marty and Alex seemed pleased with the progress of this data collection phase.  In the next few weeks,  Interfluve will return to do some additional surveying. Later this winter, ideally after a nice snowfall, a technical guru from USDA NRCS will use a Ground Penetrating Radar rig to image the underlying topology of the peat kettles. Water sampling will continue into the spring.  Meanwhile, a few volunteers are contributing living memories to our understanding the evolution of this land.

photo1 and 3: a. hackman; photo 2: g.davenport