This is a “BEFORE” picture taken by CSERC staff in 2006, showing Leland Gully in Fiddlers Green Meadow in the Stanislaus Forest.
Many decades of erosion had gouged out the gully, down-cutting a large portion of the meadow and causing the loss of most of the moisture-dependent meadow vegetation. Trees were crowding in, further diminishing the meadow’s health.
In 2010, after the Forest Service hired a contractor to do heavy equipment work to re-shape the meadow, CSERC staff and volunteers began the first of more than a dozen separate CSERC workday projects at the site. That fall, heavy runoff from a major storm scoured out part of the bare contoured stream zone, so two workdays brought volunteers back to re-shape the streambanks and install rock strips across the stream to limit erosion.
The photo at right shows volunteers planting willow shoots into the compacted soil to bring back brush cover along the stream channel. At other workdays, seeds were collected and sowed to re-start meadow growth. (Turn the page to see the results of so many workday projects.)
