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a little bit more about the iowa learning farms for those that might not be familiar we were established in 2004 and our goal is to build a culture of conservation by working with farmers and landowners and researchers to implement practices that improve water quality and soil health while remaining profitable and this is all made possible thanks to our great partners which include iowa department of agriculture and land stewardship usda natural resources conservation service iowa state university extension and outreach the leopold center for sustainable agriculture iowa department of natural resources usc epa section 319 conservation districts of iowa iowa farm bureau practical farmers of iowa grow mark iowa agriculture water alliance iowa corn and the iowa nutrient research center there's a bit of housekeeping before we get going today i do ask that you remain muted and with your cameras off during the video presentation that we can just sit back and enjoy the field footage we're able to show with you share with you and then following the videos we'll have a time for q a and discussion so you can either submit those questions by the chat box or you will be invited to unmute to ask questions again following the video so until then please just stay muted following today's presentation you'll be receiving an email to let us know and evaluate the virtual field day so we do ask that you send that back because this is just the start of the conversation we ask that you network with folks that maybe couldn't make it today uh the benefit of being virtual is that this is being recorded um and in that email you'll get a link to today's virtual field day recording so you can share that with folks and if you choose to you can provide us with your mailing address and we'll get you a free ilf net gator by completing that evaluation so again we're going to be highlighting oxbows today we've got a great set of speakers for you including karen wilkie the iowa freshwater specialist and boone river project director for the nature conservancy jeff putins he's a green county land owner derek weisenflu a private land fish and wildlife biologist with the u.s fish and wildlife service and dylan osterhaus and sam lieberg research assistants at iowa state university so without further ado i'm going to play the videos again you're welcome to stay muted with cameras off until the videos are done playing my name is karen wilkie and i'm the boone river project director for the nature conservancy in iowa today we're in the boone river watershed welcome this is a place where over 30 different partner organizations have come together for the last 17 years to help address water quality flooding and wildlife issues oxbows are old river manders that get cut off from the main flow of the river healthy functional expos can provide really valuable benefits for water quality wildlife and flood water storage however over time many of these oxbows fill in with sediment and cease to provide those benefits and so that's where restoration comes into play the restoration that we're at today was restored in 2017 about four years ago when we came to this site it was not holding any water was not really providing those benefits that it used to provide and so we came out we it's pretty basic it's not a really engineered practice we dug out the soil that had filled in over the years and now it's holding water year-round for wildlife there's a natural connection to the creek so anytime it floods that water comes in that allows the fish and wildlife to access the oxbow and then the flood waters recede and it's the stand-alone habitat in the floodplain this expo is about a quarter acre in size which is just perfect for supporting the federally endangered topeka shiner we want them to be small so that predatory fish don't come in and gobble them up it's about three feet deep i would say on average they're three to five feet that we have to dig out for them to hold water year round so that they don't freeze in the winter and they don't dry up in the summer on average the cost to restore is about ten to fifteen thousand this one which is a quarter acre it only cost seven thousand to provide these really great benefits on the landscape we're monitoring this site for both water quality and fish wildlife habitat we're trying to see if the water coming in from tile into this oxbow how much is being treated by naturally filtered by this oxbow and so we've got tile coming in from the farm behind us it's being intercepted by this oxbow and held and naturally filtered before it gets into the creek this site has tile coming off of the farm ground flowing into the oxbow which holds that water and filters it through denitrification before it gets into the creek on average our research has shown that 42 of the nitrates that come off of that farm field get processed by this oxbow before it gets into the creek our oxbow project in the boone has been a really great collaboration of so many different partners that have brought different expertise and funding together to piece together all the great benefits that oxbows are providing so we're partnering with u.s fish and wildlife service iowa state university iowa soybean association and so many more to get the research done to really show the benefits that these restorations are having as well as inform future restorations to maximize the benefits that we're getting out of these restorations oxbows are typically not in agricultural land so it's a really easy sell for the landowners no land needs to be taken out of production and it's typically right along the stream so it's land that's not really being used anyways and look at how beautiful we can make it through restoration this is just increasing the aesthetic and conservation value of the land and provides a really great space for people to get out and enjoy nature here we're at an unrestored oxbow and one that really does need restoration it's not holding water or providing the benefits that it really could be providing so once we find a potential oxbow with an interested landowner and we've discussed the goals that that landowner has for that land then we'll want to go out to the site to actually visit it we want to see that restoration is feasible that it would be beneficial and then it would help us prioritize if we have different restoration sites to compare which one would be the most beneficial to restore so once we're at the site there's a lot of different things that we'll look for that would help us prioritize this site for restoration one being is it already holding water is it already providing benefits this one's clearly not holding water another one is is there the opportunity for tile to come in and be intercepted by the oxbow another is are there any beneficial wildlife that would really benefit from us restoring the oxbow or consequently are there any that would be harmed by restoration so right here we've got topeka shiner habitat in the creek right here so we know or we believe if we restore the sox build they're going to utilize that habitat another thing we want to think about is what is the current land use and what is the future land use this right here is in pasture so we're going to want to make sure we include characteristics to this restoration that will be conducive to cattle accessing that water and not eroding the banks too much so we'll do really gentle slopes we'll want to look and see does this oxbow naturally connect to the creek or are we going to have to somehow artificially connect it during floods also is there an easy way for heavy equipment to get in that won't be so harmful to the land where can the soil be put if it's close we've got a farm field right here oftentimes it's nice black dirt we can just put and spread the dirt right in the adjacent farm field if we have to haul it far it's going to increase the cost another thing that could increase the cost is if there's a lot of trees obviously this site doesn't have any trees so that really helps us use our money more wisely and get us the best conservation bank for the buck finally we'll want to look at potential risk of sedimentation in the future is there a lot of erosion coming off the landscape or is the creek the force of the creek coming gonna come straight into the oxbow and potentially fill it in with the sediment that the creek is carrying after we've decided that the site is would be beneficial to restore we're going to want to come out and do a survey of the site to collect elevation data in order to create designs and know how deep to dig the oxbow the land will need to be surveyed by survey grade or laser level equipment in order to collect elevation data of course the professional will need to do this or at least have an engineer stamp off to make sure that all of your data is accurate so that we're not creating any issues this can be done by nrcs major conservancy fish and wildlife there's a lot of different partners who are out there to help with these restorations a couple different elevation data that you're going to want to make sure you capture are cross sections across the potential oxbow that you're going to be restoring at least at every topography change or every 100 feet this one's pretty much the same across the board so you know wouldn't change very much you'll want to collect elevation data of the adjacent creek as well that'll show how deep we are going to want to restore the oxbow what is the current width and top width and bottom width of the adjacent creek that might tell us how wide we want to plan this restoration so that we can account for how much water is going to be coming down that river and coming into the oxblow and then we'll also want to do a center line down the deepest part of the oxbow so that we know where that deepest spot is going to be and all this data is going to feed into our design from start to finish from the site visit until you're done with the restoration would typically take about a year it takes quite a while to get permits in place and do the survey and design but then the actual digging and restoration with the heavy equipment takes less than a week depending how big it is so it's a pretty quick and easy restoration practice so we've restored likely over 150 oxbows across iowa and over the last 20 years we found two inches of sedimentation out of the five feet on average that we dig out so we're hopeful that this restoration practice will be on the landscape for a very very long time and we'll get to enjoy those great benefits oxbows are not unique to the boone river watershed they are found across iowa and beyond and there are potential for restorations across iowa and beyond and so there's a lot of different organizations that can help with technical assistance and financial assistance so check your local nrcs offices and try to find those partners who can help restoration hi i'm dylan ostrows i'm a graduate student in the department of natural resources ecology and management at iowa state university and my master's research focuses on the topeka shiner and oxbows in iowa over the last two years we've caught over 6 000 fish at this site representing around 20 species each year our most abundant species has been the black bullhead which we did not manage to collect today but our second most abundant species over the last two years has been the common shiner one of the main goals of these oxbow restorations is to benefit the federally endangered topeka shiner by providing critical habitat that the species relies on for reproduction we do not manage to collect any topeka shiners today however we have captured over 500 at this site in the last two summers combined the topeka shiner is a federally endangered species in iowa and the listing of the species resulted from the declines in the population and distribution of the species which is mostly correlated with habitat loss across the range this habitat loss is likely due to the loss of oxbow and floodplain habitats in iowa as the landscape was transitioned from a native prairie landscape to agriculture and these habitats were destroyed habitat restoration in the form of oxbow restoration has provided numerous new habitats across the landscape and the boone river watershed for the species which has led to us collecting higher numbers of the species at these sites including over 500 at this one site in the last two summers which is extremely exciting given the rarity of the species in iowa these restorations are also extremely beneficial for a wide variety of other flora and fauna such as waterfowl ducks geese also aquatic invertebrates aquatic plants many mammals as well as turtles and other amphibians and really the landscape as a whole benefits from having these habitats present within the flood plain of the river the common shiner is one of the most abundant species in this site we collected over four thousand at this site over the last two summers when we're sampling these sites we pull a sane across the entire length of the oxbow and then count and measure each fish that we collect after identifying them to species once we are done taking our data we return the fish to the oxbow unharmed prior to restoration this site held no water currently there is plenty of water in this site which provides good quality habitat for a variety of fish including sport fish such as this bluegill as well as many northern pike and black bullheads these oxbows are also provide a great recreational opportunity for the landowners whose land they're on and the form of fishing and also for waterfowl and upland game hunting these oxbows provide great habitat for a variety of animals other than fish such as the crayfish and tadpoles and frogs we have in here as well as turtles other than the topeka shiner many other rare species of fish in iowa benefit from these oxbows restorations such as the carmine shiner we have in here as well as plains top minnow rock bass and iowa darter the restoration of these oxbows is extremely beneficial to a variety of flora and fauna in iowa and given the small impact these oxbows have on the amount of land they take up and the huge impact they have on our native flora and fauna they are a great investment for iowa's water quality in the future all right so i know karen had a few other things she wanted to share before we open it up for q a but feel free to get those questions entered into the chat box and we'll get to them shortly all right and can you guys hear me okay this is derek talking yes all right well hello everyone i'm derek weisenflu i'm with the u.s fish and wildlife service partners for fish and wildlife program and uh we're gonna just take a few minutes we've only got a few slides and then open it up to questions but we wanted to give folks an opportunity to hear from a landowner who has experience with uh oxbows as well and so the photo you can see on the screen here is a aerial photo of jeff putin's property jeff and nancy are shown in the photo there and jeff first called me down this property in 2017 to look at that small tributary stream that you can kind of see right right by the photo of us and some of his concerns with erosion and also his interest in improving his land for wildlife habitat and so we started there on that creek and did some cool beaver dam analog stuff and uh and from there it's continued our partnership continues today uh we've done some fen fan wetland enhancements as well as prairie and oakland enhancements and of course why we're here today is talk about oxford restorations and you can see a couple of those on this aerial photo and so these were most recently completed in partnership with jeff and nancy as well as nrcs the local field office and there's another oxford that upper right one you see there's actually on a neighbor's property uh that was completed by fish and wildlife service and that land owner in 2010 uh and so you can kind of see how these um you know once once there's one or two in the landscape they continue to be a focus uh and you can really build a good collection of oxbows uh so i will turn it over to jeff maybe to talk a little bit about his ox bows and i should mention uh karen if you go back one slide um these are in a different watershed than the video uh and so uh jeff is in the north raccoon watershed whereas the video was shot in the boone river watershed but we got jeff here and i'd like to give jeff a chance just to talk about this slide and what we can see and then we can go through the next couple slides jeff you hear me now yes all right thanks derek hi i'm jeff putins i'm a green county farmer uh what i can tell you about these projects and my own experience is yes they might take a week or two to establish but uh i've been involved in mine for about five years now it took two years for the weather to cooperate for us even though we had the permits and we had to extend the permits and everything and then it it took like he said a week like they said it took a week to get it dug out uh be patient it takes a lot of patience and it's also good that you have this time because what you're doing is going to last a long long time it it should last years and years down the road and you need to think about your goals and what you want to achieve one of my goals is i want to be part of the solution not part of the problem um get involved be involved with your people and you have to know your contractor and no one trusts the people you're working with there's many different programs there's fish and wildlife nrcs equip reap ask around and and get to know everybody well and learn as much as you can about it and when you decide to go and do it be involved like i said because you're only going to get into it what you take out you're only get you're only going to get what you put into it that's what i'm trying to say some of the things you have to think about is the dirt spoils they do have a value usually the dirt in these things are pretty highly nutritious the disturbance on the ground what's going to happen to the ground before and after and afterwards who's going to seed the ground down and what kind of seedings do you want to put in the ground uh for me for instance you know we we put some flowers in we put some different grasses in put a duck house up just uh keep the area more or less in good conservat good conservation i really can't tell you too much else right now i'm sure there'll be questions for you here in a little bit i'll work better with questions than just talking thank you jeff that was nice to hear your perspectives and yeah um we just have a couple more really quick slides but then um if anybody any of the participants have questions jeff will be on the rest of the the meeting so please feel free to chime up after we're done with these quick slides well the slide moves forward when i don't want it to but then that one i do want it to hmm must be like me talking let me here let's try it this way there as derek mentioned the sites that were featured in the video were not the same as jeff's from that past picture on the previous slide so we just wanted to show an aerial photo of the sites that were featured in the video just um for some perspective and can you guys see my mouse when i move it around or no you can okay so um you know on the left hand side is the 1930s aerial image and on the right is um present and so you know down here in the bottom right you can see that was the restored oxbow that we featured um and then the unrestored oxbow is this kind of muddy pile um here north of the road and that one is scheduled to be restored um hopefully this year so but you can see that same pasture you know back the path that the river used to flow that pasture has lots of opportunities for other oxbows and holding more storage on the landscape so just wanted to give everybody a high level view of where we were for the actual field portion of this event um also just wanted to show a nice before after picture of what these restorations look like so at the top right you can see you know before restoration often they're not holding any water at all um and then after we dig them out they typically hold water every year i've been going at this for seven years and this past year was the only year i've ever seen them dry up but usually they hold really good water year round it just takes a pretty severe drought to dry them up you can also see a picture of what dylan was talking about and staining the oxbows with a big net getting the fish out and he talked a lot about the importance of monitoring especially for tracking the benefits of these restorations for topeka shiner which is this fish in the bottom um left it's a little federally endangered fish that really benefits from these habitats and so it's important for us to be able to show the benefits that we're having through water quality and fish monitoring um lastly i just wanted to put in a plug for something that is coming soon me and a bunch of partners are working on putting together an oxford restoration toolkit and training this is going to be more geared for conservation professionals across the state of iowa basically it's going to be a step-by-step guide that will walk conservation providers through how to do an oxbow restoration so it'll provide you with all the tools and the resources and knowledge that you'll need to complete a restoration from start to finish um that should be done this coming summer and this summer or fall we hope to have um hopefully an in-person if not a virtual training that would walk through that same content and you know launch the toolkit a little bit more so um big thanks to fish and wildlife service uh derrick and iowa department of bag and land stewardship and the iowa soybean association as well as many other partners who are helping to pull that tool kit together that is coming soon so keep your eyes out for it if you want to be on the list of somebody who makes sure you get it just drop me an email and we'll make sure that it gets in your hands once it's finalized um here's uh derek and my contact information if anybody doesn't feel comfortable talking today feel free to anytime um drop us the email or call if you have questions um and then just a list of of all the folks who are on the call today and who were in the video um to help answer questions that you guys have so um that's about all i've got and we can open it up for questions yeah we've gotten quite a few so i'm gonna backtrack here and start these off so um question for you karen how are man-made oxbows different from typical scrapes done for wetland restorations is it mainly in the fact that they have a surface connection to streams and rivers yeah i would say um the hydrology is different too these things have a history of being connected to ground water and you know being a part of the stream and so when you dig them out they're just um hydrologically more um ready to connect to the stream and in beneficial ways for holding water than if you just scrape in a random spot i don't have any background in just creating oxbows where they're not historically present but maybe derek has any comments or insights uh well i think what you said is spot on in that you know oxford restoration is restoring something that was part of the old river channel so it's the scar um if we're talking about there are off channel wetlands on that also exist in flood plains that are not the actual river channel but are hydrologically wetlands um and they do connect also to the stream but in different ways again because they weren't an old scar um and there are folks doing creation of wetlands i'll just i'll say that and you can get benefits from them but of course uh there's a little bit different considerations for those um than what we're talking about today which is geared towards the restoration of historic uh river channels or the oxmo stars all right this one's for sam or dylan related to this pica shiner they're asking what is a good normal pool for a topeka shiner that allows them to thrive while keeping predatory fish at bay so in our last two summers of work we never really ran in too much of an issue with um too many predatory fish in a site but it does seem that topeka shiner like some of that shallow water within a site so it's probably key to have a diversity of depths within the oxbow site both some to provide that shallow water habitat for topeka shiner and also deeper water which would serve as refuge for intensive droughts like we had this last summer yeah i don't have too much to add there that's pretty spot-on for what we found um they definitely tend to prefer the shallower habitats all right karen you mentioned this briefly in the video but what are some major sources of funding for these restorations yeah um in the last couple years oxbows were added to the iowa nutrient reduction strategy which opened up a lot of state funding for these restorations so you can get funding through natural resource conservation service nrcs it is an eqip program practice but there's lots of other sources like if you have a water quality initiative or other state watershed funded program you could utilize that funding as well if it was written into that project that watershed and then there's a lot of private partners out there too i was soybean association myself nature conservancy u.s fish and wildlife service so it sort of depends where you're at and you know which if you're in a priority watershed but typically the first place to start is just your local nrcs office and they would hopefully know you know what other partners would be able to help provide funding maybe i'll toss this one to derrick but feel free to to chime in if anyone else has comments on this question in particular uh they're asking any special considerations for an expo created by creek straightening does the army corps need to be involved if the oxbow is adjacent to a perennial stream okay um you know there are i would say there are additional considerations if you know you're in a straightened stretch of creek uh sometimes that means they dug out that new stretch of of creek and then use the sediment to fill in what was the old river channel uh so you can run into some really funky uh soils in those areas uh but you know the if we're talking about oxford restoration in the scars you know we're still looking at the same depth information as far as what that historic depth of that river creek was um and you know making sure that it it it can function with the new ditched section so sometimes i've been in places in the north raccoon watershed with that that ditched section of creek or the created section of creek is a lot lower than the historic stream was uh which could mean in the oxford digging it you know deeper than we actually want it and so um you just gotta you know that's where the conservation professionals can help out and take a look at things um and try to help guide some of those restoration questions uh with regards to permitting uh in almost all cases floodplain permits are required or at least there's a notification requirement so without getting into too much detail if you're within the 100 year floodplain in iowa it's regulated by both iowa dnr and army corps of engineers um and while there are certain circumstances where maybe a permit won't be required or there's exemptions i strongly encourage everyone to actually you know follow through with those two agencies to make sure um that a permit is or isn't needed um and i'll just say that there's an online tool now called permit p-e-r-m-t if you just google that in iowa dnr um it actually has the first stage where you can click on a map on your property and an oxbow and it'll tell you if you will likely need permits and that's what i would strongly recommend and speaking of permits someone had asked why it's so hard to get those permits if their these oxbows are doing so so much good fair question um i would say that uh you know a lot of times that is the case you there is possibilities to make problems and that's why there's permitting that means for your neighbors typically so the reason there is that process is so they can evaluate impacts upstream and downstream um from an oxford restoration or other practices and generally oxbows are just an excavated pool of water you're not building dikes or other things that hold back water and that's why generally it still takes a while to get through the review process but it it always goes through in my experience uh whereas if you're building a dam or a dike that has a lot of other impacts and so we're hoping that we can make that a more streamlined process you know in the future but i think my experience with dnr and army corps is you know once they see what it is and if the design matches the goals they're pretty quick um once it gets in their queue to approve that so in turn yeah that a little bit yeah certainly you don't want this process to go fast there's a lot of variables here that derek's talking about for instance uh if you're in this hundred year flood plane the spoils have to be removed off of that hundred year flood plane so this is something that you're creating for a long long time you really don't want to speed through it and karen did share a link to that permitting page that derek referred to so you can find that in the chat box from the iowa dnr so speaking of the spoils x after excavation is the bottom of the oxbow typically still black dirt in my case no i i had one that was black dirt and then i had one that was still uh was the original creek bottom yeah i would just add on to that typically that's how you know when to stop digging you'll hit that old riverbed and it'll look different it'll you'll start to hit gravel or sands or blue clay and then you know that you've dug deep enough um but every restoration is different um derek and i talk about that all the time we just never know what we're going to run into so that's just part of you know the fun of it and and lessons learned um which will be a chapter of the toolkit um because there are so many things um that we run into that you just never would have expected so um but yeah typically typically it looks different and then you know you're in the right spot all right this one's for sam and dylan back to the shiner having to do with the fact that this oxbow is getting some nitrate being fed by that nearby field so does the amount of nitrate being fed into the oxide have any negative effect on the topeka shiner or are they adapted to higher levels of nitrate in the water this is the topic of my graduate thesis um so far we haven't really detected any differences between the at least the relative abundance of topeka shiners in tile fed and non-tiled oxbows um in general in past projects it is seem like they're pretty tolerant of poor water quality whether that's turbidity or higher nutrients but i haven't finished my thesis so i don't know very certain about what we'll find um so then either with your study there sam or karen in your work any comparisons of the water quality um of the nearby expos and the newly constructed expos it's a comparison of of the original or versus these restored hard to compare because most of them aren't holding any water at all so it's hard to test the water quality um when there's no water there um however you know natural oxbows that don't have tile coming into them i guess um would obviously have a lot you know a much lower nitrate content um but yeah it's a little bit hard to to quantify the processing of an unrestored versus a restored um i don't know does anybody else have a better answer than that yes i i think i could add to that when you just restore a new oxbow you're going to have disturbed all the ground around it in that and there a lot of times in my instance we needed to reseed around that until that new oxpo is aged where all the seeding and that is back to natural you're going to have some difficulties we've done some research on natural oxbows and how they remove the nitrates just from flood water and it found it takes about 21 days for flood water to get back down to you know a normal level of nitrates after the flood and so um naturally there's basically almost no nitrate coming in but when you do have that flood pulse it it introduces some and same thing with having tile like you know when the tile is really flowing you have a huge introduction um with the tile fed ones it takes maybe if the water can sit there for at least a month we can remove almost 100 it just depends if that tile continues to flow then obviously it's just flowing straight out into the stream and we're losing about you know 40 to 50 percent of the nitrate um just straight out to the stream so capacity is is a consideration you know and we talked about knowing what your goals are if your goals are strictly for fish habitat you might design your restoration a little bit different than if you were really trying to maximize um storage and water quality someone's curious um any idea how many restoration opportunities there are in iowa so that's a really fun question we're we're slowly mapping our way across the state um i did i tried to map all of them in the boone river watershed which is um about a half a million acres so you know small compared to the whole state i found over 400 potential restorations just in the boon so if you multiply that across the state the tens of thousands um at least i would say what do you think derek i don't know i think that's uh yeah a great summary just because you've done that on that that watershed scale i've done it on individual creeks in the north raccoon watershed a much bigger watershed with bigger tributary creeks and uh i have certain creeks that have over 300 potential oxford restorations i think the one thing we should emphasize is uh you know oxfords are a natural uh creek formation um and so that's uh that's a natural process to create oxford scars and and for a stream over time to straighten and to change sinuosity and so forth and so not all oxbows need to be restored and there are very there are very high quality oxbows on the landscape right now that have very good um wildlife benefits and vegetation communities and then there's many more in my experience so far um that are completely silted in uh or majority silted in and are not you know holding water or doing much for wildlife right now and those are the ones we really want to target so related to that and your identification if the land is available would it make more sense to restore the original meander or just the oxbow so back to your maps that you showed how meandering the stream was they're asking would should it be restored to the meander or just the oxbow well the two are the same uh is how i think of them so the meander is the oxbow um and so there are a lot of different design considerations and cost considerations and permitting considerations so um if best case scenario like the one that karen showed which is the oxford that was featured in my personal professional opinion i would say that you would want to restore as many of that as much of that meander as you can because it's all filled in but like dylan said because that's in a topeka shiner stream i would be looking to create as many differences in elevation and so forth as i can to benefit shiner and other wildlife uh as well and so sometimes what you'll see in oxford's we've done and others do is because of the concerns of predatory fish and other things we might dig smaller excavations as part of a larger meander and that again what that does is it adds diversity of depth to an oxbow so some parts of the oxford still have sediment some have been removed and that adds that depth variation um there really is no one size fits all it depends where you're located what the goals are and that's probably the biggest thing like what is your goal is it for topeka shiner is it for some other habitat benefit is it for cattle like what's the goal that's how it should be designed so i'll open this one up to jeff and or karen if you have a ballpark figure that contractors are charging to remove the spoils off-site and has anyone had any luck selling large quantities of spoils well i guess i'll grab that uh expensive the further you go the more the more it's going to cost it it depends on who's looking for good black dirt or if you have a a knob in the area where you need the black dirt put on but it's definitely a sellable project i mean a sellable product yeah i would agree and it it also really depends where you are in the state um restorations that i'm doing in the boon are much cheaper than ones that you would do in like the des moines metro or you know um closer to urban epicenter those ones can cost up to three or four times the amount that you could restore them in a more rural area and the distance that you're hauling yeah is a huge factor um i have um tried to sell it before or not even sell it but just like give it away because then that decreases our cost of having to haul it make sure you get it in writing because i had that person back out at the last minute and then we'd had nothing to do with all of this dirt just another lesson learned so i'm going to toss this one to our wildlife and fish specialists here is there a minimum depth you shoot for to prevent takeover by aquatic invasive vegetative species such as narrow leaf cattail i'll take a stab dylan and you guys can chime in but i mean so it's very interesting to me given the challenges we have with hybrid cattail in the states um that we you know in most cases you don't get uh oxbows having a cattail problem and that's primarily because of the depth right uh one we're restoring them to the old stream bottom which is not the best uh substrate for cattails uh they do like all the sediment that's filled in cattails but they don't they can't really handle the water depth uh and that substrate once the stream bed has been uh exposed again um so a lot of times you'll hear these referred to as likes they are far more lake like because there isn't that emergent vegetation than they are um i'd say kind of wetland-like depending on how you excavate them and design them um and so we really don't have those issues with cattail that i've seen anywhere in the des moines log so yeah just add really quickly um i think we've only ever found any cattail um in one site maybe and it was gone the next year and i think invasives in general we don't really have that many issues with we had some milk watermelon foil in one site but i think besides that we just haven't had really any issues so staying with the vegetation train um jeff or karen and your restorations and derrick too have you been successful at vegetation establishment other than reed canary grass absolutely yes i i put a cp 42 mix in there and uh of course i put a cover crop of oats in there and it is establishing pretty fast yeah i'll say the you know again if you if it's done right from the beginning you have a decent chance uh that of course the challenge with read canadian grass is the long term uh and being in a flood plain that seed bank never goes away so um i think you know there again um every attempt should be made to establish natives and like jeff with pollinators uh if you get the right hydrology following the restoration like it's been dry since jeff's have been restored um mostly dry in the floodplain that gives that vegetation a chance to establish or you get flooded immediately afterwards i'd say your chances are pretty slim um one thing um that i'm experimenting with is uh wild rice uh in oxford so i'm familiar with minnesota more but uh wild rice is very common in iowa historically and it's not anymore uh again because wild rice can handle the depth uh i think it potentially could do decently in some of these oxbows but it's also sensitive to water quality and turbidity so that's yet to be determined but i think uh as conservation professionals those of us on this call you know we want to keep looking at ways we can promote that native vegetation diversity both in the water and on the banks in the disturbed areas as much as we can and know that there are limitations in certain areas this one gets to um design elements what sort of control structures are used to allow water in and out you use physical structures like a saturated buffer or bioreactor what's your method of controlling the water levels typically a structure is not needed as long as the grade of your connection is okay typically these have a natural connection to the stream that allows you know the stream pulse to come in and then the oxbow itself is dug deeper so then that's actually holding you know the right amount of water that you would need for for wildlife um derek do you have any experience with structures or um altered connections extremely rare circumstance to have a structure um and it can obviously impact than your fish and wildlife community especially fish because a structure could be a barrier so in our most of our oxbows we're trying not to use them and there's no need to use them because we want to get that natural flooding connection um to happen and as you saw in the video they did kind of zoom in on that connection and you guys can watch it again it's a relatively small diameter relative to the overall oxbow um if it's restored or constructed and that's you know that sets the grade essentially for that connection and it allows a normal flood event to connect but it also allows just bank full events so just where the water gets to the top of the bank to connect which increases that frequency of connection to your oxbow so if you put a structure in you know it instructions are meant to allow water one way typically uh and there are other designs but in most cases we're not advocating for structures on these uh and i'd say in most cases landowners won't be happy with them a lot of landowners want structures up for various things including wetlands but there is a maintenance component and muskrats and fever and everything else tend to clog them so they can have a lot of adverse impacts too karen you mentioned the cost differences depending on where you are so have you done many urban restorations of oxbows yeah we've supported and partnered on many of them in the des moines metro which were really great for you know just raising an awareness of the practice and um especially in in fundraising with private donors just for upstream um wetland restorations and then we've also there's a huge appetite for it out in the cedar river watershed especially around cedar rapids anything to help you know slow the water and filter it upstream um the city has been very supportive and there's a lot of you know landowners who are interested in that as well so yeah yeah urban urban ones are great and you know there might be um we've never really done the research on the benefits of like storm water um you know filtering versus farm tile filtering but um there might be some differences and it could be an interesting practice that fits in well in an urban environment because they're so small and yeah so in the video the one places is a pasture so there was a question of are there instances in which there are regulations to prevent livestock from accessing the expos i don't know of any dirk do nope uh we at least you know in most cases we view it as compatible i think again the consideration is in my opinion it's following uh restoration and seeding do you want cattle in there during establishment no um so there might be some exclusion uh necessary at that point uh but generally speaking you know we we think it's a great opportunity to collaborate with the grazing community as well um and to have those benefits so i think i'm not aware of any regulations um or permits that are necessary it's it's a great you know out of the stream watering source for livestock um and we haven't we've done many of these in pastures and never really had any issue with um you know the cattle creating any additional water quality issues that impact fish or you know sedimentation anything like that so like derek said it seems very compatible dylan someone had a question on have you documented common carp reproduction in these habitats we have in just a few instances so common carb don't really seem to be a huge problem in these sites but that's probably pretty variable across the range of these sites in iowa but for salmonized projects we've only had a handful of sites where we've documented juvenile common card and i would i would just add that in my experience where you see colin carpen and dylan chime in is usually on a degraded ox pose i mean sometimes restored obstacles will have them but where i see the greatest abundance from so far has been on unrestored oxibles that are barely functioning uh so it's kind of like that invasive species indicator that something's not right so uh this person was curious of how often do you need flooding for the oxbow every three to five years 10 years i guess i'll chime in i mean i would say this what's your goal what's the purpose of the restoration is it flood water storage is it fish and wildlife habitat so for topeka shiners for example we want those octopus connecting fairly regularly because we want fish coming and going um and for us what that means is usually annually to bi-annually so every one to two years uh ideally if not more frequent um but on average um and so you know you can there's mapping resources available um that'll help model some of that stuff and conservation professionals that can help but i'd say it always comes back to what the goals of that oxford restoration are um and you know if it's restored and it has that groundwater connection it's probably going to hold water almost every year year round but whether it connects to the stream can be highly variable depending on what that connection looks like all right i've got one more question before i show the cca credit information but then there'll be time for a few more questions so feel free to get those in um so you've shared some examples where rocks would've been in pastures this person is curious about what about bottomland forests i'll let derek chime in too but um yeah it's very compatible in that area um i'll probably say what derek would say is that you just don't want to have too many trees around the oxbow you can get a um low dissolved oxygen issue with you know causing a fish kill and so um otherwise yeah no no problem having it in the wooded area versus an open anything else derek or did i steal your thumb he gave you the thumbs up all right so i'm going to share my screen i'll also put this in the chat but if you watch today to earn a cca credit please email me my email is there by 5 pm today with the name that you entered when you're registered for the field day and the cca credit number and then i invite you all to join us in two weeks for our next virtual field day we're going to be traveling to northeast iowa and exploring the work that's being done to improve water quality and quantity issues in the karst topography located in the upper iowa watershed so with that i know there are a few more questions um one in particular um karen is related to the tutorial info kit um when and where that will be available so where should they keep an eye out for when that actually becomes available good question we haven't um landed on exactly where that's going to be housed but likely it will be housed in a lot of different places we're going to try to just share it as broadly as possible um so i'm not sure for sure like the boon boonriver.org the blue river website um but we'll probably have it on a lot of partner websites as well and um it should be kind of like a pdf format so we'll just sort of email blast it out as well and just have people share it throughout their networks so sorry i don't have a better answer but well if you get it to us karen will help make sure that folks here can find it on our website and our perfect outreach as well awesome thank you yeah so again if you need that cca credit information i've entered that into the chat so you can just copy my email from there and let's see there was one more question um specifically a conservation professional has been informed by idols our department wagon land stewardship that they can't offer cost share for the oxbow unless it can filter tile water so if we have to connect tile to it any advice um i guess i'm not sure exactly what the question is but um i guess making sure that um the connection of the tile to the ox bow um is not going to create you know a plunge pool or that that water can gently get into the oxbow um and then also making sure that your connection to the stream is lower than the tile outlets you obviously don't want to be backing up any water into the farm tile so just making sure that the flow of that water can can naturally still get out of the oxbow during those high flows um derek i would just add field tile okay bioreactor tile not there there has been fish skills from bioreactor tile there could be again so i mean that's something that could require permitting um i'll just leave it at that but i think what karen said is spot on i mean in most cases field tile's completely compatible there's just the normal considerations with erosion and or tile backup that that need to be considered so again this is being recorded so if you would like to go back and look at it you can also visit our youtube channel to find the videos that were featured standalone so you can always check out those individual videos as well this is the last question i have are soil samples or borings ever used in place of elevations to determine depth of excavations kind of two-part questions and have there been instances where excavations have gone too deep and created a drainage effect you want to take that one derrick yeah i'll start you fill in if i've missed anything um so yeah in the video you saw me with a soil probe i will often do that and i actually find i don't ever do that in place of a survey so there's always a survey but i have found especially in those areas we talked about that are trenched or ditched or dredged or a straightened stream um that elevations don't necessarily match up and there's something way off and and so that soil sample can really help it can also tell you if uh we'll often see these big sand layers uh and sand is often not where we're stopping excavation it's substrate it's gravel uh the stream bed itself um and so you know doing that helps you quantify what the spoils maybe going to consist of as well so when you're going to take it to a field you really want to take poor quality stuff no um and so it's just another reason to do a soil probe and test and then as far as digging too deep i've heard of that happening don't have any experience but that is the absolute reason that we survey uh with elevations and take soil samples is that so that we don't and in my opinion um if you're concerned about that at any point with the contractor you would stop you know stop excavation and not it's better to stay shallow than it is to go too deep in my opinion um but there is a it can be very tricky sometimes to figure out where the right spot is and that's where a conservation professional and folks can help out so all right so if karen if you want to throw up your contact slide just one last time in case there's any follow-up questions from today folks can reach out to you or derek with those follow-up questions but thank you all so much for attending today's virtual field day it's been a really great pleasure to explore these oxbows and learn more about them and and how they can fit back into our landscapes so again thank you for attending today and check your emails this afternoon for a link to this recording