In Charlotte’s Town Farm Bay, another non-native invasive species is spreading. Flowering rush is an emerging threat to Lake Champlain wetlands and floodplain forests of Champlain direct drainage streams.
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Lewis Creek Association Works to Reduce Flooding Risk & Improve Water Quality in Starksboro
LCA Wraps Up 2021 Boat Launch Steward Program at Bristol and Monkton Ponds
Lewis Creek Association (LCA) recently wrapped up its boat launch steward program at Bristol Pond and Monkton Pond. . If the boat launch stewards hadn’t intercepted the vegetation on the watercrafts launching into and retrieving from the ponds, 237 watercraft (of the total 579 inspected) could have potentially spread AIS to other bodies of water.
Working in the Watershed: Wrapping up the water quality stewardship field season
Among the Great Egrets and Northern Map Turtles in Charlotte’s Town Farm Bay and Shelburne’s LaPlatte River wetlands, volunteers removed non-native aquatic invasive European frogbit for the fifteenth consecutive year this summer. Lewis Creek Association’s (LCA) “Water Quality Stewardship Program” is an invasive plant and water quality project coordinated annually since 2007.
Watershed partners unite to develop Watershed Action Plan for Lake Iroquois & Patrick Brook
The Winooski Natural Resources Conservation District (WNRCD) is pleased to announce the awarding of Lake Champlain Basin Program funds to develop a Watershed Action Plan for Lake Iroquois and the Patrick Brook watershed. WNRCD has partnered with Lake Iroquois Association (LIA) and Lewis Creek Association (LCA) to identify and address priority opportunities that remediate stormwater runoff and phosphorus pollution to improve water quality, wildlife habitat, and climate change resilience.
Lewis Creek Association Wraps Up Study of Yellow Iris Control
Yellow iris (Iris pseudacorus), with its striking yellow flowers, is a beautiful plant, but also a threat to our priority natural communities and native plants. In recent years, it has gained a foothold in many Lake Champlain wetlands and floodplain forests (priority natural communities, as documented by Vermont Fish & Wildlife Natural Heritage Program).
Online Water Quality Scorecard Map Now Available
In spring 2020, LCA adapted our FY20-21 Water Quality Stewardship Program tasks in the LaPlatte watershed region (funded by our local towns), since water quality sampling was put on hold due to COVID. We were able to create new virtual educational materials available on our website https://www.lewiscreek.org/water-quality-videos and gave several Zoom webinars (most of these are also available on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2ZlGtaFmB55EvlZTvK3lQQ). These included longer presentations for public education, and shorter versions for boards/committees/landowners.
We moved our scorecard map that shows water quality conditions in the watershed to an online interactive format, with the help of Pam Brangan from CCRPC. This map includes additional layers that will be useful to planners and Conservation Commissions as they work to understand water quality conditions in the watershed. The three products associated with this are as follows:
· Story map (a good place to start, with links to the other products) - https://ccrpc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=91bf486743b2485bbc03c43712592e89
· Interactive map - https://map.ccrpcvt.org/LCA-SouthChittendenRiverWatch/
· Dashboard - https://ccrpc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/1b44205266d44408a9c1d079b4fc5059
Kate Kelly will be hosting a brief training on these new products on June 24 (Thursday) at 7 PM. If you’d like to attend, or have any feedback on these scorecard map products, please e-mail Kate (lewiscreekorg@gmail.com) for the Zoom link.
A Tale of Two Irises
Our recent work on yellow iris was quoted in the recent column “The Outside Story”, printed in Northern Woodlands and other places. Check it out at https://northernwoodlands.org/outside_story/article/two-irises
Lewis Creek Association Continues Combatting Aquatic Invasive Species at Bristol and Monkton Ponds
Aquatic invasive plant species have been present in the Lewis Creek watershed for decades and outcompete native plants by forming dense mats of vegetation. To combat the spread of aquatic invasive species, LCA applied for and was awarded a grant from the Lake Champlain Basin Program, to continue its Boat Launch Steward Program at Bristol Pond and to establish a Boat Launch Steward Program at Monkton Pond.
