Hi Holly!

Sorry if this is a duplicate. It doesn’t seem to want to post my reply today! Sam, are we not allowed to post links?

It looks like you were successful replying, but I haven’t been yet, haha!

We are south of Whitehall where Kountz Rd intersects the Jefferson Slough. So far, we haven’t seen any archaeological evidence in the bank, but I am excited to get it stabilized to minimize risk to the arch site.

You can learn more about our research and educational outreach through our nonprofit, Alpine Ecosystems Research Institute (AERI), if you go to alpine research dot org. I just added a bunch of information about soil biology and restoration under About > The Present: Soil Biology Research. If you have time, I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions. It’s hard to remember what it was like to not know about these topics.

I also remembered your questions about moving willows out of their bioregion. The folks at Ripple both did a great job explaining the general principles of moving plants, but I can augment their answer to this question in terms of soil biology. Plants require aerobic microbiological partners to provide them nutrients from the soil and also to provide protection from diseases. A healthy plant will have root surfaces and above-ground surfaces coated in a glue-like layer of beneficial microorganisms. If you move the plant to a different bioregion with different climate, different substrate, etc., the beneficial microorganisms that came with it may not survive and the plant will be more susceptible to disease. Additionally, you run the risk of introducing a foreign microorganism, which will have unknown consequences down the line.

Finally, I’m not sure if they mentioned that willows evolved to get “torn up” by flooding events and have their missing limbs and pieces become trees down river. If we are really trying to mimic mother nature, we can think about sourcing our willows from upstream, or within the same river basin as our own.

Those are my 3 cents!

Best,
Sari