Explore the many interesting natural features of this creek and greenway. Learn about stream health, invasive plants, and cool creatures that live in the water. Gain a new appreciation for this local waterway and discover ways you can help protect it.
Sample Stories
For more content, click the "Explore this Tour Remotely" button below.
The Kudzu Menace
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Good day folks and welcome to today’s invasive species beatdown! On one bank, hailing all the way from China, we’ve got the fenceline destroyer, the highway terror, the grow so much it’ll overtake your entire property, plant of peril KUDZU!! And on the other bank we’ve got uhh… well… we’ve got more Kudzu, there’s just Kudzu everywhere folks.
In all seriousness, Kudzu can pose some major concerns for the health of our streams and rivers. It was originally brought over from China to help us control erosion on the banks of our waterways. However, we had no idea that this plant would grow as fast and as powerfully as it did. It’s why it’s often called the “vine that ate the south” and looking around at the banks of this stream, you can start to understand why.
Since Kudzu is not native to North America, this means that it doesn't have any natural controls to contain its growth. There are no natural predators, or bugs, or animals to eat most of the vines as they grow. This means that Kudzu can outcompete many native species of plants, taking away their nutrients, sunlight and space that they need to thrive. It can also weigh extremely heavily on tree branches, causing them to break and die off.
Once established, Kudzu can be really difficult to get rid of. It has taproots that can grow up to 6 feet deep, and the vine itself can grow up to 1 foot a day during the prime growing season. Even during the winter, Kudzu stores a lot of sugar and water in its root crowns, which are very thick spots of roots near the surface of the soil, that allows it to survive even the harshest of winters. All of these reasons combined are why organizations like RiverLink and many others in the area work so hard to control this invasive plant.
Have you seen other spots of Kudzu along the greenway? Keep an eye out for more as you continue to walk.
Magnolia Street Culvert
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Standing at the creek, look to the left underneath Magnolia Street. What do you see? The road goes over the creek, but it’s not quite a bridge. This type of water crossing is called a culvert.
Unlike a bridge, it covers the stream bed and channels all the water through a pipe. Culverts may be easy to install and affordable, but there are many problems that they can cause as well. The smooth surface of the culvert can make the water move faster than on the natural stream bed, with all of it’s rocks and rough features. The faster water and unnatural surface may make it uncomfortable or even impossible for some living things in the stream to pass through.
Faster moving water can also dig into the sediment on the downstream end of the culvert, especially if it is raised up from the stream bed like you see here. This will often cause mini-waterfalls to form and alter the habitat for fish or macroinvertebrates. You might begin to see erosion on the stream banks or underneath the culvert creating wide, deep pools.
Sometimes the culvert can become clogged as well. Branches, leaves, sediment, and trash can all get caught in the pipe which blocks water and animals from passing through. This can make the area downstream of the culvert very shallow and slow moving or even cut off the water flow entirely. It could also create minor flooding upstream of the culvert.
What other problems do you think culverts could cause? Make some observations about what is happening at this one and compare it to other stream crossings along the greenway. How many crossings are culverts and how many are bridges? What do you think caused one to be built over another in those spots?
