© Doug Samson/TNC     

The restoration of Jackson Lane

from the fall/winter 2005 issue of Maryland/DC News

Along the edges of a large Delmarva bay, Conservancy scientist Doug Samson catches sight of a neongreen and spotted leopard frog at rest. Two years ago, this site in Caroline County, where a host of amphibians and wetland creatures now reside, underwent a dramatic transformation.

In 2003, The Nature Conservancy began restoring portions of a former farm field in northern Caroline County to seasonal wetland ponds on 330 acres adjacent to its Jackson Lane Preserve. The project also includes restoration of a large ditched and degraded Delmarva bay. Once found in abundance across a large area of the Central Delmarva Peninsula, Delmarva bays are seasonal depressional wetlands, usually without trees, that are thought to have originated as wind-blown features at the end of the last ice age. The hydrology and chemistry of Delmarva bays is intricately and dynamically linked to local groundwater systems.

The Jackson Lane restoration project is the largest ever in the history of the Maryland/DC chapter and is one of the chapter’s most significant partnership efforts to date. The Nontidal Wetlands & Waterways Division of the Maryland Department of Environment is providing significant funding and support. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Wildlife Program and the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service provide project design and oversight services.

“People have built wetlands before, but they usually leave once they are completed and without monitoring the ecological success of the wetlands,” said Samson, senior scientist for The Nature Conservancy in Maryland. “With a team of researchers and scientists working on-site, the Jackson Lane project may well be one of the best-studied wetlands restoration projects on Delmarva and in the region.”

About a dozen scientists and researchers from Maryland universities have monitored everything from amphibians and reptiles to dragonflies and damselflies to soil chemistry. So far, researchers have documented more than 50 species of dragonflies and damselflies on the site, more than 70 bird species and almost 30 species of amphibians and reptiles.

The restoration involved constructing more than two dozen earthen ditch plugs or berms, using soil excavated immediately adjacent to the berms to create 23 wetland ponds, ranging in depth from less than a foot to about four feet and in size from about a half-acre to roughly 10 acres. Other restoration techniques included: creating pit-and-mound microtopography by using a backhoe to scoop out one bucket of soil and place it adjacent to the hole; placing woody debris in and around the edges of the ponds to create habitat for wildlife; and planting potted native tree saplings and shrubs.

“The restored wetlands are stacking up very well compared to the natural wetlands and woods nearby,” Samson said. “There were more bird species recorded in the restored landscape than in the woods nearby in the first year of monitoring, presumably because the restored wetlands have grassland and
open-canopy habitat.”

“I think our studies at Jackson Lane will make a major contribution to understanding how restored wetland habitats and landscapes function,” Samson said.