Restoring California Meadows Could Help Combat Climate Change And Increase Water Supply

"Although we have a meadow here right now you can see it's extremely dry, there is no wet component to it at all right now," says Bridget Fithian with the Sierra Foothill Conservancy.

Golden European grasses crunch beneath our feet. Cows graze in the distance.

The Conservancy has embarked on a project to return 39 acres back to what it once was, before people built roads and ditches and turned it into ranchland in the 19^th century.

Large Ponderosa pine trees grow in the middle of Bean Meadow. They will likely be removed in order to restore the meadow's natural hydrology.  Amy Quinton / Capital Public Radio

She takes me to the middle of the meadow.

"We’re kind of in a forest now, but we’re actually in a creek channel," says Fithian. "The creek channel should not have gigantic ponderosas growing in it and these huge decadent willows. So basically the wetland area of this property has been totally condensed to this little corridor."

Stephen Hart with UC Merced and Bridget Fithian with the Sierra Foothill Conservancy stand in the deepest part of a dry creek bed in Bean Meadow. Streams in meadows are supposed to be shallow to function correctly.  Amy Quinton / Capital Public Radio

What is supposed to be a shallow stream is 14 feet deep.

"It’s just absurd. It should not look like that here," says Fithian.

A deep stream moves water through the landscape too quickly. This meadow is supposed to capture water from melting snow and slowly release it downstream into the Merced River.

"When you have that slow release, you reduce evaporation and you reduce the temperature of the water,"says Fithian."So you really increase the quality of the water and you increase the quantity."

Wet meadows also have native grasses with robust root structures. That serves another important purpose - sucking carbon dioxide out of the air and storing it in the soil. 

“We know that wetlands in general store lots of carbon," says Stephen Hart, an ecology professor at UC Merced. "So if we restore the meadows like this one back to a wetland state, we’re anticipated more carbon will be stored, because less CO2 will be admitted.”

But researchers need to first get a good idea how much greenhouse gas the meadow is emitting now.

Lauren Hubert with the Sierra Foothill Conservancy samples greenhouse gases coming off the meadow. Amy Quinton / Capital Public Radio

Researchers are placing chambers, which look like plastic, upside-down bowls, over patches of grass. They then stick a syringe through the chamber to grab a sample of air inside.

They’ll measure the emissions coming off the meadow now and compare it to the meadow once it’s been restored. Bridget Fithian says restoration requires earthmoving equipment, large tree removal, and the creation of earthen berms that allow water to spread out onto its historic floodplain.

“It’s actually a pretty radical alteration to the landscape," says Fithian. "But what we have right now is radical alteration to the landscape.”

Big Flat Meadow in Northern California before and after restoration. Plumas Corporation will be using the same "plug and pond" method used above to restore Bean Meadow.  Credit / Plumas Corporation

It’s not just Bean meadow that’s been altered. Stephen Hart with UC Merced says most mountain meadows in the Sierra are in sad shape. 

“Pretty much all of them are in a state of degradation, loss of ecological function," says Hart. "So if we had the funds to restore them all that would be quite a significant sink – if my hypothesis is correct – for greenhouse gases in the future."

Design features of the Bean Meadow Restoration project in Mariposa County. Reconstruction will begin next fall.  Credit / Sierra Foothill Conservancy

If Hart is right, the restored meadow will capture carbon dioxide, store and clean water, and provide for native habitat. State agencies are betting on it.

The Bean Meadow project was one of 12 wetland restoration projects to receive money from the state’s cap and trade program. Reconstruction of the meadow will begin next fall.