« Member Update: April 2011 | Main | Happy Earth Day! »
Stewardship Tip – Spring Aeration
By Arshia | April 19, 2011
Your lawn is a buffer. It captures, stores, and breaks chemicals down. It keeps them from running off into the local watershed.
A sound conservation practice at home is to aerate your lawn. Aeration will help your lawn continue to act as a buffer.
As lawns age, soil compaction often results. Compaction reduces the pore space within the soil that would normally hold air. This results in poor nutrient uptake and reduced water infiltration. Poor water infiltration results in excessive runoff.
Aeration opens up your lawn and allows oxygen, nutrients, and water to get to the roots. It creates a healthier lawn with a deeper root system. Aeration will help to reduce the amount of water that runs off your lawn, it will also help to reduce the amount of pollutants that are carried from your lawn in runoff.
The best time to aerate your lawn is when your grass is actively growing. For cool season grasses such as bluegrass, fescue, and ryegrass, fall or spring is the ideal time to aerate. For warm season grasses such as buffalograss, zoysia, and bermudagrass, June, July, or August are ideal.
A core aerator, the type that removes plugs and deposits them on your lawn, will do the best job relieving compaction. Other types of aerators, such as spike aerators, will actually compound soil compaction by pressing the soil down.
Why it is important to the fish: The Ozark Hellbender resides in the North Fork of the White River. This giant salamander, unique to the Ozarks, is on the endangered species list. It is, according to the National Park Service, “extremely vulnerable to habitat disturbance and changes in water quality.”
The North Fork of the White, like many cold-water streams in the Ozarks, is fed by large springs which are easily polluted due to the karst topography. Karst topography is characterized by layers of soluble bedrock. Runoff enters the aquifer almost directly. There is little soil to buffer any pollutants. If the North Fork became too polluted due to unbuffered runoff, not only would an incredible fishery be lost, but the rare hellbender would be as well.
Ozark Hellbenders are canaries in a coal mine. They are extremely susceptible to pollution. They need cold, clear, pollution-free water to survive. If pollution kills off the Ozark Hellbenders, will the trout be next? And what after that?
We all live upstream. We may live upstream from a karst area, we may live upstream from a sand bottom river. No matter where we live, the runoff from our lawns may contain pollutants. We can reduce those pollutants by aerating our lawns.
This week’s sponsor-partner:Songs from The Tackle Box
Songs from the Tackle Box is a musical compilation inspired by fishing and the outdoor lifestyle. If you love great songs and fishing, then this collection is a must!
Would you like to get the Stewardship Tip e-mailed to you weekly?
Please visit our Stewardship Tips Sign Up page or use the form located at the top right portion of this page.
Topics: Stewardship Tips | Comments Off
Comments are closed.