Creating an Educational Landscape at JMU
In the Fall of 2001 I took a walk from the Integrated Science and Technology building to
the Modular Building. The path consisted of a cement walkway with a ford over a dry,
intermittent stream at the bottom of the valley. The four year drought in the Shenandoah Valley
was in its third year, and to that date I had not seen any water in the stream during my two plus
years at James Madison University.
I was distracted on this walk by a squirrel dancing under a clump of bushes on my left as
I neared the stream. The squirrel was quite upset, chirping, squeaking and bouncing from one
edge of the shrubs to the other. This strange behavior made me look around, and eventually up,
for a cause. The culprit was a juvenile red-tailed hawk seated serenely on a horizontal branch of
a honey locust tree about 20 feet above the path. Normally a hawk of this type will take off
quickly when a person approaches within 100 yards, but not when lunch chatters 50 feet away.
Having no desire to rush, unusual for a faculty member in the middle of a semester, I sat in the
grass and watched the potential spectacle. The squirrel kept up its chattering and the hawk did
not blink or shift while my eyes shifted from one to the other, far enough away that neither
player noticed me in the least. Eventually a student came along seeing neither the squirrel nor
the hawk. Noticing the student looking curiously at me sitting in the grass, I decided to point out
the drama unfolding around her. Her only comment, “Why don’t you throw a rock at the hawk
and save the squirrel?”
Seeing no need to commence with a lecture on ecology, I let her go. The next two
students were noisy enough to distract all parties in the drama. When the hawk shifted its gaze,
the squirrel bolted from the bushes and quickly reached the tall grass and undergrowth of the
trees near the incinerator and I lost my chance to witness a red-tailed hawk attack. Why was the
squirrel there? I suspected it was for lunch as well. The honey locust produces sweet, edible
pods that make a nice snack. The hawk spotted the squirrel and flew down to investigate, but its
approach alerted the squirrel too soon and it found cover. Since that crisp fall day the bush has
disappeared, the woods have been beaten back with lawn and landscaping, and the path is no
longer a ford but a bridge. The honey locust remains but I doubt that I will ever see a hawk in
that tree again.
This incident, while minor, has come back to me many times over the last four years.
Here was a moment of education for me, the living ecology of the place asserted itself in the
midst of what was, and remains, a sterile landscape. This landscape has only continued to grow
more sterile, and therefore more ignorable through time. Every time I walk the path between
ISAT and UREC the question pops into my head: can’t we do something better than frequently
mowed lawns and gabions? Is it not possible to turn this part of the campus into an educational
landscape, a place where squirrels, hawks and students can interact? This is the focus of my
proposal below.
The Two-Pronged Problem
Twenty years ago the east side of the JMU campus was just a vision. The land was still
farmed, mostly as pasture, and the remainder woodland. The small stream located between
ISAT and UREC, which continuously flowed through the present arboretum, hardly amounted to
anything. As the campus grew, the surrounding business community changed as well. JMU
bought the land, built new facilities, expanded parking lots, and reworked the landscape,
including two significant ponds designed to control runoff from the new impervious surfaces.
Woods and pasture became buildings and pavement, not just on JMU land but throughout the
Arboretum watershed, resulting in a completely altered flow regime of the stream.
This past spring semester 2005 I worked with a number of students in a class I teach
called Sustainability: An Ecological Approach. Six of the students in the class chose to work
within the boundaries of this watershed, three of them helping define the present boundaries of
the watershed and the extent of its development. The other three examined alternatives to the
landscaping in the area bounded by the incinerator, the road to UREC, I-81, the solar panels, and
the two runoff control ponds. Much of the information below is based on their reports.
Chris McGough, David Karan, and Ruby Rathbun worked with David O’Neill, Director
of the Arboretum, to delineate the watershed that drains into the stream flowing into the
arboretum pond and under University Avenue. They found that the watershed consists of 501
acres, 140 of which are impervious surfaces, mostly pavement and buildings. The aerial photo
below shows the boundaries of the watershed in red, with the arboretums boundaries in yellow.
It should be noted that this photo was taken in 2002 and more construction, and more parking, is
added annually.
Watershed of the Arboretum
Arboretum Boundary
Watershed Boundary
Bv
rsity
Unive
nu
ve
e
Reservoir St
A
ff
Ne
ld
0
145
290
580
870
Meters
1,160
Chris McGough 2005
James Madison University
Figure 1: Watershed of the Arboretum. Note that the watershed from the I-81 culvert is larger
(than previously expected? Or larger than something?) and includes everything from University
Avenue, the campus buildings and most of the parking lots along I-81.
When rain falls on a natural system it is generally met at the surface by plants that break
the speed, absorbing the energy of raindrops. Without plants, soil surface is highly vulnerable to
erosion. When slowed, the rain not captured in pockets on the plant, follows plant surfaces down
to the soil where it is absorbed. Only in heavy rainfall events, such as hurricane remnants, will
water flow across the surface. Absorbed rainfall either is picked up by plants to be re-emitted to
the atmosphere through transpiration, or is discharged to surface flow through springs after a
time in ground storage. This process evens out stream flow through time by reducing flows
during high rainfall events, and keeping some discharge even in times of drought.
Impervious surfaces are prong one of our two-prong problem changing the nature of
water flow across a landscape. When rain falls on a sidewalk, road, or building, it quickly moves
downhill, following the lowest path across the ground. It reaches culverts and streams quickly
causing a pulse of high water to race through the system. This high energy pulse of floodwater
damages surrounding lands even in areas where vegetation is relatively intact as the photo from
the arboretum shows (figure 2.) When this pulse of water reaches areas without adequate natural
cover the results are even more dramatic. The purpose of catchment ponds near every new
construction site or parking lot is to reduce the size of this pulse. It does not always work as well
as required.
Figure 2: The undercut bank to the left and poor health is evident in the stream running through the
Arboretum. At the time of this photo, a huge amount of white mold-like bacteria was growing on the
stream bottom. You are not seeing any reflections, its all mold. (McGough, et al. 2005)
In October 2002 the rains returned to the Shenandoah Valley after a four-year period of
significant drought. To that point no one on the JMU campus imagined that the Arboretum
stream could be a concern. Hurricane Isabel in September 2003 ended all remaining doubt. The
fords with small culverts underneath proved inadequate and were undercut by the volume and
velocity of the water. After replacing the failed stormwater devices with larger culverts,
Facilities Management witnessed another failure. These devices were undercut and collapsed
with heavy rains in the coming year. Finally the heavy fall rains of 2004 created an erosion gully
that prompted drastic measures: the dredging and placement of in stream gabions. These wire
mesh structures, filled with rock called riprap, are supposed to stop further erosion and stream
bed degradation. This will not work either.
This leads to prong two, mowing the lawn right to the stream bank. Lawns in America
are a symbol of success. In fact, it is America’s largest crop, occupying more land, and using
more fertilizer, than our second leading crop, corn. Unlike corn, our lawns are perennial crops
and there is virtually no erosion except along the edges. However, much like corn monocultures,
lawns are highly simplified ecologically, and therefore require significant energy input to
maintain through time. Lawns are expensive though easy to manage with high energy equipment
like mowers and fertilizer spreaders.
These problems raise serious energy concerns along with concerns over fertilizer
leaching into the Shenandoah River watershed, however, they are not the focus of my concern.
It is mowing the edges that prompts my attention. Go for a walk along Newman Lake and note
the shoreline. The lawn is mowed to a rather abrupt edge that drops straight to the water in a
bare soil cliff up to two feet high. This is not the long term shore line. Originally the lawn
extended in a smooth slope to the water line. Most grasses do not like to have their roots
permanently wet. At the waterline their roots stop growing. During wind events lake waters roil
or produce small wind chop, slowly eroding the rootless soil under the grasses. Through time the
erosion eats under the banks and the sod collapses in a phenomenon called mass wasting. As this
process continues it can eat the bank back a considerable distance, as is clearly seen on the lake
front side of Sonner Hall.
JMU mows the lawn along the Arboretum Stream as well the lawn right up to the
gabions. When originally filled in the Spring of 2005 these gabions had no soil in them, there
was plenty of space between the rocks. Erosion from the sides of the stream, and soil material
carried downstream from the upper watershed, is slowly filling these gaps, which I imagine will
be completely plugged by next spring. Vegetation will then start growing in the gabions and
water, which previously flowed through the spaces between the rocks, will again flow on the
surface even in low flow periods. High flow will find the water level expanding beyond the
present boundary of the gabions and into the shallow-rooted, continuously-mowed lawn. This
will be washed out in places, requiring, for lack of further creativity, the placement of more rock.
Lawns and gabions, while simple, require continuous maintenance. They do not solve
the problem with the landscape along the arboretum stream and have no educational value. I
propose a completely different approach that centers on the native ecology of the land.
Management of this area should be viewed holistically and can be divided into four parts that I
will deal with in turn: a riparian buffer along the entire stream; a wetland between UREC and I81; a prairie above the riparian buffer going up to the base of the solar panels; and borders of
native trees. Many of these ideas were developed by three students who worked on this area for
their class project, Robert Feerst, Anand Kao, and Clara Kim.
A Riparian Buffer
Natural streams, untouched by humans, have some characteristics quite distinct from our
present, gabion lined drainage ditch. Natural streams never flow in straight lines, they meander
in irregular, sine-wave generated curves, dissipating energy as they flow (Leopold 1994).
Natural streams are messy as well. They may have areas of relatively open flow, but they are
commonly clogged with logs, branches and rock, all of which provide habitat for a wide variety
of macroinvertebrates. In addition, natural streams are heavily shaded by trees and shrubs,
keeping water temperatures down, and adding food energy to the aqueous ecosystem through
leaf deposition. Unless there is something wrong with the habitat upstream, these natural
streams show no sign of erosion, and recover quickly after all but the most extreme rainfall
events.
The Arboretum stream between the incinerator and the pipe under I-81 is far from
natural, and the continuous need for maintenance arises because the stream fights to revert to a
natural state. We can make space for the stream to do this without many inputs and without
removing the gabions (which will eventually disappear on their own.) The solution is to create a
buffer zone about 20 to 30 feet wide, depending on the contour, for the stream to construct its
own bed. The first and most important thing to do is stop mowing. If we were patient enough
that is all we would need to do, but this would mean accepting short-term problems.
A better solution is to mark off the buffer zone, and then plant selected riparian species in
the zone that can tolerate both water logging and drought, since both are characteristics of
intermittent streams. Some of these species include willows, red-osier dogwood, yellow-flag
iris, rushes, and the occasional sycamore, cottonwood, black walnut and the already present
honey locust. These species bind soil, improve habitat for birds and other wildlife, filter and
slow water and provide shade. They will also block views of the water unless you are very close,
but that is a small price to pay for the overall goal.
The Wetland
According to the Department of Interior, the United States has drained, filled in or paved
over at least 50% of the wetlands that existed in the country when first settled by Europeans.
Many of these wetlands were created by the single most ecologically important species for clean
water on the North American continent, the beaver. The beaver performed for nature what we
are attempting to do with our sterile holding ponds, slowing, spreading and filtering water,
keeping it cycling on the landscape for longer periods.
I am not advocating for an on-campus beaver colony at this point. They are, after all,
rather fond of decorative trees and shrubs as construction material and food. However, the
product of their creation is exactly what we need. After a heavy rain it is possible to see a
potential wetland emerge in the area between UREC and Interstate 81. Water backs up before it
can enter the culvert under the highway, creating standing pools along the highway fence. The
only vegetation in that area at the moment is grass. Expanding this potential wetland to an actual
wetland would not be difficult or costly. The solution would include a small ridge about three
feet high, with an armored spillway on one end leading to the culvert. This would increase the
volume of back-up water and lend itself to wetland species like cattails, bulrush, iris, and a wide
variety of other species.
A wetland like this absorbs and filters a great deal of water. This will reduce stress on
downstream areas, though not enough by itself to solve flooding problems. The major benefit
will be to wildlife. Ducks, red-wing blackbirds, warblers, herons, and many more species take
advantage of this type of habitat and its borders. Yes, insect populations will increase, but not to
the annoyance of humans. Mosquitoes and gnats, the two most annoying species, are actually far
less abundant in a natural wetland than they are in poorly managed peri-urban landscapes with
standing water. Frogs, bats, swallows, dragonflies and other natural predators keep them under
control. The wetland and surrounding could become a natural area where students could do
long-term observational studies without needing a transport budget or a grant.
It is possible to have three or even four wetland area of variable size along the stream
corridor between UREC and the municipal incinerator. Each could have its lower end secured
with an earthen bund, covered with native plants and an armored spill way for high water events.
There are times when these wetlands will be relatively dry, so the deeper water species like
cattails may be appropriate only in the lowest of the wetlands, but all could function for water
retention, filtration and absorption, promoting wildlife and adding aesthetic value to the
landscape.
The Prairie
When the Shenandoah Valley was first visited by European explorers it was a mixed
landscape of forest and open grassland or prairie. Native Americans used fire to maintain the
landscape, which supported populations of buffalo, elk, deer and their predators. The explorers
described grasses growing so tall they could tie the grass over the top of their saddles. I always
thought this was a stretch until I planted a prairie in my yard and let it grow. Today the big
bluestem and switchgrass is tall enough for me to tie a knot above my head. It is not all grass.
Prairies are diverse, deeply rooted ecosystems that are very productive. Only a dense
forest can rival a prairie’s ability to absorb water, and nothing rivals a prairies ability to build a
rich, deep brown soil. They are also an ecologist’s dream. Wild bergamot attracts
hummingbirds and moths like nothing I have ever seen. Black-eyed Susan’s, tall daisies, asters,
knapweed, and my personal favorite, Virginia spiderwort, add seasonal color. Birds flock
around, build nests and forage year round in the vegetation. It is a rich addition to my
landscaping and above all it requires almost no maintenance. My only task is to mow it down in
the early spring, usually in early march. If needed, it can be burned, but this is not required. I
spend only four hours of labor a year for a 120 by 20 foot prairie, all by hand, to produce an
ecological gem.
There is no reason that JMU could not have a prairie in much of the area above the
riparian zone and wetland of the Arboretum stream. This area could extend from the remnant
woods below the solar panels across the slope to the steeper downhill side of the retention ponds.
Mowing could happen along the existing walkways to keep the prairie vegetation from leaning
into the paths and perhaps between the prairie and the riparian buffer zone. This would facilitate
exploration by students who wish to study or simply observe the area. There is no reason to keep
the area in and around the retention ponds mowed so closely either. The prairie vegetation could
expand into this area through time if permitted to do so.
Borders of Native Trees
The basic native vegetation of the Shenandoah Valley region is the oak-hickory
woodland. It dominates every landscape not directly managed by humans, providing food for
wildlife and protection for the land. These tree species should be featured in the landscape of
JMU even around the parking lots. In the area of this paper’s concern native trees are a major
resource at the boundary, and could, if designed properly, provide relief from the campus’s two
main eyesores; I-81 and the municipal incinerator.
At present there is a single row of trees along the I-81 fence from UREC up the hill
toward the Carrier Drive bridge over I-81, and sparse planting on the other side of Carrier Drive.
This planting should be denser, wider, and with a better variety of species. Near UREC the
species need to be water tolerant such as sycamore, poplar, willow, honey locust, and black
walnut. As you move up the hill you presently see a single row of pines. These can remain, but
behind them should be a collection of oak, hickory and other dry soil species perhaps 60 to 100
feet wide, tapering narrower as you approach the solar panels. Planting can continue along the I81 fence past the parking lots all the way to the track. These trees would provide a barrier to
traffic noise and cool the landscape in the summer.
The municipal incinerator is even harder to hide and the only way it can be done is with a
planted forest buffer. Again the best species are the oak-hickory forest species, with water
tolerant types planted near the stream, and dry soil types along the slope above and around the
two retention ponds. At present landscaping appears aimed at an open grassed woodland, but
this requires constant maintenance and provides an insufficient noise and visual barrier.
Concluding comments
Woodlands in these areas will encourage a diversity of species, but the real benefit will
be found at the borders between woodland and prairie and woodland and wetland zones. Here
species will multiply greatly and the visual interest maximized. All the changes recommended
will take many years to mature, giving students, faculty and others maximal opportunity for
study, research, and enjoyment. Though expenses will be incurred to establish such a design,
there will be a payoff in long term maintenance cost reductions and increased use.
The present management system of the area between UREC and the rest of the East
Campus academic facilities is expensive, environmentally weak, and educationally useless. It
does not make sense to continue in this direction. We need to take a hint from the natural world
and redesign it in a sensitive and thoughtful way. My ideas developed here, with student input,
are a starting point to open discussion. Hopefully they will contribute to development of a
sensible, ecologically strong and educationally meaningful landscape.
Wayne S. Teel
Associate Professor, ISAT
November 2006