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ANNUAL REPORT - 2011 <br />Due: December 31, 2011 <br />Permit DA 198811488 <br />Coal Creek Wetland Mitigation <br />Schmidt Construction Company <br />This is the sixth annual report after the 2006 amendment to the permit. The report contains <br />the results from the 2011 growing season, analysis of the vegetation for Exclosures 1 and 2, results <br />of the stream rehabilitation efforts on the south end (Section 25), and discussions of related issues. <br />Some of the information presented in 2006 (exclosure maps, plots of vegetation transects, etc.) are <br />not presented this year as it would be redundant in the file. <br />Introduction and Summary: At the end of the first year (2006 report) there was a diverse array of <br />populations of willows and cottonwoods. Herbaceous growth in the exclosures had increased as a <br />result of the removal of grazing, but it was still not dense growth except in very favorable locations <br />and then only in the three older exclosures (3, 4, and 5). But it was also found that in the first year, <br />woody plant growth showed more robust growth, larger leaves, and somewhat taller plants than at <br />the beginning of the year. In the youngest exclosure, number 1, woody plant density was very high <br />with many young plants and only a few plants that were more than first or second season plants. It <br />was expected that in Exclosure 1 there would be a dramatic decline in density in 2007. In Exclosure <br />2, the driest of the five exclosures, density was low, but in the more moist areas there was a fair <br />number of young plants. So, that, in brief, was the results of the first year. <br />By 2008, the patterns established previously continued, but there was considerable <br />stabilization in density in Exclosures 2 through 5. In Exclosure 1, density continued to exhibit <br />increases, mostly due to willow growth. To some extent, the density increase in the willows could be <br />due to increased stem density with little change in actual plant density. In fact, during the sampling <br />attempts to count the willows were abandoned in some areas because it became impossible to <br />distinguish between individual plants and new individual shoots of pre- existing plants. The strong <br />tendency of willow to produce root sprouts as well as layering makes it exceedingly difficult to <br />distinguish actual plants from adventitious growth except where plants are isolated from their <br />neighbors. This isolation is rarely the case in this exclosure, but is more common in the older growth <br />in the other exclosures. <br />In 2009 it became clear that continued sampling in Exclosures 3, 4, and 5 made little sense as <br />the goals seemed to have been reached and the vegetation development had reached a plateau with <br />considerable stability. As a result, sampling in these three exclosures was dropped from the <br />requirements, but photographic monitoring needed to continue. Thus, in this report, discussions of <br />the data are restricted to Exclosures 1 and 2 where the goals had not yet been achieved. The reason <br />the goals have not been reached at this point is due to the development time. It is clear that these two <br />2011 Annual Report Coal Creek Wetland Mitigation Permit DA 198811488 Page 1 <br />