An Enhanced Riparian Wetland EarthCache

The posted coordinates take you to the Brandon Riverbank in Brandon, Manitoba. This is a city park and you are invited to walk the paths around the east pond and along the river to the west of the Discovery Centre building. It is suggested that you do this EarthCache between mid-April and late October while the water is not frozen and there is little or no snow to obscure the view. Please practice cache in trash out. There are trash containers near the building and in the picnic area to the north of the parking lot. Taking pictures of your visit and posting them with your log serves to record a memorable caching experience for you while giving other geocachers a view of a place they might like to visit.

To claim a find for this EarthCache please walk around the area behind the Riverbank Discovery Centre building and determine answers to the following questions. Do not include your answers in your online log but do send them to the cache owners through their public profile.

1. What evidence do you see in the landscaping of efforts to reduce erosion?

2. What evidence do you see of efforts to support diversity of plants and animals inhabiting the area?

3. Does any evidence of the devastating floods of 2011 and/or 2014 remain in the area? Explain.

What you will see here is a prairie riparian wetland. Before there was a city here, this area was low-lying and frequently flooded by the Assiniboine River. As the city grew, the area was used in winter as a place to dump truckloads of snow cleared from the streets. In recent years there has been a cooperative effort to enhance the wetland.

A riparian area is the zone along the sides of a river. It serves as a transition from dry ground to water body. As such, it is sometimes wet and sometimes dry. If it is low-lying, it is likely wet much of the time. That was the case for the area before you.

As water drains off the land through a healthy riparian area it is filtered of sediment, nutrients and micro-organisms. The riverbanks can be built up by the sediment and nutrients. As water trickles through the soil of a riparian zone it recharges the groundwater. A healthy riparian zone will have vigorous growth of trees, shrubs and grasses and will show very limited erosion. It will be host to diverse populations of both plants and animals.

A wetland is, quite literally, land that is wet much of the time. It is also described as a body of water that dries up sometimes. It functions as a seasonal container for runoff from melting snow and spring rain. Because wetlands provide this holding place for water, they slow the flow to the sea and tend to decrease erosion. They allow the water to drop the sediment it carries when it moves. The plants that grow in a wetland absorb nutrients and pollutants carried in the water. Cleaner water trickles down to the groundwater.

As a riparian zone, this riverbank is subject to events on the river. The Assiniboine River gathers water from a vast area comprising parts of Saskatchewan, North Dakota and Manitoba. Flooding is a common occurrence along the Assiniboine. Heavy snowfall and a quick spring thaw in 2011 caused a record setting flood level. This was followed by an unusually slow retreat of the water and levels remained at flood stage through July. The extended flooding killed many trees along the riverbanks and the extreme quantity of water washed away some of the pathways.

Some human activity is harmful to a riparian wetland. When trees and brush are cleared from riverbanks, runoff will carry more soil into the river, erosion is more destructive. Depositing truckloads of snow too close to the river over winter increases the amount of runoff in the spring and risks further damage to the river and its banks.

The human interventions over recent years in the park have helped this riparian wetland function in a more healthy manner while making it a very pleasant place to visit. Land bridges were created forming the two ponds and supporting pathways through the area. Pathways limit pedestrian and bicycle traffic so that larger areas of natural habitat are preserved. The ponds provide still water for enhanced waterfowl habitat. Restoration of native grasses and planting of shrubs and trees in the park provide additional habitat and serve to stabilize the soil against erosion.

I am a proud