Riparian Projects:
Streams

ChicoryLane Streams

The Chicorylane Property includes three streams that flow into the property from the North and the East, merge, and flow out as a single stream to the SouthWest.

The largest, perennial which we call Brush Mountain Run, emerges from springs near the top of Brush Mountain, flows down a wooded cut in a shoulder of Brush Mountain and passes under Green Grove Road to wind through ChicoryLane’s marshy old fields; bypass its farm pond; to merge with a smaller, occasionally intermittent stream, we call Green Grove Run. A small unnamed steam  flows out of an adjoining pasture, through a Cattail Marsh, before quickly entering the larger Brush Mountain Run close to its entry point and above the merge with Green Grove Run.

Green Grove Run also originates up Brush Mountain, menders down the mountain past several fields, passes under Green Grove Road, hence its name, and then parallels Green Grove for several hundred yards, before entering ChicioryLane from the east. It then flows along the base of a substantial hill that includes a small remnant Hemlock forest and a much larger successional forest. Along the way, it passes in front of the ChcioryLane house and barn, and then a wet meadow, before joining Brush Moountain run. This intersection is marked by an enormous old Crack Willow treee and several generations of its offsprings.

The merged stream then gooseneck south  of  vernal pools in a restored wetland. It leaves ChicoryLane to the southwest and then flows once again south along Brush Mountain Road, crosses under Rt. 45, before joining Penns Creek beside Klein Rd.

Stream Biological Assessment

Part of ChicoryLanes’s long-term goal to enhance the Ecological Quality of the property includes the waters of the streams flowing through the property. During 2022, Suzy Yetter, Ecologist with Clearwater Conservancy, who holds ChicoryLane’s Conservation Easement, began a biological assessment and coarse inventory of the aquatic macroinvertebrate community of these streams. Her study is multi-faceted and ongoing, but results to date indicate that ChicoryLane steams provide good biological conditions that provides excellent instream habitat to support a very diverse group of aquatic macroinvertebrates. Indeed, with a Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI) score of 90.3 for sample values collected to date, ChicoryLane Waters in the Riparian North section currently appeart to be in excellent biological condition. For details, see Suzy Yetter’s report, Stream Biological Assessment For ChicoryLane Farm (Spring, 2022). These data and analyses will enable us to note any changes to water quality resulting from up-stream changes or other factors.

Project Areas

Our first set of Ecological Enhancement projects are situated along four separate sections of the two major streams - Brush Mountain and Green Grove Runs. Two ecologically distinct areas are identified along Brush Mountain Run - one emphasizes viburna and spicebush wheras the other is dominated by several types of willow. The lower segment Green Grove Run is dominated by its proximity to the house and barn, wheras th4e upper segment includes Alder and several variety of trees - Beech, Hemlock, and Hop-hornbean - not found else where on the property.

The ecological distinction of each of these areas provides the baasis for our approach of augmenting the existing natives pieces in each as well as providing guidance in decreasing invasive or less beneficial species as well as introducing new, compatible  ones, thereby increasing overall diversity of the area. At some 10-12 acres, this is enough acreage to have cological consequencies at the same time not being so large as to  be overwhelming.