The streamside forests of Kansas are some of the state’s greatest natural resources. Streamside forests play an important role statewide, as they act to protect water quality for more than 134,400 miles of streams, creeks, and rivers.
The Kansas Forest Service has worked with Kansas landowners to assist with streamside forestry since at least 1957, when three pilot watershed assistance programs were established, which grew to 29 watersheds with 64,500 acres by 1967!
Since then, our foresters have continued to work with many state and local partners, such as the Kansas Water Office and local WRAPS groups, to offer technical assistance and access to funding to ensure our streamside forests are healthy and the quality and quantity of the State’s vital surface water resources are sustained into the future.
Direct Seeding a Riparian Forest Buffer Into a Cover Crop
Streamside forests filter runoff and sediment from adjacent lands, slow damaging flood waters, recharge aquifers, serve as excellent wildlife habitat and support many game and nongame species of mammals, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. They serve as travel corridors linking rivers, wetlands, and larger blocks of forestlands. These forests are also aesthetically pleasing and provide many recreational opportunities such as hunting, fishing, bird watching, and wildlife photography. Well-managed riparian buffers also can provide economic returns from quality timber for commercial harvesting.
Another name for a streamside forest is a “riparian forest.” These riparian forests benefit from management and protection where they still persist, and re-establishment where the important ecosystem services they provide are now reduced. Re-establishment of these wooded corridors next to waterways, especially in coordination with adjacent agricultural land use, is sometimes referred to as a “riparian forest buffer.”
According to the National Agroforestry Center, “a riparian forest buffer is an area adjacent to a stream, lake, or wetland that contains a combination of trees, shrubs, and/or other perennial plants and is managed differently from the surrounding landscape, primarily to provide conservation benefits.”
While streambank erosion is a natural adjustment process of streams and rivers, this process can be accelerated by variables including inadequate woody vegetation near the stream channel.
Retaining and restoring woody vegetation along streams and rivers protects the banks and increases downstream water quality and quantity by limiting mass inflow of sediments and nutrients which otherwise cause issues -- especially in watersheds and reservoirs that support drinking water, irrigation, recreational uses, and aquatic habitat!
Riparian forest buffers maintain streambank stability, especially during floods. Aerial photos taken before and after the historic 1993 flood in Kansas showed riparian forest buffers along 37 miles of the Kansas River were responsible for the deposition of an average of 10 feet of soil while grasslands and croplands lost an average of 78 feet and 155 feet of sediment respectively.
