Meeting transcript
Inlands Wetlands Meeting
August 1, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay, folks, it is now 07:00 and time to call to order this regular meeting of the Andover Indian Wetlands and Water Courses Commission on Monday, August 1 at 7PM. I see by the smiling faces on the Zoom call that we have Commissioners Larson and Munro present, as well as myself, Chairman Elliott. Will, don't have anybody else to seat, so we'll move on to changes in order to the agenda. I failed to ask our agent to include a revisit to the Commission's annual report for this meeting, and so I propose to add that to item 8C. Without objection. Second it. Okay, we'll vote on it then. I'll second it. Commissioner Larson. Aye. Commissioner Munro. Aye. And I'll vote aye. So the motion carries 300 to add that to the agenda. Any other changes or proposed changes or additions to the agenda? Okay, if not, then we'll move on to Item four, approval of the minutes from 07/12/2022. Give me a second here while I pull them up to my screen, but I hope everybody's had a chance to renew or to review them. And if you have any corrections or changes to add at this time, please make them known. I have none.
Okay, Mr. Monroe. None. Yeah, then I'll move to approve the minutes of July 12, as presented. I'll second. Okay, moved and seconded. Commissioner Larson. Aye. Commissioner Monroe. Aye.
And I also vote aye. So the motion carries 300. Do we have any public comment? We don't have any applications on the agenda, so I'm not surprised that there would be none. And under new business, as you've noted, we don't have any pending applications to consider tonight, which means we can have a nice short meeting. Okay. Agent Wagner, do you have anything to report enforcement or actions that you've been able to take on your own recognizance?
No, no enforcement, no. No permit approvals for this month. I got, a call from 25 Slider Mill Road that they're starting. That was the one that you guys approved sometime last year, I think. Might have been the year before, actually. It was Yeah. They were waiting for Staddlebrook to dry up again. So they're they're gonna be starting that within the next week or so. So I went over there and took a look. And yeah, it's it's pretty dry. So it seemed like a good time to do that. And then I got two notices from that company. Forgot what their name was, the one that was treating the Andover Lake for weeds. I think you got them too, Chairman Elliott. I'm aware of the fact that they're doing the work. Yeah, they sent the notice they treated it on July 20. And on, well, tomorrow they're treating it. So,
that's all I got.
Okay, good. Then we can move on to other business on Item 8A.
Chairman Elliott, I did have one question for Agent Wagner before we went on. Go right ahead. That was in the last minutes that we just approved. On 196 Lake Road, it said you were investigating as to whether or not they needed a nutrient allocation worksheet. How did that come out? Oh yeah, that's
getting worked on actually. Jim's on the case and they're I think they're working on it today actually. Okay. So we'll see see if it changes. I don't think it's gonna change much for the the approval I did, but they're working on it now. So I'll fill you in next month. I'll try and fill you in. Hopefully that'll all be completed. Thank you. Okay,
anything else? Nope. Okay, in that case, we will move on to 8A, vernal pool survey. And I see Hank Gruner is on the call. Hank, do you need the screen or anything like that? Yes, if I could share screen, that would be fantastic. Well, I think Mr. Wagner can do that for you since he's running the meeting. I think I made it so you could share.
I don't know if you could check. Yep. Let me do that. Hold on. Yep. In the process of sharing. Alright.
Let me see if I can get this into actual Woah. PowerPoint. There we go. Alright. There we go. Everybody sees that? Yeah. Yep. Great. I like Good, beautiful. Well, I'd like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, providing the time on the agenda tonight to go through the results of our joint Conservation Commission and Inland Wetlands Commission spring vernal pool survey. And so what I thought I'd do is give you a you know the summary results of what we've you know what we actually found. To ground folks a year ago we worked in partnership with the University of Connecticut to map potential vernal pools town wide using aerial photographs and satellite imagery to you know identify where those potential pools might be. And if I recall, I think we identified 183 potential pools, based on certain signatures on those images. We then reached out to landowners for permission for those pools that were on private land to survey because the intent was to survey pools townwide as many as we could on both private and public land. That was done and completed, and now we're and then we the final phase was to conduct spring surveys, biological and habitat assessments at the pools where potential pools where we had access, with a goal of confirming if in fact they were vernal pools based on the biology there, and also to determine if they were vernal pools to collect some biological and habitat data that could be used both by the Inland Wetlands Commission in reviewing applications,
but also could be used by the Conservation Commission as it moves forward with a broader natural resource inventory mapping, you know, critical resources in the town in preparation for our 2025 plan of conservation and development. So that's kind of where we are. We had, we ended up with 18 participating landowners and 15 participating volunteers. As you recall, a goal of this was to train volunteers from the town to be able to conduct the biological surveys and to, you know, to help so that we could cover a fair number of areas. Was based on work that was done in seven towns back in the early 2000s in the in the Farmington River Valley, where there was an evaluation of the ability of adult volunteers to collect vertical specific data. So we followed very similar to the methodology and the approach to that to that project. We ended up serving 124 potential vernal pools, and again those at this stage they were still potential pools. Because to confirm a vernal pool, really have to do it based on the biota, and obviously you can't see that from analysis of aerial photographs and satellite images. So we had 124 potential pools that we had access to out of I think a hunt, you know there was a 183 or so that we actually initially mapped. That included 51 mapped pools and 26 new pools that we identified during the survey. So, did identify quite a number of new pools that we did not find when we did the GIS analysis, the satellite imagery. And we also had six additional potential pools that in the process of going through the aerial images, we identified six that we had missed previously on the aerial images, which we were able to go out and conduct
some surveys. So, long and short of it is we confirmed 77 pools based on the biology and 47 that were not vernal pools. The primary reason for a pool not being a pool was mostly, I would say the majority of them, probably greater than 90%, where they were too shallow. They were depressions usually associated with other wetlands or along a water course that did not hold water long enough to support the biological activity necessary for fertile pool obligate species. We did have a couple of false positives with conifer trees that we thought were pools, turned out to be a hemlock tree, and a couple that were shadows. One was a ledge shadow that showed up that looked like a pool on an image, and another was a tree shadow. And then we had a few that were turned out to be ponds. The opposite of not holding water long enough, they hold water permanently, so they don't support the typical biological community associated with fertile pools, which have a temporary hydrology to them. Then of course there were, and this was sort of anticipated, especially we were somewhat conservative when we were identifying potential pools, wanting to, you know, not miss some. We knew that there were areas that would be too shallow, and we knew that there were areas that would probably be ponds, but we wanted to hit them anyway. There were 92 pools that we initially mapped that we did not have access to, so we're not able to survey. There were a couple that we did have access to, but actually just couldn't get to because of some flood conditions or some extremely thick vegetation or a combination thereof.
So by and large, a 124 potential pools were surveyed, 77 were confirmed this fertile pools and 47 not. The surveys really were broken at the primary focus of the spring survey was to look at the biological value of the pool, And this is based on the work by Calhoun and Clemens in 2005, where they put together a method that's fairly widely used in the Northeast and here in Connecticut. It's called the best development practices for conserving vernal pools. It was targeted at collecting some basic habitat data and biological data to inform municipal commissions to more effectively conserve pools. So that's the methodology that we were following. There were some slight deviations that we made additions, and I'll explain those as I go through and why. But pretty much we're following the core principles set forth in their biological surveys and habitat surveys. And the focus of the biological surveys in their in that plan is to look at the for the presence of any
state listed species that might occur in the pools, or what are called vertical indicator or obligate species. And those are a series of amphibians and one shrimp freshwater shrimp called the fairy shrimp that require vertical pools, so they're determined to be obligate species. So we're looking for the presence of them, and then we're trying to get a sense of their abundance, and that's where the egg mass counts come in. In this case, particular other, at least 25 egg masses, although we tended to try to count as many egg masses as we could to get a better idea So, the spring surveys focused on those biological surveys. The first survey, we have to time those surveys based on the breeding activity for the amphibians as they move forward in the spring. Luckily, this spring followed an almost ideal trajectory where the breeding season started on target and did not shut down with inclement weather and continued in a very typical fashion, which actually is not so typical or in in New England. We were lucky in the fact that we could time the survey very effectively and we we hit it just as they were. The species were starting to breed. So the first survey that we worked with volunteers, their focus was to was a March survey. They had to complete the first survey of the vernal pool in March with a focus on identifying where their wood frog egg masses in the pools. And trying to get a count of those egg masses. Second survey whispered targeted for April because spotted salamanders tend to breed a little bit later and have a more protracted breeding season. So the second survey focused on
spotted salamander egg masses. Are they present and trying to get an abundance count of those? In addition, the volunteers did not do this, but I did this. I visited all the pools and I did a dip net survey both during March and April to look for the presence of marbled salamander larvae. And the reason we did not have the volunteers do that is that's more difficult technique to do. It's harder for identification, And also, there's a potential to spreading disease if you're running a lot of dip nets through a multitude of vertical pools. So I was able to do that by using multiple dip nets and doing a disinfecting protocol between surveys so it controlled the number of people who were doing that. So I did that in both March and April surveys. All surveys, both the volunteers and myself, we would look for the presence of state listed species. You know, did we encounter certain turtles or snakes or certain species that we would note their occurrence because that obviously is important to know. And then I added based on some recent literature and recent studies that have been coming at, I was curious on how widely distributed another species of salamander
the four toed salamander was, although it's not. An obligate vertical species, it does breed in certain vertical pools, where there's sphagnum swamp growing and we're look based on the research that we're seeing, that's a species that we may need to focus on in the future because of changing environmental conditions associated with our wetlands. So I thought it was a good opportunity to collect information on the presence of that species that are in some of these systems as well. So here is a here's sort of what we found. This this graph shows you by the different species, the percentage of vertical pools that they occurred in. With the wood frog they were widely distributed they occurred in 96% of the vertical pools that we confirmed Spotted salamanders a little less widely distributed in 66% of the vertical pools. That's not necessarily surprising. Wood frogs have a very short breeding season, so they're able to use pools that dry up earlier, so they can be you tend to find them in a broader range of vertical pool hydrologists than you do spotted salamanders, which have require the pool to hold water for a longer period of time. Marbled salamanders and fairy shrimp were very limited in distribution.
The marbled salamander only in 5% and the fairy shrimp in 4%. I believe, certainly with the marbled salamander, that may be an under representation. The previous year we had a very wet fall and the breeding conditions were odd for marbled salamanders. They generally breed when the pool dries up in the fall in the in the dry pool bottom. If you recall from last summer into the fall, was very wet and our pools were pretty much topped out in the fall and we're not sure how marbled salamanders reacted to that. I did note there were a couple of pools where previously I have identified marbled salamanders breeding where we did not find larva. So I don't know whether the abundance was just low and we were missing them or whether they skipped the breeding season. That species can do that. I've documented that in Andover at several sites where they'll be absent for up to three years in certain pools.
So they may be more widely distributed than what this data shows. Fairy shrimp are a crapshoot. We don't really know a lot about them. There's been not been a lot of work on them. I'm a bit surprised that they weren't found in a bit more, but that's consistent with the work that I've done throughout the state and then in and also here in Andover on their occurrence. State listed species we found were spotted turtle, wood turtle, and ribbon snake, and that we found those in about 10% of the pools that we serve. As far as relative abundance, you'll see that it varies by the species again. The red bars are the spotted salamanders and the blue bars are the wood frogs. And this is the number below the less than 25, 25 to 49, 50 to 99, and greater than 100 are the number of egg masses. So for example, 57% of the pools that we surveyed with spotted salamanders, the egg masses were less than 25 total egg masses versus 38% of the the pools that wood frogs occurred in. They tended to have larger egg mass counts. So you see that that was very variable
and varied widely. As far as the range, it's extremely variable. For the wood frog, found as few as two egg masses in a pool and as many as seven zero one, with an average of 110, although a median is probably a better representation because the data is pretty, pretty widely skewed, so median's probably a better representation of that number. Spotted salamanders as few as one egg mass in a pool to as many as 530. This, again, is not surprising. The numbers of the twos and the ones are likely colonizing attempts. These are species that will attempt to colonize new sites, so you will have adults that will try to breed and reproduce in small numbers in pools, they're rarely successful, although sometimes these pools can establish as populations.
So this isn't necessarily surprising the range in numbers that we that we encountered here. Hank, did it surprise you that on those wood frogs, had a lot over 100 and a lot 125,
but not so much in the middle? No, not really. You'll see some of the reasons, I think, why that shakes out a bit as we go through it. This is the and I apologize. I know these are smaller maps. The if you look on the left, this is the distribution and abundance of wood frogs, and the map on the right with the the green dots is the spotted salamander distribution and abundance. And the dots are scaled based on those those egg mass parameters. So in other words, the larger dots those bigger blue dots or green dots you see are the ones that are generally over 100. And if you do notice if you're familiar with the town, you see Route 6 cutting through the upper corner there and you can see Andover Lake and Bishop Swamp. If you're familiar with the town, notice that those large dots tend to be concentrated up in the Nathan Hale State Forest area and
down around the Bishop Swamp area and the large tract of land that includes town land and the Ladano parcel north of Boston Hill Road, where there's lots of forest land still heading into Bolton, and then some areas along the Hop River. And if you look at the Hop River, especially in that central area of the Hop River, there's some very large tracts of forested land that abut the river. You see a similar pattern with the spotted salamanders and what that this is sort of what we see from a conservation standpoint point. When you have large intact areas of forest, you will have larger both you know abundance and distribution of those species. So that's not surprising at all that that that's where they tend to occur in those larger intact forest areas. But keep in mind, as you'll see, Andover is still a very rural town. We still have a lot of fairly large
intact forest systems, so you'll see that play out in a little bit as well. The marbled salamander and the fairy shrimp, as I said, are a little more confounding. The marbled salamander, I don't know why. They all seem to be concentrated North Of Route 6. That's where the populations were again in the along the Hop River Corridor and then in the Bishop Swamp or the Nathan Hale site. Why we don't have records down in the Bishop Swamp area? I don't know, but I've been surveying Andover for close to forty years now. You know, out of work that I do statewide, but since I live in Andover, I put a lot of time in here, and that that coincides with my, you know, with data that I have for for the town. Why they're not as widely distributed or whether we're just missing them, I don't know, but you know, that seems to be playing out. I do think they're probably more widespread than than those dots indicate
because they, you know, they can skip years and they're a little harder to effectively survey for because they're harder to detect and require a little bit more of a survey effort. As I mentioned with the fairy shrimp, a little surprised that the northern one along Nathan Hale, all of the records I previously had were associated with the Hop River system. But again, we don't know a lot about fairy shrimp and their distribution, and they're a hard one to really again hard to detect, And we don't really know a lot, it's hard to make make a heck of a lot of sense out of out of the data that we have here. State listed species distribution We identified three state species. The yellow dots are the spotted turtle, which was the more widely distributed. The green dots are the wood turtle, much confined to the Hop River system, and that would be true. Hop River and its tributaries. That's primarily where they occur in the town, and the blue open circle one is the ribbon snake. Both the spotted turtle and ribbon snake occur much more widely in town than this data indicates. I know that from wetland surveys in general. They use a variety of wetland habitats. They're not obligate the vernal pools.
And also remember these are state listed species, so detection of them is, you know, very dependent on luck when you're going out just one or two times, Unless you're specifically surveying for these species with multiple effort, they're harder to detect. So these were incidental occurrences that were picked up by myself and volunteers, but they give us some additional information about those vernal pools. But from a conservation planning standpoint, with both the spotted turtle and the ribbon snake, a broader range of our vernal pools will support them for sure, and their species that use a larger landscape. So they're using vernal pools selectively during the season, as well as other habitats. The wood turtle is is widely distributed within the Hop River System and several of its larger tributaries but doesn't occur as much as you get up into the upland area so its primary area, not surprisingly, is associated with the Hop River System. I mentioned the four toed salamander before, and I was very curious about this one. We we detected it in about 25% of the pools there. This one I didn't ask the volunteers to do because detecting it is you really have to look through. You cover search under logs around the pools, or you look for the females that deposit their eggs in sphagnum tussocks. These are moss that grows on these tussocks of sedge, and you part the sphagnum and you can find them with their eggs. Actually, George, your chairman,
was was on one of the surveys where we found found a female in the in a vernal pool over with the by the Bishop Swamp Wildlife Management Area, where with a female with some eggs. Really cool. Yeah, it's pretty neat. They originally back in the 70s when folks started to first look at this, were considered a rare and endangered species in Connecticut. But what we found out when we first started surveying for them fairly heavily heavily, they're actually more widely distributed statewide, and I find them fairly widely distributed in swamps in Connecticut and vernal pools in in in Andover as well. But the reason I I I wanted to put attention on this one is there's been some recent modeling based on climate change scenarios and their predictions are a little startling. They're looking at a potential 79% decline in this species based on changes to the wetland systems that they use under those climate change scenarios, and Connecticut falls within that decline area. So, I thought it wise to start to get a little bit more baseline data on them while we had the opportunity because it may be a species if those scenarios start to play out that we really need to pay a bit of attention to. I don't find any evidence of decline in them in any of the work that I've been doing statewide over the past years. And we just mapped this species for a for a publication we did with the state, and it was still very, very widespread with the exception of high elevations,
but always wise to get the data. So we did collect information on the species. So that's the biological surveys, but there were a second set of surveys that were required to put additional information into the data into the mix to be able to work on the conservation of the pools, but I did not ask the volunteers to do this because this is a bit trickier. This is looking at the critical terrestrial habitat that surrounds the vertical pools because the vertical pools don't function on their own. They're the breeding habitat for species that are using surrounding terrestrial, primarily forested habitat around them. So I followed again the same protocols in Calhoun and Clemens 2005, where we look at the critical terrestrial habitat zones. But in addition, I took the opportunity as I was visiting all the pools to collect information on the depth and estimated hydro period, and the hydro period is the estimate of how long the pool will potentially hold water. Does it dry up in early spring, say by June, or mid summer or late summer? That's important because it determines its effectiveness to support various biota. The size of the pool, the pool type, is it a man made pool like an old farm pond or a burrow pit? Is it a pool that's associated, you know, that's a classic rural pool isolated depression? Is it a floodplain pool? So different types of pools. The connections to water courses and wetlands, is it associated with any other wetland system or water course on the landscape? What's the vegetative structure? Is it a diverse vegetation? For example, does it have sphagnum moss which would support certain species like four toed salamanders?
Or is it less diverse? What is the bottom substrate? So I collected some of this information to be able to help categorize the pools in addition to looking at the terrestrial habitat zones. So this is what the terrestrial habitat zones look like. This is a pool I as an example, this is Wheeling Road up off of the this is part of the Nathan Hale State Forest. And if you look at the yellow dot that's identifying the exact location of a pool that we confirmed the little dark area around the yellow dot is the pool. And I can actually very accurately measure using GIS what I which I did on the pool sizes. But if you look at the light red ring around the the whole pool,
that's that 100 foot immediate conservation zone, and that's a zone that we know that's very critical. It needs to be forested and impacts in that zone can have a significant impact on the water quality, but also on the on the biota associated with that pool because they use that immediate 100 feet. And then the larger buff colored ring that goes out around that is the second zone that extends from 100 to seven fifty feet beyond the 100 foot zone beyond the red zone. And that zone we know is the zone, the primary area where 95 of the the salad, you know, the salamanders and frogs and the organisms that are using that pool for breeding are tending to utilize that habitat. So in this example, you see that there's really no impacts on the immediate pool or the 100 foot zone at all. It's completely protected, but in the 77, 150 foot zone there's moderate impacts. Mean, I would say minimal impacts you see Wheeling Rd cuts into it, and then you see 123 housing residents that you know that have carved out some area in the forest, but that's really a small minimal impact on that whole habitat corridor. What I also would point your attention to is note that this seven fifty foot zone intersects with several other hundred seven fifty foot zones of vertical pools just to the South of it, some of which are on Bishop Swampland or not Bishop Swamp Nathan Hale State Forest land and further south. We also have some that are on private land, so you see that there's overlapping
connectivity between these habitats and these populations will mix, And that's very important in planning, as you'll see later on. So this is how we mapped those terrestrial zones so that we can look at the condition of these habitats based on current development. And also now we layer in the biological data and we can get a sense of you know what's in that pool and how abundant it is, what's in the pools near it, so on and so forth. So when we do that, what we do with through the protocol of Callum and Clemens, ask a series of questions. There was biological data and that habitat data and depending on how many we answer. We come up with a tier ranking We have a pool either as Tier one through three Tier one pools are high value. In other words, they tend to have a very intact. Habitat, in other words, very minimal development within their either either zone, terrestrial zone. They have presence sometimes of of of state listed species. They certainly have presence of obligate vertical species using more than one species and or an abundance of those species. Tier two are kind of intermediate. They could have a small number of abundance or a single species breeding in them, or they could have some impacts to the terrestrial habitat zones or both. They're kind of intermediate and then Tier three pools are ones that either have some significant development. There's impacts associated with them, or there could really be no impacts or development. It could be that they're very ephemeral and have very low abundance of species
or a single species in it. So the ranking goes from a Tier one through a Tier three. So when we apply that to the pools that we the 77 pools that we collected data on, you see that we come up with 74% of our pools are Tier one pools. Only 3% are Tier two. And 19% are Tier three pools. Three are unknown simply because we were not able to collect enough data because of the the characteristics of the pool to evaluate it. Couldn't get accurate egg mass counts, so we really don't know and we could have missed the species as well. It's not surprising in a in in a still rural town that we have a lot of Tier one pools. Now I also caution this is probably skewed data somewhat because remember, we were surveying both public and private pools, but our access to private parcels was much more limited than to public.
So pools that may already have had impacts on private lands, we didn't necessarily have access to. So this data is somewhat skewed because it includes a, you know, a high number of public pools and some that are going to tend to be more intact systems, and those intact systems also tend to have higher abundance and so forth. So a little bit of caution in interpreting the data. This is how it shakes out when you map it. The yellow dots are basically the Tier one pools, the Tier three pools are the purple dots, the green dots are the Tier two pools, and the red dots are the unknowns. So again, you see concentrations in the you know the forested areas of Tier one pools. It's not surprising you get a fair number of the purple Tier threes along the Hop River, because if you think about that from a physical standpoint, that's a floodplain zone. So you get many areas that are small depressions that'll hold water for a short period of time. So they function, they can, you know, have a couple of egg masses, but they dry up quick. So it's not unusual in floodplain habitats along those major rivers to get a fair number of tier three pools because of the floodplain characteristics that you don't have in the upland pools, say of
of, you know, the the the northern part of town or the southern part of the town. The ones more associated in the interior are more associated with impacts to those pools or isolations to those pools, those are tier threes. But remember, we can't lose sight of the fact that we can't just focus on the 77 pools that we're able to confirm, because there's still a body of pools that we were not able to gain access to. So when we map those, those are all the blue dots now. They there, while we don't have data on them, we do know that there's a potential occurrence of pools there, so we need to keep that as a data set for future use in our planning because they could they, you know, they may well support populations, and they may be important to from a connectivity standpoint to the pools that we have already identified. So there is still a very important data layer not to lose sight of. And when we put it all together, we map in the obligate state vernal pool species, the state listed species, the potential pools
of seven fifty habitat zones, which kind of show up kind of funky there, know that's the light buffer around the whole thing. You can start to see some of the values of these larger intact systems And remember, this is just the vernal pool data sets from the Conservation Commission standpoint. We're layering in this information with a much broader natural resource inventory that looks at other wetland habitats, other terrestrial habitats, like early succession habitat, which is important for biodiversity, other species data, soils data, a variety of other information, farmland data, important farmland soils. We're layering all of that in to be able to help identify core areas in the town where we need to be mindful as we continue to plan, both from a management standpoint, whether it's forestry applications or agriculture or recreational or potential future development, where we can plan accordingly to try to balance those needs with conservation of our biodiversity, including the vernal pool species. I'll also note here while I don't have the the outlines of our three. Open space corridors that have been identified in in in town. They are the wet the Western Corridor which falls pretty much down from the Bishop Swamp area and goes up through the north. This aligns very strongly with that corridor.
The Hop River corridor, which obviously follows the Hop River and the Eastern Corridor, which basically all that area that you see with the big dots is all part of that Nathan Hale Forest, all part of our Eastern Quarter. So these data sets align very strongly to those open space corridors, which were identified by the way in the previous plan of conservation development 2015. A couple of other things just to mention that come out of this that are important for consideration. Notice I circled that 64% of the pools that we identified were connected to other wetland or water courses. One of the things that became very evident as we were going through the pools is very often they were situated in a forested area along a seepage corridor that spanned throughout a forested area. Oftentimes you would literally could follow that seepage corridor and you would hit the depressions, so they're very much connected to other wetland systems in the in the in that we have within our in our forest as well as those water core systems. That's important when we think about it for planning because you know that that from a corridor standpoint that becomes very, very important to consider for ecological connectivity, but also for potential impacts up and downstream within those corridor systems.
The other thing I want to note is while many of our pools were forested pools, there were some that were man made because believe it or not, made pool, you know, old farm ponds and places like that. In fact, there was one area in over by the Bishop Swamp area on the backside where it was some old forest roads where the the road was cut in so deep where there was a where there were very abundant egg masses in the in the in the tire ruts. Were holding water for an enormously long period of time and actually functioning as had higher numbers of egg masses than the natural pool that was within 100 feet of it. So it goes to show you that you know these animals can adapt to some of those type of systems. Some man made pools can function very highly. What I want you to notice is the ones that I circled the 56% the open emergent and open shrub pools. When I mean open what I mean is open canopy they're non forested so in it those types of pools, because they have a lot more sunlight, they have a lot more vegetation productivity, algae, grasses, and sedges, and you'll often get very different array of species. Some will be similar to the forested pools,
but you'll get species that will utilize them that that will not utilize the forested pools. So from a broader spectrum of biodiversity, they can be very important. The fact that they're underrepresented makes the mix also makes them very valuable, so they they require some important consideration when we when we look at projects and we look at our conservation planning. If we have an open canopy pool associated with a floodplain or a forested area that may be functioning from a biodiversity standpoint at a very important level. So connected pools, high connection to wetlands and watercourses, and low occurrence of open canopy pools, which are important in conservation planning. The other thing I wanted to point to, which is also becoming evident among conservation biologists is if this is a pie chart of the estimated length of time that the pools hold water. And if you notice, and I based it on a number of criteria, one of them was you know to deter and I see I forgot a spell check here. Got the French version of summer. Do they dry up in early summer, mid summer or late summer? Okay, if they're drying up in early summer, which basically means June, they're not going to support something like spotted salamanders because they just can't develop in that length of time. If they're drying by midsummer, it's a crapshoot. Midsummer generally means sometime in mid July, you know, usually the wood frogs can get out of that for sure, but spotted salamanders it's crapshoot. Especially if it's completely forested pool, a lot of canopy and shade. If it's late summer, a lot of things can get out of it. It's cold in water for a long period of time.
And by the way, this can vary year by year, depending on the you know the type of year that we have and the amount of precipitation and so forth. But in general, the trajectory of these will follow one of these sort of courses. Ideally, you have a range of those hydro periods is going to give you your greatest biodiversity, because if you have short period pools, they you know the wood frogs and the the fairy shrimp and species that are using them don't have the competition as some of the other species, so they may be very effective for them. So you want a diversity of hydro periods of your rural pools is ideal, and we tend to see that on the landscape as represented by this pie chart. However, under changing environmental conditions and modeling, those pools that hold water for a long period of time, late summer, which are only 13% of the pools that we identified,
become extremely important because it may be that under changing environmental conditions, what the modeling is showing that those early summer and mid summer pools may not be very effective in supporting much biodiversity in the future. It may shift on that spectrum and the late summer pools may become very important what we call a refugia in many years for vertical breeding species. So they may play a very important role on the landscape, especially where they're connected to other pools and other networks of pools. They may be especially important because they will serve as refugium, which gets back to the statistic I showed you of the 64% of the pools connected to wetlands and watercourses. One of the interesting things I found out about this, and you find this by mucking about in the pools, is those pools that were connected to wetlands and watercourses were very mucky. And if you have a very mucky pool,
even though it starts to dry up, it holds water longer. The muck stays wet. You get pockets of water in there, and I'd saw this writ large to me again with me and another biologist. We're doing a project over in Middletown from town, and we surveyed a series of 15 pools in this forested area, and we surveyed it in mid July and a fair number of pools would dry it up. There were several pools that had the longer hydro period, were clearly refugia, but there were a number of them that were mucky pools that still had small pockets of shallow water, and I'm just talking like an inch of water, and they were scattered, yet they still had larvae in them. The larvae can persist in them. Now depending on whether we get rains, you know, whether they would persist, but that mucky characteristic of those wetland associated watercourse associated pools may enable them to have a hydrology or persist a bit longer than they normally would if they were isolated and were draining a little bit more readily based on the soils not being as mucky. So those two factors are important to consider as we look at long term planning. So that that sort of concludes the the results. Just a reminder, phase one was the mapping. Phase two was the biological survey. Both of those are done. Phase three really will be completed when we finish our plan of conservation and development as we drive toward that, and that's taking the maps that we've created the database that we have and integrating that into that the that that plan of conservation development along with other maps.
But for the Wetland Commission, all of this information now exists. So as projects come up, we have a data set that can be used to help guide projects associated with those pools that might come in, where we would not necessarily need to rely on external consultants to collect data. It also aids the developer because there's a body of data that they don't necessarily need to collect. So if they're coming in with a project, say, in the middle of winter and it's out of season to be able to go out and actually collect information, we may already have data to to to to be used in that. So it's it's helpful to potential developers as well. And for those pools where we did not access, we know that there may be a potential pool and we can guide a consultant or the developers, hey, there may be a potential pool, and by the way, here's some protocols you might want to follow to collect some data that will be consistent with the data that we've collected. So some of that could start we could already start to utilize. And of course, a hearty thank you to the volunteers and landowners, some that were joint. They were both landowners and volunteers. While this all sounds exciting to go out there and find the frogs and stuff, when you actually get out there and you start mucking about and stuff and it's it's it can be quite challenging.
So my hats are off to the folks. Each volunteer team surveyed at least five pools. Some teams took on some additional ones and they did two surveys at each of the pools, and they did a great job. There was very little hand holding on my part. It was mostly helping them in a couple of cases find some pools, but it was. They did a great job and were you know collected some great data and you know we will hopefully be scheduling the Conservation Commission is looking to schedule a joint program on pollinators as well as the vertical results later in the year to present to the public on some of this information as well to keep that awareness building of these resources in the town. So I know that's a lot, but if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
Well, thank you, Hank. You were an inspiration to all of us in undertaking this survey and having such a knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide made the process a lot more enjoyable because, as you said, there was a lot of mucking around in some pretty nasty barberry swamps. So, Commission members, any further questions? I know some points came up during, but questions about the surveyor results.
Would like to Well, you know, Hank, thanks for heading up the effort. I know from, you know, even a planning and zoning perspective, when we look at the open space subdivisions and where we want to put the open space to protect it and that the information you got here is very helpful for that. And for a guy who thought a vernal pool was a big mud puddle, it was kind of eye opening, how much
science there is there. Yep, so thank you. No, you're welcome and Jed, that's exactly right, know, and thank you for it's not just in the wetlands, but the planning and zoning, especially with those conservation subdivisions. It's exactly as you outlined. The information can help really identify those areas for conservation corridors and protection. That's right.
How do you envision this data getting? How shall I say incorporated into the public record and collective memory?
Yeah, that you know that it's a great question, George, and that's one of the challenges. I mean, one of the things that you know was a bit of a challenge here was because we don't have our own town geographic information system, which is, you know, that's a tough undertaking, especially for small towns because you generally require folks who can run that update it, maintain the databases. All of this work we did on the free versions which were available through Arcview to be able and available data sets that we had. We had to reach out to Yukon for some of the higher end mapping stuff because they have access to the full system, which they did. Yeah, but we do need to think through as we plan for the the, you know, the the planet conservation development. You know I'm assuming that there again will be a contract with a firm like last time that has those systems where they start to incorporate all the maps. But one of the questions we have to think about is where does you know right now I have the the you know the version with the you know with the data layers and the maps you know. Can that live somewhere? Can we provide permissions to you know certain folks who would be responsible within the town, whether it's the wetland agent, somebody like Joe, where you know would live, you know they would have access to it, you know, so or they would own it. They become the owner. We create a new ownership and it becomes, you know, the wetland agent or however however we want to structure that. And then there's where that lies. So that's a question where I think we need to think through what's the best way
for where this infrastructure will live, and that's you know something I've been meaning to talk with Eric about. Know he and I have had conversations in the past about GIS and and planning for you know for the planet conservation development, but I think there's an infrastructure discussion. It's broader than just the data we're collecting because know we're creating all these pollinator areas and mowing areas. It would be great to map all those and have all that live somewhere because you know as we cycle out of our roles on commissions you we need longevity sustainability somewhere within the town. And I don't think it's necessary for us to take the jump of having to have a full GIS system, I think we can continue to operate in a more simplistic manner. As long as we figure out where we want it to reside and who has permissions to it, who can alter the data, things like that. Awareness is half the battle here. Yeah,
and the good news is, you know, we've got a couple of years as we plan for the, you know, the twenty twenty five planet conservation development. So to me this is a good opportunity to start really thinking through how you know how do we want these these data layers to live? And I'm sure there'll be other ones. I remember Eric talking about mapping the culverts and things like that, know, from an engineering standpoint. So there's a lot fair number of data sets that could live in a in a similar system that different folks have access to for various either planning or application review needs that could be updated periodically with with new data and so forth fairly easily without having to bite the bullet on a full GIS system and somebody who knows how to run and keeps maintaining a full GIS system. Because I've seen that we've tried that route actually and we found it didn't work so effectively with some towns because they just couldn't maintain that either from a funding standpoint to have the people on board. It just became an onerous task that which I can understand that's it's not an easy thing to do. Well, any further questions or comments on the report?
Well, that that all that data can't get integrated into like Yukon maps. Those, You know, the the clear maps that have all the different layers and everything.
Yeah, I mean, could. I mean, that was the partnership we, you know, we we partnered with some folks at Yukon. I mean, I think if you know with another consideration could be, I think they're sort of you're pursuing here, whether it's with UConn or Eastcon, somebody or Eastern somebody who has GIS capacity at a university that's willing to sort of partner with the town to host the data, know, to have it available. That's certainly possible. Mean the system that I'm using is its arc view, which is the standard. It's by Esri. They provide this free version, but the data sets are all by the DEP and Yukon's clear program it's called Connecticut eco. And they have a very robust data layer set which they continually update So that would be a natural place to look at potentially housing that data because it could. You know, it's one that you know they're updating data layers and it would be a seamless sort of approach. You know they may look at requiring that if it was be publicly available, so we'd have to be willing to have some of it available, and that gets a little dicey because of things like you know, for example, the dots that I showed with the potential location of state listed species. Usually that's protected information. You don't necessarily want out there. The rural pool data less so, but you know, so we'd have to be very careful on some of the data sets if it was publicly available.
But I think Joe it's a it's a discussion. What's the best route for the town? Is it a partnership through a university or an entity like that? Is it, you know, maintaining a simple system that you know various folks in the town various you know the town planner that the wetland agent have access to and understand how to use what's the best approach to this or combination thereof. You know those are the discussions I think we need to wrestle with based on you know our resources and and be realistic what we feel. Is sustainable, because you know I think the last thing we want to do is create a lot of this information. And then you know not have it available or have to recreate the wheel, you know fifteen years down the road after you know for the next planning and you know.
POCD and it also, think, will position us for things like grants that we may go forward for for open space acquisition or various other conservation initiatives by having that information and by being sort of proactive with it.
Okay, seeing no further questions or discussion, again, you, Hank, for this presentation. Welcome. And again, we'll look forward to continuing to assimilate the information and have the discussions that you've referred to. But for now, want to move on with our agenda. Alright, night folks. Thank you. Alright, thanks. Thank you.
Okay, so other business 8B, commission vacancies. The only thing I really can't report here is I did speak to, or I actually emailed Ed Smith after the last meeting, and he indicated that he wanted to drop down to alternate status. There are health issues that he's dealing with, so he didn't feel comfortable remaining a regular, if nominal, member of the Commission. So, I made that adjustment. Basically, though, of course, what it means is that we are currently too shy of regular members and too shy of alternates, so their openings and warm bodies would be welcome to fill those vacancies.
George, do you think it would be worthwhile to reach out to Megan again to just see if she would come in as a member or an alternate? Know she was, you know, being chairman is a pretty time consuming thing, but maybe she'd just to sit in and participate and bring a wealth of knowledge with her.
You've got a point and then I'll make a note to do that.
I think I talked to Eric earlier, well, last week, and we're going to put an ad in the River East too to try and spread the word a little more. Okay.
I know we've had announcements periodically in that venue. Yeah. I'm optimistic, but hey, it's worth a shot. Yeah. So, we've had some other inquiries, but we'll remain to be seen how that will fall in terms of recruiting eligible and regular members. Moving on, I would like to get approval of the annual report so that I can submit it to the Board of Selectmen in a timely manner. And again, I'm looking for any feedback on errors or omissions from that document. It's pretty straightforward, you know, what we did, where we stand, where we're going. I didn't have any comments for you, George.
Okay, good, good. No news is good news. No comments is no edits.
I wanted to make I see as you have the two commissioners completed the Inland Wetlands Agency training program. I tried to get in on that, but I couldn't navigate it for some reason I think the iPad I was using wasn't didn't have enough power.
I don't know. Know it's been it was was tricky for me between the fact that they had, you know, they had it open at one point, and then they closed it, and then they reopened it. And then, you know, and of course, I formally had a UConn ID, so that threw the system into confusion, because the thought that I was ABGEE02001, which is no longer effective, you know, it was a nightmare. But I encourage you, you know, if you get your hands on a laptop or desktop computer to try and get into it, because it really is a valuable training and very succinct and well structured, and the quizzes are pretty easy. Does that come around
again, or is it something that is? At the end of each module there's a little quiz, open notes, so you know, not too hard to navigate. Joe, what was your feeling about the training session?
Yeah, I mean, thought it was pretty good. It's definitely worth taking. Is it up permanently now?
I think so. It seemed to be. I didn't I haven't gone back to it since I completed it, but it showed every sign of being a, you know, completely revised that, know, they between the first time I attempted it and couldn't get to the end because they dropped it, and the new one that came up, they seem to have been completely revised.
I might have to take a look at that because I think I took it before it was like gone, and then it came back, and then I took it, and then I don't know, it was version two or something like that. I don't know. I
don't know what version was, but again, it was definitely worthwhile, and I thought that it was good, you know, was well structured, fairly succinct, but with enough depth to give you more background than you might immediately need for wetlands and watercourses decisions, a little bit broader. Okay, so with that, that was a digression, I guess, the discussion of the annual report. If there are no comments or suggested revisions, I would move to accept that report, forward it to the Board of Selectmen. I'll second it. Okay, so moved and seconded to accept the annual report, again by roll call. Commissioner Larson? Aye. Commissioner Munro? Aye. And I also vote aye, so the motion carries three-zero-zero. And I will take draft from my draft and submit it as final to the Town Clerk at my next opportunity. Okay, that brings us to Item nine on our agenda, which is to remember that our next meeting will be on a Tuesday, the second Tuesday,
because of the Labor Day holiday. So, we'll be back again on September 13, again, 7PM, and you'll get the Zoom link. And finally
I did have one information thing if I could, George. Sure. And that is that planning and zoning is going to be conducting a site visit to the gravel pit operation this Wednesday at 06:00. And certainly, Wetlands Commission members are welcome to attend. Guess the thing that I would be particularly interested in from the knowledge of people on the wetlands commission is, you know, we're wrestling with what should the plateau that's going to be the big level space where they used to have the gravel pit be. And know, right this minute, the proposed was a peak in the center so the water could run off to both sides. One side of me from all that training said, well, why shouldn't it be
concave to where we could have almost like a detention pond to collect rainwater and let it soak in? And then, you know, the third option is just make it flat and the rain will do what it does. But I'm not sure what the best to protect the groundwater, the wetlands, all that stuff is. And so if anybody had any input they would like to share with the Planning and Zoning Commission, we would certainly welcome that in our next meeting on the September 19. But it's this Wednesday at 06:00, we're gonna be out there to have the engineer run through his restoration plan with us.
Okay, I'll make a point to try and get there, Chad. I don't know of anything on my calendar for Wednesday at 6PM.
I think, yeah, Joe, Jim's invited, twisted your arm a little bit to get you to come over as well. I should be there, so very Okay, very good. Yep, thank Okay,
thanks for thanks for calling that to our attention. So, then again, our final item on the agenda is, of course, adjournment, and what I picked up from the hearings was without objection the meeting is adjourned. I'm fine with that. Okay. So, Joe, you can quit the meeting and I'll say goodnight to all. Thanks for participating, and again, we'll see you in a month. Goodnight, everybody. Thank you. Goodnight.