Regular readers will be familiar with NGT’s ongoing hydrological restoration work at Glenshera Swamp, on the Fleurieu Peninsula near Mount Compass.
In the previous newsletter we described recent work completed to backfill an artificial drain that was denying flow to a natural, meandering creekline that formerly carried water into the heart of Glenshera Swamp, a short distance downstream. It turns out we completed this work just in the nick of time, because good autumn and early winter rainfall has caused this seasonal creek to start flowing just a few weeks later.
So you now get to enjoy these before and after comparisons!
Upstream of Glenshera Swamp, this natural creekline (left) has been denied water for decades due to an artificial drain that bypassed this section of the creek (about 20 metres away), leaving it high and dry. Backfilling the drain in late May has sent water flowing back down the natural creekline (right).
Another view of the natural flowpath before (left) and after (right) drain backfilling that has returned natural flows. It will be interesting to watch the vegetation respond to restoration in the years ahead.
A little further upstream before (left) and after (right) the reinstatement of natural flows. We anticipate introduced grasses to disappear and native wetland plants to increase in response to restoration of the broad flowpath, where previously there was a narrow, channelised flow down the drain.
Example of a section of the creek where the former artificial drain (location indicated left) intersected the natural creekline. With the return of flows, shallow water is flowing over a wider area, restoring a shallow floodplain habitat type that had been completely lost, and bringing low energy flows back the surface.
