User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
Time: 8:30AM on Dec 30 2019
Weather: Cloudy
Size and Location: Cristopherson Steps in Surrey, BC. The natural areas alongside the stairs as well as the roughly 2 km stretch of beach front at it’s base.
General description: The stairs begin from a suburban street and go steeply down a ravine, eventually over a railway track and to a beach. It’s quite rocky in this area and the shoreline is eroding from both the sea on one side and the regular removal of plants from the track area behind.
Designation: Cristopherson Steps is property of the City of Surrey but in the beach front area it is a mix of City of Surrey, BNSF Railway and potentially the provincial government because the tide comes very close to the area of interest.
Vegetation: Natural area alongside the stairs and down the ravine is mostly infested with ivy but there are also ferns, western red cedar, douglas firs. The beach front consists of deciduous shrubs and trees, and a mix of perennial and annual weeds.
3 intriguing questions:
- There are very young western red cedar trees no more than 6 feet in height that have germinated from seed presumably from the few larger specimens above (some are growing inside or along decaying tree stumps, therefore I don’t believe they have been planted). English ivy is already climbing these young trees and I wonder if western red cedar can survive without removing the ivy.
- Along the beachfront the shoreline in front of the railway tracks is built up with large boulders. The areas that have Rosa and Holodiscus discolor growing within the cracks of boulders seem to be less eroded than the areas without. Do these plants stabilize the area better than the other more eroded areas?
- The heavily eroded portions of the shoreline are sparsely populated with what I believe is Digitalis. I could not find it present in any other areas except where the shoreline has recently collapsed and the soil conditions seem poor. Are the areas where the shoreline has recently collapsed from erosion providing this plant with the conditions it needs to germinate and then not be out-competed by other plant species?
