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Native Revegetation: The Sustainable Erosion Control BMP

Technology Training Workshop

Tuesday December 9th and Wednesday December 10th, 2008

Heidrick Ag History Center, Woodland, CA
Registration includes a BBQ Dinner Reception on Tuesday evening.

The Western Chapter - International Erosion Control Association invites you to attend a Technology Training Workshop that will be addressing native revegetation technologies that are demonstrating promise for successfully re-establishing native plant growth on drastically disturbed soils located in a variety of climates and topography throughout the moisture-challenged American West. We intend to encourage Workshop presenters and attendees alike to challenge the merits of these more recent seeding/planting technologies, as well as conventional seeding technologies, in an effort to gain a more in-depth understanding as to where any one of these technologies and practices might be successfully implemented on a particular project site.

Never has there been a time when sound native plant establishment technologies and implementation expertise were more critically required to maximize the investment of our scarce restoration funds. Accordingly, pursuant to our Chapter mandate to provide quality training opportunities to our members and associated professionals, and in light of the current challenging economic times, WC-IECA is both underwriting and subsidizing this state-of-the-art Technology Transfer Workshop in the hope that as many members as possible are able to attend.

Attendees (drawn from both the ranks of those who attended the June San Diego-hosted Workshop, as well as welcome new arrivals) are encouraged to come armed with your questions, challenges, biases and with whatever pearls of enlightenment you are prepared to share. Even better, if those of you who attended the San Diego-hosted Workshop have questions as a result of what you heard during that previous Workshop, please email and we will do our best to incorporate such questions into the Agenda.

Who Should Attend
This Training Workshop is geared to accommodating individuals who already possess a reasonably advanced understanding of the challenges that typically face anyone embarking on re-establishing native plant growth in harsh environments. Our prime objective is to consolidate and build upon the knowledge that was presented at the June 19th & 20th, San Diego Technology Transfer Workshop, by continuing to both (a) lay the scientific foundation for what technologies are showing promise in the field; as well as (b) encouraging an interactive format between attendees and presenters in a good faith effort to promote greater depth of understanding as to why so many native revegetation efforts, initiated with great promise, fall short of anticipated goals.

Key Points of Interest

• Top-ranked scientists/academics are returning, along with the addition of Mark Paschke PhD., Restoration Ecologist from Colorado State University, to both provide the scientific foundation to what technologies are showing promise in the field, and to participate in roundtable discussion/debate as to where native seeding design practitioners might venture in the search for greater consistency of success on revegetation projects.

• Schedule will incorporate a re-cap briefing and consolidation of material that was presented during the 2-day training workshop in San Diego, CA, before moving on to a structured exploration of current native seeding technologies that are demonstrating consistency of success on a variety of terrain, climate/rainfall, altitude, soils etc.

• Analysis of "minimum threshold" levels of restoration endeavor as a pre-requisite for success.

• Vulnerability of both conventional and state-of-the-art seeding practices to implementation shortcomings.

• Geographic/climatic limiting parameters to a variety of current native revegetation seeding practices.

• Exploration of "weak links" in current revegetation technologies and potential solutions.

• Vendor attendance is encouraged for display purposes.

• In light of the current challenging economic times, Western Chapter-IECA is offering this state-of-the-art Technology Transfer Workshop at the stated subsidized rates to all potential attendees to encourage as many interested parties as possible to attend. Early registration is appreciated and rewarded.

If we can be of assistance, please contact Rose Bond at or call (707) 839-3208. We look forward to seeing you all in Woodland, CA in early December.

Peter McRae, President
Western Chapter-IECA

Native Revegetation: Flyer and Registration Form Download the complete flyer and registration form in Acrobat® PDF format.
WCIECA_Woodland08.pdf, 340kb