Mar 15, 2012

The floor of the Napa Valley today is far different from what the first white settlers saw in the early 1800s. Streams and wetlands have disappeared, the once-sprawling Napa River has been channeled.

A new book, “Napa Valley Historical Ecology Atlas: Exploring a Hidden Landscape of Transformation and Resilience,” documents nearly 200 years of man’s efforts to bend nature to his needs.

Using more than 200 pages of photographs, paintings, maps, graphs and stories, the publication details how the valley floor morphed from what it was in the early 1800s to the mostly groomed landscape of today.

As the book illustrates, the first Europeans encountered a Shangri-La of lush wetlands, broad oak savannas and fields of wildflowers which they gradually adapted for their towns and farms.

Author Robin Grossinger, director of the Historical Ecology Program at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, called the book a “community project” that can serve as a guide for future restoration projects.

“A lot of people contributed to making it and it’s a gift to the region from all the people who spent so much time making it a reality,” Grossinger said.

Though the book highlights the differences in the Napa Valley circa 2012 versus the Napa Valley circa 1820, it also shows how much of the area still retains a rural character.

“Napa is still pretty much the same as it was in the 1940s,” Shari Gardner, who helped do research for the book for Friends of the Napa River.

Gardner credited the valley’s Agriculture Preserve for that fact. “In some places, there’s even more of a riparian corridor” than 70 years ago, she said.

The book contains an aerial photograph of the valley from 1942 and one in 2005 that shows considerable conservation of the natural landscape.

To put the Napa Valley in perspective, there are also photos of an agricultural Santa Clara Valley in 1939 and an intensely urban Santa Clara Valley in 2005.

“(Napa) is still a really beautiful, rural place,” Gardner said.

The task of documenting what has been lost was made easier by the Internet, assisted by visits to libraries and people’s attics and the journals of early travelers, she said.

Chris Malan, one of the founding members of the Friends of the Napa River, was a researcher on the project for about five years. Knowing conditions 200 years ago can guide man’s efforts to shape the future, she said.

“In order to properly restore a river or a lake or a wetland, you have to understand how it was,” Malan said. She began researching Napa Valley wetland in order to educate people about pollution that was causing fish species of the Napa River to die off, she said.

“It’s good for people to know what it was in the past so we can have policy changes in land use,” Malan said.

Malan said she was surprised to learn how much of the Napa Valley was once covered with redwoods and conifers. They were the first to be cut for logs as settlers moved in, she said.

Today, deforestation remains a problem as the hills around the Napa Valley are cleared for vineyards, creating erosion and flooding problems, she said. “Deforestation of our watershed is the biggest threat,” she said.

The book maps where all the valley oaks are thought to have once been. Researchers used aerial photographs from the 1940s to pinpoint where trees that have since died off or been removed grew.

Gardner said knowing where the valley oaks once were will help groups in coming years to re-weave them back into the landscape.

Bernhard Krevet, president of the Friends of the Napa River, said the book’s contents is also valuable in restoring the Valley’s waterways. “Not only is it a beautiful book but it’s a piece of history that has never before been seen in this context,” he said.

“If we want to restore the Napa River watershed, we have to have a direction,” Krevet said. “The area the city occupies was always flooded so in order to reduce flooding to current structures, you have to give (the river and Napa Creek) more room.”

The recent widening of Napa Creek behind the Napa Firefighters Museum on Main Street does just that, he said.

“My hope is that the book could inform and shape our efforts, moving forward, to preserve and honor this breathtakingly beautiful landscape that we know and love,” said T. Beller, director of Napa Valley Arts and Lectures.

Grossinger said he has worked on similar ecology research projects, but this is the first to be turned into a book. He credited the amount of information available and the level of interest in the Napa Valley as the reasons.

“People have always been fascinated and loved the Napa Valley and that really comes through the historical records,” Grossinger said. “It really does have a wonderful array of historical images and photos that we wanted to share with people.”

“We tried to write the book so it would be of general interest to the public as well as the scientific community,” Gardner said. “Time just slides by and the landscapes change and we don’t always notice it.”

Read more: http://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/new-book-documents-valley-s-cha...

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