Urbanized Creeks in Southern California
Channel: Sean Anderson
Date: 2017-01-10

The Conejo Valley affords a great opportunity to explore the impact of differing riparian channel designs upon water quality.  Here in the Newbury Park section of Thousand Oaks, California we have a fantastic chance to explore the impact of a traditional, highly artificial concrete/boxed channel to a more natural riparian channel populated with dense stands of native herbaceous and woody vegetation, natural banks, and soil-lined channel.
This video was shot in the immediate wake of the strongest rain event we have had in California since 2005.  The series of storms that dropped several inches of rain over the 48 hours preceding this video amounted to much-needed precipitation in our drought-stricken state.  I filmed these channels around 8:00 on the morning of January 9, 2016–roughly 9 hours since the last big dump (that had brought about ¾ to 1” of rain over roughly 10 hours) tapered off.  So while the flows in the channels at filming were lower than peak flow, they are still much elevated flow relative to the normal rain-free conditions in this Mediterranean ecosystem in coastal southern California.
The first, concrete channel surrounds the Hickory Park neighborhood.  The second, natural riparian channel slices through the Dos Vientos Neighborhood.