Vegetation in Natural Areas

In areas where parks allow floodwaters to spread, vegetation plays a crucial role in mitigating flood damage.

How Vegetation Helps 

• Slows water flow: Vegetation acts as a natural barrier, reducing the speed and energy of floodwaters. This minimizes erosion and the potential for damage.
• Acts as a natural infrastructure: Parks and open spaces function as the city's green stormwater infrastructure, mimicking and often surpassing the effectiveness of man-made structures like concrete and rock, but without the cost.
• Increases infiltration: By slowing water and providing space for it to settle, vegetation enhances the absorption of water into the ground, recharging underground aquifers.
• Prevents downstream flooding: This increased infiltration reduces the volume of water flowing downstream, helping to prevent flooding in residential areas.

Mowing all vegetation along stream banks leads to increased erosion which negatively impacts water quality, and potentially causes significant property damage downstream.

Impacts of Removing Vegetation

• Increased Erosion: Vegetation serves as natural protection, absorbing the force of water during storms and holding soil in place with its roots. Without this vegetation, soil erodes and washes away.
• Reduced Water Quality: Erosion decreases water quality and clarity. This added sediment can clog or be abrasive to fish's gills, cover fish eggs, and smother aquatic insects, impacting the food source for fish. Increased erosion can also introduce excess nutrients like phosphorus, leading to algal blooms and decreased dissolved oxygen, creating "dead zones" harmful to aquatic life. Sediment washes downstream into our lakes causing siltation, resulting in costly infrastructure processes to clean our drinking water.
• Threat to Infrastructure and Property: Eroding stream banks can undercut or weaken nearby infrastructure and property, leading to costly repairs. Stream erosion repair can cost several million dollars per tenth of mile. Vegetated stream buffers help hold the soil in place for FREE and reduces the impact of flooding and erosion. 

Mowing

Parks and open space serve multiple purposes ranging from active recreation to flood mitigation. Active use areas such as soccer and baseball fields, dog parks, skate parks, playgrounds, and golf courses are maintained by frequent mowing. The Park & Recreation Department manages contractors to mow active use areas of parks.

Natural Areas are where Nature reigns.These areas allow for passive recreational activities such as trails, nature-viewing, and exploration. Natural Areas also provide ecosystem services such as slowing and detaining floodwater, wildlife habitat and connectivity, and filtering our drinking water and the air we breathe.

Litter Control

In an urban environment, litter on our streets and waterways present an ongoing challenge. Park staff and contractors pick up litter in parks weekly. Keep Fort Worth Beautiful, whose mission is to educate and engage Fort Worth residents and businesses to take responsibility for improving their community environment, organizes volunteer groups to pick up litter in parks and streams. Adjacent neighborhoods and park visitors can help by safely picking litter up when they can. You can volunteer too! Challenge yourself to pick up 10 pieces of litter on your daily walk. Nearby neighborhoods can help by securing their household trash and placing their trash at the curb the morning of their scheduled solid waste pick-up.

 I see a ton of Ragweed!

Giant ragweed is a native plant that grows in wet soils. It is one of the first species to establish along stream banks, pond and lake shorelines when the water recedes. It provides seed and shelter to wildlife and over time will decrease in abundance as other higher quality plant species replace it and shade it out. In some limited cases, park staff may thin the ragweed. Our goal is to allow vegetation buffers along streams to protect the soil, stream bank, and water quality. If we are patient, trees will grow and the buffer will transition into a shaded forest.

Is that algae?

There are many species of native ‘green’ plants that grow in ponds and streams. The first step is to determine what the species are and if they are out of control. Some ponds have fountains that aerate the water, which reduces algae blooms. If algae becomes a serious problem, the Park Department may employ several techniques to control it. Learn more about native and non-native aquatic plants.

Invasive Vegetation

The Park Department prioritizes parks with extreme invasive species problems. As time and resources allow, staff employs numerous methods to remove and control invasive species. If you would like to volunteer to assist with invasive species control; or if your neighborhood association would like to adopt a park, contact us at: https://www.fortworthtexas.gov/departments/parks

The Park & Recreation Department maintains the majority of all parks via biweekly mowing. A firebreak is mowed around Natural Areas and stream buffers. The Fort Worth Fire Department is trained to respond to wildfires, and the mowed firebreaks will help control the spread of a fire. In some parks, natural resource experts in the Park Department use prescribed fire to manage vegetation. The City of Fort Worth Fire Department assist with burns in our parks and open space.

Learn more about our Prescribed Fire program.

While these activities can take place anywhere, vegetation creates areas where this type of activity may occur. Park staff visits parks frequently and Fort Worth Police Department patrols parks. When camps are discovered, the City of Fort Worth has humane protocol to address the situation. Vegetation management procedures will adapt in response to illicit and illegal activities.