International greenways: a Red River Valley case study

Building and preserving a network of greenways can be an intricate activity requiring interdisciplinary collaboration. Greenway segments often require local input and participation. In addition, greenways are not necessarily generic open spaces, but can be managed structurally to fulfill specific spatial and temporal requirements. This paper describes local activities in the Fargo (North Dakota)-Moorhead (Minnesota) metropolitan area related to preserving and embellishing the greenway focused around the Red River Valley of the North. This greenway is part of a larger Western Hemisphere greenway, composed of riparian corridors operating as wildlife habitat migration flyways and as resident wildlife habitat. Local activities include demonstration gardens, comprehensive corridor planning, habitat analysis, and revegetation studies. From 1985 to 1990, four spatial treatment investigations were completed, one spatial planning study was prepared, and five demonstration gardens were built. The spatial treatment investigations revealed that the wildlife occupying the greenway could be divided into four habitat-use dimensions, suggesting four important habitat associations for the greenway. The study also revealed three distinct vegetation zones for re-establishing herbaceous vegetation in non-wooded planting conditions. In addition, one experiment indicated that replanting the disturbed woodland corridor was not influenced by seedling size and that Fraxinus pennsylvanica seedlings were highly successful at surviving in a gap opening within the forest corridor. In the last experiment, a seeding application rate study indicated that seeding rates three times higher than recommended rates resulted in improved vegetation cover of non-wooded herbaceous vegetation planting sites. The spatial planning study illustrated landscape patterns for the greenway composed of a continuous tree canopy corridor, augmented by herbaceous vegetation patches, food plots, and snags. To build and manage the greenway, this investigation reaffirms the importance of multi-disciplinary collaboration, local participation, and the potential individualistic structure of a greenway. The study suggests that both broad landscape planning visions and detailed site endeavors are necessary to understand and manage the greenway successfully.