Headwaters to Baywaters

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The goal of the Headwaters to Baywaters initiative is to ensure healthy lands, healthy waters, and healthy communities for the greater Houston region.

The Headwaters to Baywaters initiative was launched by five partner organizations:

 Bayou Land Conservancy  (BLC)   Houston Audubon Society  (HAS)

  Buffalo Bayou Partnership  (BBP)     Katy Prairie Conservancy  (KPC)

 Galveston Bay Foundation  (GBF)

The objective of Headwaters to Baywaters is to increase the protection of land and habitat providing multiple benefits to the Houston-Galveston region of the Texas Gulf Coast.

These five land conservation and environmental advocacy organizations are united by their shared objectives to identify high priority riparian conservation tracts, acquire those tracts for preservation, and implement riparian restoration. Headwaters to Baywaters operates within a multi-county project area that encompasses the overlapping areas of focus per each partner organization.

The project area is characterized by four hydrologic and geographic features:

Nature-based infrastructure has been described as a “network of nature, semi-natural areas and green space that delivers ecosystem services.”  (1)  Ecosystem services provide benefits to humans that occur as a result of natural processes, free of charge. Nature-based infrastructure is a tool that provides the triple bottom line - ecological, economic, and social benefits. The Headwaters to Baywaters partners believes a comprehensive approach that uses nature-based solutions (green infrastructure) and engineered solutions (gray infrastructure) working together can help create a resilient and healthy community.

Nature-based infrastructure yields multiple benefits from a single project, such as conserving biodiversity, dissipating water to reduce the volume of stormwater entering drainage ways, increasing property values, and improving quality of life for residents.

“A network of nature, semi-natural areas and green space that delivers ecosystem services.”

In a region with several thousand miles of waterways and increasing vulnerability to floods, a key component of nature-based infrastructure is the network of green spaces associated with waterways and waterbodies, known as riparian corridors. 

The distinctive vegetation, soil, and hydrology of healthy functioning riparian corridors maintain water quality, provide aquatic and terrestrial habitat, enhance aesthetic values, allow for recreational opportunities, sustain freshwater inflows, and can reduce flood damages  (2) .

The environmental, ecological, community, and economic benefits that healthy riparian corridors provide are first achieved by their preservation, and then enhanced through active management of the conserved lands. Large-scale land conservation, with emphasis on riparian corridors, is achieved through land acquisition or preservation to form greenspace, parklands, wildlife management areas, state and national parks, and private preserves. Conservation land management activities taken on by land trusts or other conservation organizations protect wildlife habitat, biodiversity, scenic value, and other unique attributes of the region’s natural areas such as springs or rare plant communities.

Riparian corridors include natural landscapes, such as  wetlands , bottomland forests, and rolling prairies, which are important to our region. Conserving or restoring riparian corridors and natural landscapes, especially on a large scale, ensures that benefits provided by these habitats will be available for future generations. 

The Headwaters to Baywaters objective is to increase protection of riparian corridors to ensure healthy lands, healthy waters, and healthy communities. 

Furthermore, riparian land conservation and the integration of nature-based infrastructure with traditional stormwater practices can support and enhance resilience in the Houston-Galveston region.

Ecosystems benefit humans by purifying the air we breathe, cleaning our water, stabilizing the ground we stand on, reducing flood impacts, supporting biodiversity, providing wildlife habitat and offering recreational space, all of which improve our quality of life.

An ecosystem is comprised of complex interactions between a community of organisms and their physical environment. Ecosystem benefits are services that humans derive from natural processes within ecosystems – for free. Five key ecosystem benefits provided by riparian corridors are: flood resilience, water quality, wildlife habitat, recreation potential, and economic value

Flood Resilience

Natural ecosystems within the Headwaters to Baywaters project area have potential to mitigate damage from storm events. Healthy functioning riparian corridors support ecosystem functions that store stormwater, moderate its release, and dissipate its energy. Research focused on watersheds in Texas, including the Houston-Galveston region, found that healthy, large, unfragmented, and well-connected areas of green space help reduce flood damage  (3,4,5) .

One study suggested that a one percent increase of green infrastructure in the 100-year floodplain – including strategic land acquisition and low impact development practices, such as rain gardens and constructed wetlands – can potentially reduce annual peak flow by nearly eight percent  (5) . Green space and healthy riparian corridors also mitigate storm events, helping keep people and property out of harm’s way.   

Water Quality

Intact, well-connected, and healthy functioning riparian corridors support and improve stream water quality in multiple ways. Shade from riparian vegetation moderates water temperature, which regulates the amount of instream dissolved oxygen available to support healthy aquatic life. Plants, or vegetation, filter and process pollutants, including nutrients, sediment and bacteria. Vegetation also slows stormwater runoff, further filtering contaminants and resulting in decreased sedimentation, nutrient (e.g. nitrogen and phosphorus), and bacteria loads  (6) . These processes improve and protect the quality of surface waters.

The ability of green space to protect water quality is extremely important to the economic vitality of the Houston-Galveston region. Pollutant-free surface waters in the Houston-Galveston region contribute  $4 billion  per year to the regional economy, largely from ecotourism, oyster harvesting, and commercial fishing. Improving the quality of our water by preserving riparian corridors and ensuring their health is one of the goals of the Headwaters to Baywaters initiative.

Wildlife Habitat

Vegetated and intact wildlife corridors support diverse communities of plants and wildlife. Often riparian corridors along the region’s headwaters are important habitat for wildlife, even more so than surrounding land cover. 

Houston's position on the Central Flyway makes it a hotspot for fall and spring bird migrations. The Upper Texas Coast witnesses a steady flow of migratory birds during spring migration from March through May and fall migration beginning as early as July lasting through November. Many species hug the coastline on their way to South and Central America for the winter. Migratory birds also rely on important habitat along the waterways.

Recreational Space

Bayou Land Conservancy, Buffalo Bayou Partnership, Harris County Precinct Four, and the Houston Parks Board, among others, continue to develop trails along hundreds of stream miles within the Headwaters to Baywaters project area. This work is demonstrating the desire for recreational trails, as the public flocks to them and use of these trails continues to grow. While trails are not a primary focus of the first phase of Headwaters to Baywaters, connected riparian corridors will provide opportunity to develop extensive trail systems during later phases.

Nature-based infrastructure can also be a useful approach to address environmental justice and health issues in Houston’s underserved communities, by planning for the inclusion of easily accessible greenways that facilitate walkability  (7) . For example, having trails or nearby walkable forest areas was shown to reduce childhood obesity for a cross-section of underserved Hispanic youth in Houston  (8) . Riparian areas and corridors provide recreational space that can improve human health and quality of life of residents.  

The Green Infrastructure and Ecosystem Services Assessment estimated the value of ecosystem benefits of forested lands in the Houston-Galveston region. The study found that regional forests contribute $200 per acre per year in groundwater recharge benefits and $105 per acre per year in flood protection benefits. 

The Bayou Greenways 2020 initiative secured over $220 million to create a continuous system of parks and green space along Houston’s major waterways. The project’s return on investment is estimated to be $90 million per year for human health, environmental, and economic benefits, including $10 million per year for flood and runoff attenuation and improved water quality  (9) . We estimate that as the Headwaters to Baywaters initiative is implemented it will provide similar benefits. 

Natural landscapes such as riparian corridors have a multitude of benefits including flood resilience, improving water quality, providing wildlife habitat, supporting biodiversity, and providing recreational space.

Urban and suburban riparian corridors are an interface between social, economic, ecological, and hydrological systems. Riparian corridors stitched into the fabric of the Houston-Galveston region promote the advancement of social equity, environmental benefits, hazard mitigation, economic growth, quality of life and ecological integrity. 

The Headwaters to Baywaters initiative is actively coordinating with public and private sector partners and working to preserve and restore riparian corridors across the project area.