2025 ECOLOGICAL MONITORING REPORT: UPPER CURTIS ROAD CULVERT RIGHTSIZING ENHACEMENT PROJECT CORTLAND COUNTY, NEW YORK
The 2023 upper Curtis Road Culvert Replacement Project (CRC) initiated by the Cortland County Soil and Water Conservation District allowed an opportunity for WRI to assess macroinvertebrate community changes in response to a road culvert enhancement and rightsizing project in the Town of Virgil. Streams associated with culvert crossings are often smaller than those associated with dam removal monitoring. Unlike dams open culverts, unless blocked by debris, do not impound water upstream. The degree to which undersized culverts and associated rightsizing construction activities may have in influencing local aquatic life is unstudied. Perched culverts can be barrier to upstream fish movement (Gibson et al. 2011), but to what effect inefficient hydraulic flows have on regulating macroinvertebrate populations in the immediate culvert vicinity is understudied (Frankiewicz et al. 2021). The macroinvertebrate sampling regime at the Upper Curtis Rd culvert was mirrored after the dam-removal monitoring strategy but lacks the cross-channel survey component. The CRC study aims to increase our understanding around under-sized culverts and their influence on local hydrology and aquatic macroinvertebrate communities. The CRC study presents a pre/post rightsizing comparison between two sampling locations, one within each upstream and downstream reach surrounding the culvert. The information gleaned from this study, particularly on macroinvertebrate populations surrounding culvert enhancement projects, will allow resource managers to make increasingly more informed decisions on prioritizing site selections, improving culvert construction protocols, and executing aquatic connectivity improvement strategies.