Buffalo Bayou is one of the few bayous left in central Houston which was not reconstructed with concrete in the 1960s and 1970s. It contains an incredibly diverse urban ecosystem supporting dozens of native species of flora and fauna.

The Buffalo Bayou Partnership is working to promote native plant species, improved water quality and low-impact development, for the restoration and sustainability of the Bayou as a healthy ecosystem.

GEOLOGY

Silty banks are what come to mind for most of us when we think of Buffalo Bayou’s bank geology. Actually, the Buffalo Bayou watershed is located just above the Beaumont Formation, the youngest of the Pleistocene age geological formations in the region. This formation consists of clay, silt, and fine sand arranged in spatial patterns that reflect the distribution of fluvial and coastal mudflat marsh origins. The tidal influence and velocity of storm flows re-suspend the clay particles from the Bayou bottom, decreasing water clarity and silting over the Bayou banks.

The Bayou’s riparian zone structure is a function of climate, parent materials, relief, organisms and time interacting together to build up and erode away the banks. During flooding events, the sediment suspended in the water column rises over the banks. As the water rises, it also slows down. This reduced velocity enables the sediment to fall out of the water column, silting over the banks. A single flood can deposit a foot or more of sediment within the corridor. These young, steep, soft banks are highly susceptible to erosion.

Barker’s Reservoir conducts controlled releases of water at typical velocities of 2,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) into Buffalo Bayou on an on-going basis. This constant flow is not an historical water pattern in the bayou. Some of the impacts to the Bayou of this controlled flow include bank scour (banks void of vegetation) and bed scour (undercutting of the bank) which both contribute to accelerating bank erosion.

FLORA

The Buffalo Bayou Partnership is working to promote native plant species along the bayou and eliminate invasive species through its Vegetation Management Plan (VMP) (hyperlink). Stroll along the bayou trails and you are likely to find diverse flora representative of riparian and wetland zones, prairies, and bottomland hardwood forests.

Sunflowers, sedge, black willow, roughleaf dogwood and yaupon holly are examples of the plants within the riparian zone.

The trails provide a chance to see over 100 representative species from three ecosystems, including sunflowers, Texas vervian, bluestem, paspallum, bottlebrush, mulberries and beebalm. The linear trail system allows users to pass over Cypress tributaries and into pocket praries of native grasses and flowers, to scenic overlooks of the Bayou from within a rich riparian zone of cottonwoods and inland sea oats.

Time and time again the diversity and natural beauty of the Bayou’s flora will surprise and amaze the unsuspecting. Some of the more common flowers you can see are the passion-flower, lantana, Turk’s cap and bidens. Flowering plants not only make the corridor colorful but they provide important habitat sources for insects that rely on flowers to lay eggs for food and mating. Conversely, many flowers depend heavily on those insects for pollination.

FAUNA

On your next walk along the bayou, keep your eyes peeled for graceful blue herons, two foot loggerhead turtles and even an occasional alligator. Year-round birding enthusiasts and the general public enjoy an array of native and migratory birds that use the coastal bayou system for shelter and food. Birds to look for throughout the year include osprey, cardinals, herons, hawks, and kill deer. Migratory birds relying on the linear habitat of the bayou include wood ducks, purple martins, warblers, cedar waxwings, and sparrows.

Not only do we have birds in our skies but we also have one of only a handful of non-migratory bats populations in the world, the Mexican free-tail bat. At dusk, you can observe over 150,000 bats flocking into the night sky to feed on mosquitoes and other insects. Smaller but equally important are the numerous species of butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies that fill the air to observe and photograph. Best bat viewing is under the Waugh Bridge.

Terrestrial and canopy fauna include snakes, squirrels, raccoons, and possum. In the water you can find at least three species of turtle – the red-eared, loggerhead and soft-shell. You may also catch a glimpse of our bayou alligators. Although reclusive, many people make the rare spotting on sunny days.

For more information, see our conservation projects.