Open Space Advisory Board Agenda and Packet 2021 12 08

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Open Space Advisory Board Minutes November 10, 2021 Page 2 of 5 7. Board Updates A. Anneliese announced that she will be moving away from Louisville next year, so she will be stepping down from the board in December. Charles asked how many open slots there will be on the board. Jessamine, David, and Helen, are all up for renewal in December and are all planning to reapply. Council will make the decision to fill vacant spot in December. B. Wayfinding Tiger Team Update —Ember has been working with Kristen, a consultant, and meeting with several local fabricators. They are finding that during the pandemic the costs of many materials have significantly changed. They are putting together a spreadsheet for material options and costs for all the different components of the plan's signs. The team has made some recommendations and will work out total costs. i. Deb Fahey said she was recently on a call with the Louisville Revitalization Commission (LRC) and they are very interested in the Wayfinding project. They are particularly interested in digital tie-ins, such as QR codes. They might be able share some of their funding. She added that a member of the Cultural Council thought there might be some sort of tie-in with their signs for city art. C. Trails Tiger Team Update —Charles, Nathan, and David met on the previous Friday. They further discussed a pilot study for classifying current social trails at Warembourg Open Space. They are working to formalize four classifications for social trails, defining and establishing criteria for each. The proposed classifications are (1) to be closed; (2) to be ignored/unchanged; (3) to be upgraded to crusher fines or concrete; (4) to be designated as a primitive/dirt trail. They would like to bring their ideas to the board in December as a discussion item. Helen expressed interest in being able to provide feedback on this project and suggested there needs to be a plan for public outreach process for this project. Jessamine agreed. 8. Discussion Item: Plant Community Survey Updates. Presented by Steve Roels, Senior Natural Resource Specialist Steve shared the results of his vegetation survey work. Historically this sort of work has been done by contractors within Louisville, but it is now being done in-house by Steve, the Senior Natural Resource Specialist. Steve aligned his cover -point methods to align with previous studies and to be comparable to other local municipalities. This technique provides quantification of ground cover, estimates of diversity, and longitudinal studies. There are seven city open space properties with permanently -established transects on them already, and this is where he is starting his work. Steve shared some sample data from some of the transects and interpreted it for the board. He shared his method of visualizing and summarizing the transect data. A few trends he described included that sloped land and north -facing slopes tend to have higher species diversity. Laura commented that she really appreciated Steve's effort to make the data visualizable and therefore easily interpretable by the citizens who are paying for it. 5