Ed Herricks and Bruce Branham Airport Wildlife Safety Management

Turf Infield - Saving Costs and Reducing Wildlife Attraction Working hypotheses –Birds are attracted by food sources - how can these be reduced? –Birds are attracted by color

Research Areas Use of subsoil/poor quality soils Correlation between soil insects and bird visits Use of zoysia grass (Zoysia japonica Steud.) as a groundcover at O’Hare.

Effect of soil quality and soil insects on wildlife attraction

Benefits of Wildlife Study Using poorer quality, subsoil fill in place of topsoil results in significant cost savings for OMP, and potentially, reduces wildlife attraction by supporting a lower population of soil insects. Will develop guidelines for determining what minimum physical characteristics these soils should possess.

Zoysiagrass Warm season grass, shorter growing season  less mowing, less maintenance $$ Turns brown when dormant (mid-Oct - mid- May) less attractive to wildlife? Geese have a shown preference not to consume zoysia. Negative - expensive to establish, weeds

Infrastructure and Stormwater A second element of the CEAT Wildlife Program OMD research is directed to developing capabilities for infrastructure analysis with a specific focus on stormwater issues.

Progress to date: ORD GIS system initiated and is generally operable Have initiated stormwater infrastructure analysis and modeling

Help needed! conversion of Micro Station files lost elevation need reports on stormwater modeling better infrastructure information to support GIS development of the sequence of change at ORD during OMP phases.