I hadn’t been to this parcel – south of 87th, abutting the mouth of the Calumet River – in awhile, but I wanted to see what ephemeral ecosystem on Calumet slag barrens on the US Steel Southworks (USX) site will be lost when the Chicago quantum campus is built.

The USX site is one of the wildest greenspaces in Chicago – in a really unregulated state. Since most of the property is not under active land management, all manner of wildlife can wander around with little chance of interaction with humans. At dusk and dawn, large mammals are plentiful.

First, a little bit about this parcel. Unlike the north and central parcels of the site, this spot on the far southeast has arguably had the most disturbance due to development: fill has been added and graded around these ~40 acres since at least 2003. In 2011, Dave Matthews Band played a show, beneath “truckloads of wood chips … imported to cover the ground.” (I must return to hypothesize about differences in plant community on slag with, and without, this organically rich additive!)

Buildings were still at the site in 1991; by the year 2000, most structures were gone and there was a fence next to the Bush on the west so that the whole property was invisible to the public.

Today, the vast open areas with crushed gravel-like slag can sustain wave after wave of short lived annuals that thrive in disturbed areas.

Other quadrants haven’t been regraded as recently, and here, copses of pygmy cottonwoods show us where nutrients and organic matter have collected.

I never thought of using the infamous Phragmites as an indicator species, but from our research on slag barrens, we have found the most interesting plant species in the depressions and wetlands of the slag barrens. In this case, the telltale seedheads (often confused for “prairie grasses”) belie the rare native orchids, sedges, and spike rushes that can similarly tolerate these damp human-modified sites. There wasn’t much to see in December around the Phrag, but it would be worth checking out in the summer, if the site is still accessible.

Elsewhere at the site…