Is Stream Restoration Working?

Here in the Pacific Northwest, stream restoration is a growth industry (purely anecdotal - I have not done a study). The big issue is restoration as it relates to the salmon fishery: trying to undo the mess we've made of the environment.  I've been told that the Columbia River produced something like 20 million adult salmon per year prior to European settlement. It is now on the order of one million or so. By the way, that 20 million figure is an estimate, since no one was really scientifically studying the salmon in those days.

At this point I should note that the current Columbia River run of sockeye salmon is setting a record.

Although stream restoration can be viewed strictly as a fluvial geomorphological or hydraulic engineering problem, the relationship between restoration, or renaturalization (as preferred by friend and colleague Bill Woessner of the University of Montana) and fishery recovery is apparent. Purists: mea culpa if I tend to conflate the two; I will try to be good.

When I came here from New Mexico in 2006 I knew of the importance of stream restoration, especially as it pertained to the iconic salmon, a charismatic creature with economic, recreational, religious, culinary, and cultural, and ecological significance. Yes, we had stream restoration and endangered fish species in New Mexico, but nothing like that in the PNW (far more perennial streams) and nothing as charismatic as salmon (e.g., the Rio Grande silvery minnow).

Little did I realize just how important stream restoration was (and still is) in the PNW and other places, too; my Bay-Delta committee work has certainly brought that home.

So why am I tackling stream restoration?  Simple. I'm curious - how well is it working? Can we test hypotheses?  Here is a previous post questioning some of the models of stream restoration.

What piqued my interest was this article at the JAWRA blog (run by the JAWRA editor Ken Lanfear) Testing Stream Restoration. Lanfear discusses a recent JAWRA article,"Design of Experimental Streams for Simulating Headwater Stream Restoration" (you can read the abstract for free but will have to pay for the article if you are not an AWRA member).

Here is what he says:

Stream restoration is a billion dollar industry in the U.S. [emboldening mine] — and a very controversial topic. JAWRA has published a number of articles on this topic in the past several years, and almost all have generated spirited discussions and replies. One problem is the uniqueness of each restoration project: a park agency restoring a stream, for example, is not inclined to build several different versions just to test the theories. At the Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, Columbus, Ohio, however, researchers are doing exactly that.

This study designs three experimental channels – two-stage, self-design, and straightened channels – on a human-created swale for long-term evaluation of headwater stream evolution after restoration. The swale receives a continuous flow of pumped river water from upstream wetlands. These stream channels, after construction, will be monitored to evaluate physical, chemical, and biological responses to different channels over a decade-long experiment.

This article is the first of what likely will be a series of journal articles over the years describing the progress of the restoration project. It looks at the characteristics of the facility and how the experimental channels are hypothesized to evolve.

Stream restoration is an important issue, one that I plan to follow a bit more closely.

At the JAWRA blog you can view some of the other articles JAWRA has published on this topic.

Enjoy!

"One man's fish is another man's poisson." -- Unknown

Comments

[David Bailey]

Hey,
Thanks! Great post you have written on "Is Stream Restoration Working?". Really I can say that your post is very informative, I'll come across your blog again when you will update it with new.
Thanks,
David Bailey
http://www.o-n.com.com/