Stream Corridor Restoration

This document is a cooperative effort among fifteen Federal agencies and partners to produce a common reference on stream corridor restoration. It responds to a growing national and international interest in restoring stream corridors.

Restoration practitioners share simultaneously in the good fortune and responsibility of participating in a new endeavor - stepping beyond the current concept of natural resources conservation to a newer concept of restoring the living environment to an ecologically viable condition -to create places that improve rather than degrade over time. This document is a result of an unprecedented cooperative effort among fifteen Federal agencies and partners to produce a common reference on stream corridor restoration. It responds to a growing national and international public interest in restoring stream corridors. Increasingly, feature articles, case studies, and published papers focus on stream corridors as critical ecosystems in our living environment. This document encapsulates the rapidly expanding body of knowledge related to stream corridors and their restoration. It makes no endorsement of one particular approach to restoration over another; nor is it intended as a policy document of any participating Federal agency. It includes the full range of possibilities facing restoration practitioners, including no action or passive approaches, partial intervention for assisted recovery, and substantial intervention for managed recovery. The document encourages locally led, public involvement in restoration planning and implementation. The challenges in restoring thousands of miles of degraded stream corridors must involve government agencies, public and private landowners, permit holders, and local volunteer, civic, and conservation groups and individuals. This document takes a more encompassing approach to restoration than most other texts and manuals. It provides broadly applicable guidance for common elements of the restoration process, but also provides alternatives, and references to alternatives, which may be appropriate for site-specific restoration activities. Moreover, the document incorporates and reflects the experiences of the collaborating agencies and provides a common technical reference that can be used to restore systems based on experiences and basic scientific knowledge. As a general goal, this document promotes the use of ecological processes (physical, chemical, and biological) and minimally intrusive solutions to restore self-sustaining stream corridor functions. It provides information necessary to develop and select appropriate alter­ natives and solutions, and to make informed management decisions regarding valuable stream corridors and their watersheds. In addition, the document recognizes the complexity of most stream restoration work and promotes an integrated approach to restoration. It supports close cooperation among all participants in order to achieve a common set of objectives. The guidance contained in this document is applicable nationwide in both urban and rural settings. The material presented applies to a range of stream types, including intermittent and perennial streams of all sizes, and rivers too small to be navigable by barges. It offers a scientific perspective on restoration work ranging from simple to complex, with the level of detail increasing as the scale moves from the landscape to the stream reach.

Our rivers are in crisis and the need for river restoration has never been more urgent. Water security and biodiversity indices for all of the world’s major rivers have declined due to pollution, diversions, impoundments, fragmented flows, introduced and invasive species, and many other abuses. Developing successful restoration responses are essential. Renewing Our Rivers addresses this need head on with examples of how to design and implement stream-corridor restoration projects. Based on the experiences of seasoned professionals, Renewing Our Rivers provides stream restoration practitioners the main steps to develop successful and viable stream restoration projects that last. Ecologists, geomorphologists, and hydrologists from dryland regions of Australia, Mexico, and the United States share case studies and key lessons learned for successful restoration and renewal of our most vital resource. The aim of this guidebook is to offer essential restoration guidance that allows a start-to-finish overview of what it takes to bring back a damaged stream corridor. Chapters cover planning, such emerging themes as climate change and environmental flow, the nuances of implementing restoration tactics, and monitoring restoration results. Renewing Our Rivers provides community members, educators, students, natural resource practitioners, experts, and scientists broader perspectives on how to move the science of restoration to practical success.

Decades, or even centuries, of changing and competing land uses have left many of the world's streams degraded, in poor health, and out of balance with the ever-shifting dynamics of their watersheds. This is a basic resource intended to help individuals, groups, organizations, companies, communities, and governments plan and carry out environmentally sound, cost-effective stream corridor assessment, enhancement, and stewardship programs. Using the watershed as the basic unit of reference, the Handbook provides ideas and information with which readers can assess and document local stream conditions, learn about and evaluate methods of enhancement, devise and implement enhancement plans, and then maintain the stream and stream corridor in its enhanced state of better health and balance. While not a comprehensive technical manual for professionals trained in stream restoration, this resource does provide a solid foundation by which volunteers may become informed observers, advocates, and organizers of stream enhancement programs and participants in their implementation.

This book presents the author's thirty years of practical experience managing long-term stream and river restoration projects in heavily degraded urban environments. Riley provides a level of detail only a hands-on design practitioner would know, including insights on project design, institutional and social context of successful projects, and how to avoid costly and time-consuming mistakes.