Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Jeremy FiveCrows Symposium Session: 2023 – 00 Invited Speakers Topics covered: community involvement, equity and inclusion, and fish-salmon ABSTRACTLearning from the Indigenous Connection to the …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Laura Brown Symposium Session: 2023 – 12 All that glitters is not Gold: Restoring Dredged Rivers Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, dredged rivers, fish-salmon, lessons learned, riparian, temperature, and tidal ABSTRACTIn 2019, WDFW and partners carved a ¼ mile channel through dredged material to restore off channel habitat along the lower Columbia River. Since the 1880s, anthropogenic impacts to the lower Columbia River have led to a reduction of habitat for salmonids. In the early 1900s, piles were placed along the mainstem and dredging of sand was already underway to maintain a navigation channel. These two actions began to transform the mainstem Columbia and impact salmonids, as critical shallow water habitats were targeted for dredge spoils placement. At RM 90, just upstream of the confluence with the Lewis River, over 1.5 million cubic yards of dredged spoils were placed within the mainstem along Bachelor Island by the USACE. This effectively covered nearly all existing shallow water habitat, leaving a groundwater connected floodplain lake in the center. Starting in 2016, WDFW worked with DNR and USFWS to identify viable alternatives for a multi-species restoration project, with a particular focus on juvenile Fall Chinook and Chum salmon, waterfowl, and turtles. In 2018 and 2019, the South Bachelor Island Restoration Project excavated approximately 120,000 cubic yards of historically placed dredge material to create a 2,300 ft channel that reconnected a remnant 40 acre open-water wetland to the Columbia River mainstem. Key for waterfowl and turtles was an ability to retain water in the wetland year-round, despite significant seasonal changes in the mainstem. Additionally, it was important to design a self-maintaining channel, despite being carved through sand with a slow revegetation rate. Unique to this project was the placement of excavated material downstream of the channel along the riverbank to be slowly released back into the channel over time. Another unique component was the modification of the remnant pile-dike structure that crossed the wetland, in an effort to improve tidal exchange through the channel. Since construction, physical and biological monitoring has been conducted. Annual topographic and shoreline surveys show that changes to channel form and shoreline embankments are occurring. Fish monitoring to date has shown that juvenile salmonids are using the newly created habitat, and that main stem and off-channel wetland water temperatures impact fish movement. Continued monitoring is crucial as this project serves as an example of what can be anticipated when attempting to restore shallow water habitat impacted by dredge material placement. As we continue to manage rivers to provide multiple benefits, determining innovative ways to restore habitat within an altered system will be critical to salmon …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Lauren Senkyr Symposium Session: 2023 – 11 Foresight in Adaptive Management Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, lessons learned, riparian, and wood ABSTRACTRestoration requirements associated with the Portland Harbor Superfund Site spurred the construction of several habitat restoration projects on the mainstem of the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. Four projects have been constructed as “restoration banks,” where the project developers intend to sell credits from their projects to parties that have legal and financial responsibility for restoration because of their past pollution. This banking model is similar to mitigation banking, but the projects are overseen by a Trustee Council made up of tribal, state, and federal governments, including NOAA. While the banking model of habitat restoration is different in many ways from voluntary and community-based restoration efforts, it has interesting lessons to share on the topic of adaptive management. In the case of the Portland Harbor restoration banks, adaptive management is required, expected, and financially secured before a project is constructed. In this presentation I will cover examples from four river restoration projects: Alder Creek, Linnton Mill, Portland General Electric’s Harborton Wetlands, and the Rinearson Natural Area. I will describe how the Trustee Council uses an adaptive management plan, monitoring, and performance standards as cornerstones of the adaptive management process. I will cover different forms of financial assurance established to fund adaptive management before it is needed, including escrow accounts and letters of credit. Lastly, I will share examples and lessons learned from the oversight and implementation of adaptive management activities on these four projects. Every one of the four restoration projects that the Trustee Council oversees has undergone some adaptive management through an agreed upon process. Invasive vegetation management and replanting of native species have been the most common activities. However, the adaptive management process has also been used to evaluate fish passage concerns, sedimentation, and issues with adjacent landowners. Our experience confirms what you might expect- adaptively managing river restoration projects collaboratively among multiple agencies, tribal governments, and for-profit entities is no easy feat. We’ve seen successes and failures in terms of process and on the ground conditions. Successes include securing up front funding for adaptive management, the comparison of monitoring data to agreed upon interim and final performance standards, early interventions in specific cases of poor plant establishment, and use of additional monitoring as an adaptive management technique. Challenges have included timing of data availability and reports, the time consuming nature of an iterative and collaborative adaptive management process, permitting and consultations, and of course Mother Nature. In sharing these examples, I hope to shine a light on how diverse disciplines, perspectives, and funding models can be brought to bear to make this buzz word a …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Erin Plue Symposium Session: 2023 – 12 All that glitters is not Gold: Restoring Dredged Rivers Topics covered: dredged rivers, floodplain, idaho, riparian, and sediment transport ABSTRACTFrom 1917 through 1926, a floating bucket dredge turned over five miles of the floodplain of Prichard Creek, a tributary to the North Fork Coeur d’Alene River in the Idaho Panhandle. The dredge left behind hundreds massive U-shaped piles of large cobble with small ponds scattered throughout the piles and sent the finer sediments either floating downstream or buried dozens of feet below the surface. These impacts paired with other placer mining, extensive historic logging, and infringing infrastructure have left the drainage with significant impacts. Even with the significant challenges facing Prichard Creek there are many reasons that its restoration has been prioritized in the Coeur d’Alene Basin. Prichard Creek has some of the coldest water in the basin and most of the riparian area remains undeveloped with minimal recent impact. Ten and half miles of Prichard Creek’s 14-mile length is owned by a private lumber company, Idaho Forest Group, who is a dedicated partner in the restoration project and is in the process of putting the property into a conservation easement that will restrict future mining, development and subdivision of the land. This is a rare gem in an area with heavy recreational use and intensive streamside development. Prichard Creek’s cold water is an appealing refuge for local Westslope Cutthroat Trout, but their access is restricted to the bottom four miles of stream during the heat of the summer due to subsurface flows. The path of the water once it drops out of the channel is complex and not readily apparent or predictable from the surface. Ground water monitoring stations were installed in 23 spots throughout the dredged reaches of the stream in fall of 2021 to help better understand where water is moving in this chaotic landscape. With a greater understanding of where and why of the route of the water within the Prichard Creek floodplain, alternatives for restoration have been developed in the past year. As the first phase of restoration is set to start this summer on the bottom four miles of stream channel, the project partners have been in the process of ranking the alternatives for restoration on the remaining project area and committing to a path forward. Understanding the likelihood for success and the costs is paramount in helping the partners commit to a restoration alternative. What is the most desirable result for Prichard Creek? Is it really feasible to restore flows throughout the whole channel all year? Will there be impact to the water temperature? What are the risks and what is the chance of failure? What is the likelihood of finding funding for these alternatives? Are partial fixes worth the effort? These are some of the hard to answer questions that the project partners have been wresting with. Understanding the impacts that have occurred on Prichard Creek has been complex and helping the project partners navigate the most desirable path forward may be just as much of a …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Fred Meyer Symposium Session: 2023 – 12 All that glitters is not Gold: Restoring Dredged Rivers Topics covered: california, dredged rivers, floodplain, and riparian ABSTRACTFloodplain connectivity on many California rivers have been impacted by the combination of historic gold dredge operations and flow regulation. Flow regulation typically reduces peak flow magnitude, frequency, and duration, which correspondingly reduces frequency and duration of overbank flows. As historic gold dredge operations moved across the valley bottomlands, they have inverted the grain size of these bottomlands by bringing the coarse material to the top (cobbles-to-boulders) and depositing fines at the bottom or between the dredge tailings (slickens). These dredge tailings have also reduced floodplain connectivity by 1) destroying the natural floodplain morphology, 2) destroying the natural grain size gradation of the floodplains (fines displaced, now dominated by cobbles and boulders), and 3) the remnant dredge tailings often confine and entrench the low flow channel between tailings piles. The post-dam high-flow flow regime is usually reduced to the point where the river is no longer able to re-work these tailings and heal itself. In most cases, improvements in the high flow regime to re-enable the river to rework the tailings is infeasible; therefore, physical rehabilitation of the channel is required. There are typically three ways to conduct channel rehabilitation to reverse the confinement and entrenchment caused by the dredge tailings to re-create floodplain connectivity: 1) Lower the dredge tailings down to create new floodplains that are scaled to the post-dam flow regime, 2) Raise invert of the mainstem channel to increase water surface elevations and connectivity to higher overbank surfaces, or 3) a combination of lowering tailings and raising the invert of the mainstem channel. Solely relying on dredge tailing lowering is extremely expensive due to the large earthworks involved, so raising the channel invert is a way to substantially reduced rehabilitation project costs via reduced earthworks and less off-site hauling of excess cut materials. One typical constraint is that the elevation of the 100-year flood cannot be raised by the rehabilitation project; therefore, a careful balance between dredge tailing lowering and mainstem channel raising is needed to meet flood management requirements and minimize implementation costs. This presentation will provide an overview of design strategies for regulated rivers with extensive dredge tailings, and the physical, riparian, ecological, and cost tradeoffs of these strategies that may be informative for other rehabilitation projects on regulated rivers with extensive dredge …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Abbey Rhode Symposium Session: 2023 – 11 Foresight in Adaptive Management Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, floodplain, lessons learned, temperature, urban, water quality, and wetlands ABSTRACTEngineering plays an important role in many stream and wetland enhancement projects, especially in heavily impacted urban and agricultural areas. The traditional approach for cost-effective scaling of engineering is standardized design, but natural systems are difficult to standardize and the Tualatin River basin is dominated by fine-grained sediments which are a departure from the cobble and gravel-dominated streams that typically characterize the Pacific Northwest. These fine-grained streams are particularly sensitive to the impacts of urbanization and the lack of coarse sediment has forced us to reconsider our engineered approaches to streams, starting with acknowledging the limitations of traditional methods. Furthermore, engineered approaches are expensive and time-consuming, with much of that time and effort being spent on understanding and mitigating the risks that our own engineered activities will have on the site, including the significant disturbance required to construct those engineered elements. This presentation will illustrate how we have been applying our lessons learned from the Tree For All Program to scaling up our engineering approaches to stream and wetland enhancement and the challenges encountered along the way with case studies of past and current work. Much of it begins at the organizational level. By embracing an ethos of innovation, long-term stewardship and adaptive management, engineers are empowered with the flexibility to scale back designs and allow for more uncertainty and change over time. The immediate outcomes following construction are de-emphasized in favor of long-term outcomes which shifts the focus of engineering from fixing a system to buying time for the ecosystem to heal itself. That increased flexibility allows for a more efficient and collaborative design process such as reducing the level-of-effort of desktop design in favor of field-fit design where engineers, ecologists and contractors can customize the design to the site together. However, that openness to change and unpredictability brings new challenges with how we define and demonstrate success or failure which is important for both ourselves as practitioners to be able to adaptively manage our sites and improve our methods, as well as for meeting regulatory …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Nate Hough-Snee Symposium Session: 2023 – 10 Charismatic Megaflora: Cottonwoods Restoration Topics covered: beavers, cottonwoods, floodplain, groundwater, and riparian ABSTRACTCottonwood (Populus species) are considered an obligate riparian species whose biology and life cycle are tied to the seasonal movement of water and sediment through floodplains. In many large, alluvial rivers, cottonwood forests may be the primary forest ecotone, providing shade, contributing large wood to channels, and creating bars, islands, and other complex fluvial landforms. Given the links between watershed and reach-scale hydrology, sediment transport, and cottonwood establishment, persistence, and regeneration, cottonwood forests can serve as an indicator of reach and watershed-scale processes. Here, I describe where and how cottonwood forests, one of western rivers’ canaries in the coalmine, regenerate along Pacific Northwest rivers and streams, with a focus on Washington State and tributaries of the Columbia River Basin. With an eye to fluvial geomorphology and hydrology in the interior Columbia River, I will discuss where and how cottonwood occur within watersheds and floodplains and what their presence and absence tell us about how our watersheds have evolved and what trajectories they might be on. Providing examples from across the Pacific Northwest, I will discuss the limitations to cottonwood establishment and persistence, and how targeted restoration through environmental flows, invasive species control, planting, grazing management, and reintroduction of keystone species, like beaver (Castor canadensis), may allow practitioners to rejuvenate and restore cottonwood forests. I will synthesize these restoration approaches to introduce the case studies from California, British Columbia, and Washington State to be presented by subsequent speakers within the …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Stewart Rood Symposium Session: 2023 – 10 Charismatic Megaflora: Cottonwoods Restoration Topics covered: canada, cottonwoods, flow augmentation, and riparian ABSTRACTThe transboundary Columbia River system is one of North America’s most extensively dammed watersheds. The 1961 Columbia River Treaty between Canada and the United States was intended to further regulate the river system, through the construction of three large dams in British Columbia: Mica, Keenleyside, and Duncan (producing Kinbasket, Arrow and Duncan Reservoirs, respectively); and Libby Dam in Montana (Koocanusa Reservoir). The original Treaty objectives were flood control and hydropower generation, and with the current Treaty modernization, a third objective is proposed, ecosystem function. For this objective, riparian woodlands provide the richest regional wildlife habitats, along with favored cultural, social, and economic resources. Cottonwoods, riparian poplar trees, provide the foundation for the floodplain forests, and this presentation will consider aspects of cottonwood adaptation and ecophysiology that provide a foundation for the prescription of dam operations for riparian enhancement. The presentation will then consider: (1) the implementation of functional flow regimes for ecosystem enhancement downstream from Libby Dam and Duncan Dam, and (2) prospects to manage reservoir regimes to promote riparian vegetation in the ecologically barren drawdown zones, thus ‘regreening the reservoirs’. The reservoir vegetation enhancement strategy relies on understanding the inundation tolerances of the native and introduced riparian trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants. Subsequent modeling to project outcomes from prospective operational scenarios also requires mapping of the topography and physical conditions for the upper drawdown zones, to assess influences including bank slopes, sediment types, stream inflows, and seed sources. Analyses of the feasibility for operational changes should then consider balancing relative to the three objectives of flood control, hydropower, and ecosystem function; as well as some contrasting influences on the reservoirs upstream and the rivers downstream from the Treaty …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Michael Burke Symposium Session: 2023 – 10 Charismatic Megaflora: Cottonwoods Restoration Topics covered: cottonwoods, flow augmentation, idaho, montana, mountain west, and riparian ABSTRACTRiparian cottonwoods play an essential role in the ecology of riparian ecosystems in western rivers. Yet their recruitment, establishment, and succession are susceptible to a variety of factors which have led to declines in many river systems. In particular, land use changes and river regulation have resulted in substantial impacts. Using the case study of the Kootenai River in north Idaho and western Montana, this presentation will first review quantitative methods developed to apply the concepts of the cottonwood recruitment box model (CRBM) in assessment of impacts resulting from river regulation. We will then review adaptations integrated into restoration planning, implementation, and adaptive management to foster recovery of cottonwood forests along this great river. Adaptations include 1) shifts in the regulated flow regime towards more normative, natural flow patterns, 2) use of tools and observations to recognize the most viable locations within the altered riparian landscape for passive recruitment, 3) strategic adaptations of floodplain areas formed by historical river processes to the realities of the contemporary regulated regime, and 4) adaptive management strategies such as proactive ‘disturbance’ techniques to reset potential recruitment sites plagued by invasive species …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: John Bair Symposium Session: 2023 – 10 Charismatic Megaflora: Cottonwoods Restoration Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, california, cottonwoods, dredged rivers, lessons learned, and riparian ABSTRACTMany large rivers in Northern and Central California were transformed through hydraulic mining, dredge mining, and streamflow regulation. Cottonwood trees are a component of the riparian forest and were once far more abundant. Alluvial valleys were turned over by mining activities, leaving coarse unsorted materials, disconnected from subsurface and surface hydrology. Remaining mine tailings are often barren, sometimes rising more than 25 ft above the river. Physical reconstruction of tailings and vegetative planting have been used to rehabilitate dredger mined rivers with varying success. Removing and lowering dredger tailing piles below the 1-yr recurrence interval flood to increase annual inundation frequency and duration has been a primary factor in successful recovery of riparian function and increasing planting survival. Lowering dredger tailings creates better access to shallow groundwater for plantings and is more likely to restore physical and hydrologic conditions where passive vegetation recruitment can occur. Once tailings have been lowered, cottonwoods are ideal candidates to plant because they are easy to grow from cuttings and grow into a largest deciduous tree. Cuttings can be made at any time of the year but require handling and management during creation, soaking, and planting. Cuttings are less prone to scour mortality than container stock due to their deep planting, they typically cost less to make, and do not require irrigation after the project if they are already planted into a perennial water source. Cuttings tend to be most successful if they are quickly transported and placed in a pond or wide trench with water in it, then placed into a trench or hole with 2/3 their length in water. Depending on the time of year, cuttings can start to grow roots or rot if soaked too long; therefore, cuttings need to be planted quickly after a 7-to-14-day soaking period. Our most successful summer cottonwood plantings have been installed with an excavator that digs a hole to groundwater. Excavator planting creates irregular patterns and microtopography. Six or more cottonwood cuttings are placed around the perimeter of the hole into visible groundwater and the hole backfilled. Additional water is pumped into the hole as it is backfilled to ensure good cutting contact with fine sediment washed into the hole during backfilling. If planted during the summer, sprinklers are set up and clusters of cuttings are irrigated until the rainy season or construction ends. Cottonwood cutting handling and planting methods have had the greatest effect on survival. Initially cuttings were not soaked and had a 20 to 40% survival rate; however, when cuttings were soaked, survival rate increased to 60 to 90%. Clusters of cottonwood cuttings planted into late season shallow groundwater has been the most successful method. One or more cuttings are expected to survive in each cluster, with an average post-project survival of 60 to 70% without follow-up maintenance or irrigation. These planting methods, when combined with mechanical lowering of dredger tailings to increase hydrologic connectivity have led to the greatest revegetation survival and tailing …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Steven McNeely Symposium Session: 2023 – 09 – An Open Toolbox: Tools and Assessments to Tackle Complex Questions Topics covered: modeling, sediment transport, and wood ABSTRACTIn streams that support salmonid populations, reservoir operations and other anthropogenic activities reduce the natural supply and transport of gravel and large wood, which adversely impacts habitat quality. In Santa Clara County, California, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, also known as Valley Water, administers the Safe, Clean Water and Natural Flood Protection Program, which includes projects focused on restoring and maintaining populations of the federally threatened Central and South-Central California Coast distinct population segments of steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss). In support of these efforts, AECOM conducted a study of steelhead streams in the county to identify priority locations for spawning gravel and large wood augmentation. We developed GIS workflows to organize and analyze existing spatial data sets to divide the study streams into reaches. Data used to delineate reaches included steam network properties, limits of anadromy, fish functions and values, bed and bank conditions, and FEMA floodplains and floodways. We then prioritized the delineated reaches for spawning gravel and large wood augmentation based on a list of criteria developed in coordination with Valley Water that included 1) source watershed disconnection, 2) remaining source protection, 3) likelihood to improve geomorphic function, 4) proximity to sediment sink, 5) likelihood to improve steelhead habitat, 6) risk of increased flooding, 7) ease of implementation and 8) fish passage impediments. We developed a complex weighted scoring model to produce a reach score for each of these criteria, as well as total reach scores for both spawning gravel and large wood augmentation priority. The weighted scoring model is carried out in GIS using nine hard-coded Python scripts, which can be run directly within ArcMap’s Python command window. Workflow documentation included a step-by-step explanation of all GIS analysis, with references to GIS layers, geoprocessing steps/parameters, and Python scripts to run. This documentation will allow Valley Water to modify any part of the process or update reach prioritization scoring when newer spatial data become available. A similar process of prioritizing stream reaches for spawning gravel and large wood may be useful to stewards of salmonid supporting streams elsewhere on the west coast, including the Pacific …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Michal Tutka Symposium Session: 2023 – 09 – An Open Toolbox: Tools and Assessments to Tackle Complex Questions Topics covered: hydraulics, modeling, and wood ABSTRACTThe design of large wood (LW) is limited by a lack of mechanistic tools for predicting how LW features (e.g. porosity, orientation, frontal area, flow area, wetted perimeter) will affect flow depths and velocities. This project aims to understand how submerged LW features impact flow depths and velocities as well as which LW features have the greatest effect on hydraulic resistance (represented as roughness coefficients, Manning’s n and Darcy f). Analysis involves integrating data derived from structure from motion (SfM) meshes of eight log jams in the Coastal Range, Oregon, USA, with varying channel span, log placement, and orientation with a topographic survey over a range of depth and discharge observations. Analysis is underway – greater drag and higher roughness coefficients are expected at jams with logs oriented orthogonal to the flow, spanning the channel, and/or at low relative submergence due to increased form resistance. Except in cases where channel-spanning logs are encountered with stage, the relative influence of log jams on hydraulic resistance is expected to decay exponentially with degree of submergence. This study aims to provide (1) a more accurate approach to quantifying jam features, (2) insight on the relative importance of physical features on flood depths in natural settings, and (3) practical value for better designing, prioritizing, permitting, and implementing LW …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Matthew Goslin Symposium Session: 2023 – 09 – An Open Toolbox: Tools and Assessments to Tackle Complex Questions Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, lessons learned, passive restoration, and riparian ABSTRACTThe Middle Fork of the John Day River (MFJDR), Oregon, has been the focus of both active and passive restoration efforts since the late 1990s following the establishment of private conservation areas and reforms in U.S. Forest Service cattle grazing management. In the mid-1990s, a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional effort (Oregon State U. & U. Oregon) gathered data on geomorphology, vegetation, and aquatic fauna throughout the MFJDR prior to these management changes. In 2018-2019, a renewed collaborative effort (UO, OSU, Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs) resurveyed these data across the watershed in order to assess long term changes relative to differing restoration strategies. Management classes included a) adaptive grazing (private ranches), b) partial passive restoration (U.S. Forest Service, reduced grazing), c) full passive restoration (conservation areas with grazing removed) and d) passive + active restoration. Survey remeasurements were paired with analysis of historic air photo sequences. Here we present results focused on changes in greenline vegetation and channel planform. Greenline surveys showed a dramatic shift in species composition towards perennial, deep-rooted, hydric sedge communities and away from mesic, grass-dominated communities. In particular, the native riparian sedge, Carex nudata, became the most common species. C. nudata’s dense root system allows it to colonize the edge of formerly bare channel bed and bars, facilitating the expansion of other previously absent riparian species behind it. Aerial imagery analysis showed narrower greenline-to-greenline channel widths and increases in channel complexity metrics, changes consistent with restoration goals. The direction of these changes was similar across management classes but were smallest for the adaptive grazing class and greatest for the full passive restoration and passive + active restoration classes with no difference among these two classes. This study suggests two key messages. 1) While most monitoring efforts have focused on the effectiveness of active restoration projects, the role of passive restoration should be explicitly identified and monitored. In the case presented here, passive restoration was the critical driver of system-wide changes in vegetation as well as geomorphic responses linked to those changes. How particular suites of vegetation could respond to passive restoration should be incorporated within an overall restoration strategy. 2) Whole watershed strategies should not discount the potential contributions of private landowners, and it is critical to include them in the conversations around restoration. While private ranchers in the MFJDR did not have the same stated restoration goals as the conservation areas or public lands, similar changes (of smaller magnitude) were apparent, suggesting that practices may have been evolving in the context of watershed-wide conversations, collaboration, incentives and examples of …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Phil Roni Symposium Session: 2023 – 09 – An Open Toolbox: Tools and Assessments to Tackle Complex Questions Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, fish-salmon, hydraulics, lessons learned, and modeling ABSTRACTThe restoration of floodplain habitats is now one of the most common approaches to restoring a variety of ecological and ecosystem services and increase habitat capacity and recovery for Endangered Species Act (ESA) listed salmon and trout. Restoring floodplains or entire valley bottoms for a reach or valley segment to historically anastomosing channels, often called “Stage 0” or valley bottom restoration, has become increasingly common in the Pacific Northwest of North America. To ensure Stage 0 restoration is successful, applied in the right locations, and not the latest costly watershed restoration technique applied inappropriately, some additional guidance is needed. Therefore, using lessons learned from planning and implementation of valley bottom restoration projects designed in the Grande Ronde River Basin in Northeast Oregon, we outline the key steps and decisions needed to plan, design, implement, and evaluate a successful valley bottom restoration project. We first define Stage 0 channels and restoration, detail how it compares to common channel typing systems, and identify natural anastomosing channels in the Grande Ronde Basin to assist with designing Stage 0 restoration projects. We then discuss how to identify potential sites for valley bottom restoration including historic, current, and potential for Stage 0 channels. Next, we discuss key considerations for project design and implementation including hydraulic modeling, habitat suitability modeling, and other tools that also assist in setting objectives and monitoring and evaluation criteria. Finally, we provide examples of planning, design, monitoring and evaluation of Stage 0 restoration projects to assist with adaptive …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Colin Thorne Symposium Session: 2023 – 08 – Restoration as Risk Reduction: Wildfire Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, climate change, fish-salmon, floodplain, riparian, risk and resilience, wildfire, and wood ABSTRACTThis presentation is directly relevant to river restoration science, as well as being of wider interest to a range of environmental disciplines. It identifies a novel co-benefit of fully-restoring river-floodplain connectivity in anthropogenically-incised streams (a goal which is colloquially termed “restoration to Stage Zero”). Rehydrating the floodplain at base flow is known to alter the behaviour of wildfires that sweep through river valley floors, through replacing a uniformly-severe burn with what is termed a ‘fire mosaic’. Interactions between the habitat mosaics on the floodplain generated by the impacts of (a) flood inundation and (b) fire may generate benefits for biodiversity resilience and recovery, wildfire management, and people who live, work or rely on continued functioning of the river and its floodplain. Broadly, we use the emerging results of an ongoing study of the impacts of Holiday Farm Fire (September 2020) and subsequent post-fire recovery to investigate the hypothesis that pyro-diversity increases biodiversity. The study site is at, and adjacent to, the reach of the South Fork Mckenzie River restored to ‘Stage Zero’ by the US Forest Service, starting in 2018. This is an interdisciplinary effort, drawing on elements of ecology, geomorphology and river science, with strong practical applications. Scientific rigour in our case study is assured by the breadth and depth of the large team of environmental specialists performing the work, which includes both academic and government researchers, as well as the river management and restoration practitioners who are most familiar with the river and its floodplain. Our approach is based on sound principles, best field study practices and appropriate analytical treatments, coupled with cautious interpretation of our results that avoids over-stating our initial conclusions. As the frequency, intensity and extent of both floods and wildfires are expected to increase due to climate change, it is essential that we develop integrated management approaches that leverage the positive environmental and ecological impacts of floods and fires, while minimising their adverse impacts on people, property, and infrastructure. This presentation contributes to advancement of the science and practice of river restoration because at present, the academic literature elucidating interactions between riverine ecosystems and wildfire is limited. Its originality stems from the fact that, to date, no published study has presented a first-hand account comparing and contrasting fire impacts and recovery trajectories in an area of floodplain restored to ‘Stage Zero’ with an otherwise equivalent, unrestored area of the same floodplain. Our study is in its early stages, but its initial findings suggest that flood and fire interactions differ between unrestored and restored floodplains, with the former being more adversely impacted and slower to recover, and the latter less adversely impacted and trending towards increases in biodiversity and resilience. Clearly, our findings must be classed as preliminary and we plan to present them in that spirit, aiming to inform and stimulate a lively discussion at the presentation’s …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Emily Fairfax Symposium Session: 2023 – 08 – Restoration as Risk Reduction: Wildfire Topics covered: beavers, california, climate change, colorado, idaho, mountain west, risk and resilience, and wildfire ABSTRACTMegafires, defined as fires with burn areas greater than 100,000 acres (404.7 square kilometers), are partially the result of increasingly short wet seasons coupled with hotter, drier summers, year after year. Though megafires historically were rare, they have become increasingly common in recent years. These fires pose unique challenges – they have exceptionally fast rates of spread, generate their own self-sustaining weather systems, and can easily cause secondary ignitions in the surrounding landscape via ember spotting and lightning strikes from pyrocumulus clouds. This culminates in an environment where the fire perimeter expands rapidly, posing significant risks to both humans and ecosystems. Large rivers already are utilized as fire breaks in small to medium-sized fires – fire management plans take advantage of the fact that water doesn’t easily burn. Riverscapes, however, include far more than just the river channel itself – they include the floodplains, the wetlands, the wet meadows, the side channels, the subsurface hyporheic zone, and the shallow groundwater systems historically created and maintained by widespread native beaver activity across most river valley bottoms. Beavers, and their innate ecosystem engineering behaviors, are uniquely capable of restoring and rewetting riverscapes even under highly modified and simplified modern stream and river conditions. In this study, we demonstrate that beaver-dammed riverscapes have significantly reduced burn severity compared to both riverscapes without beaver and to the landscape as a whole. Satellite-derived quantitative dNBR burn severity data are included in these analyses, as well as false color mapping and visual inspection of aerial imagery and on-ground photographs as qualitative lines of evidence. Our results indicate that riverscapes with a high degree of landscape manipulation by beavers have robust resistance to burning during wildfire, which may provide valuable secondary benefits in ecosystem health, water quality, and biodiversity post-fire as …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Natalie Collar Symposium Session: 2023 – 08 – Restoration as Risk Reduction: Wildfire Topics covered: california, colorado, groundwater, idaho, modeling, mountain west, risk and resilience, stream, and wildfire ABSTRACTThe impact of wildfire on water availability and stream function are critical issues in the western United States. Because actual evapotranspiration (ETa) constitutes the largest loss in the terrestrial water budget, it has been suggested that fire-induced ETa reductions are primary drivers of the modified runoff response often observed in and downstream of burn scars. To evaluate this, ten gaged watersheds with burns exceeding 5% of their total contributing drainage areas were selected from California, Oregon, Montana, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. Discharge data were compiled and gridded 30-meter ETa estimates were generated with the Operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEBop) model. Fire-induced ETa shifts were quantified with statistical tests that compared pre and post-fire monthly ETa in burned and unburned pixels. Because streamflow data are point measurements that aggregate a large spatial area, additional statistical methods were required to isolate the effect of fire from climate on baseflow and runoff. This talk will present the key takeaways most relevant to stream restoration practitioners. First, fire-induced streamflow shifts were seasonably variable. This means that annual time series likely mask or dilute the most acute effects of landscape disturbances on streamflow magnitude and timing and as such, restoration engineers should carefully consider the time-step of any post-disturbance hydrologic time series used to inform design. Second, where fire-induced streamflow increased significantly, surplus water from ETa reductions was sufficient to account for increased discharge volumes. However some basins experienced fire-induced ETa reductions and no detectable shift in streamflow, suggesting compensatory uptake pathways may have consumed the excess water before it reached the gage. We show that by understanding where and how compensatory uptake pathways develop (e.g., the position of intact vegetation relative to the disturbed area) or what constrains it (e.g., whether basin ETa flux is energy or water-limited), practitioners can better predict how their watersheds may respond to future hydroclimatic or landscape disturbances. Finally, when recharge/runoff generation zones were observed along elevation gradients, drought and wildfire caused zones to contract and expand in similar manners. This suggests that burn scar hydrology may provide insight into potential future states and better position stream restoration efforts for …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Brian Bartell Symposium Session: 2023 – 08 – Restoration as Risk Reduction: Wildfire Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, california, climate change, fish-salmon, flood, lessons learned, riparian, risk and resilience, wildfire, and wood ABSTRACTHundreds of millions of dollars are spent each year on restoration of rivers, creeks, floodplains, wetlands, grasslands, forests, and riparian areas along the west coast. At the same time, larger and hotter fires are becoming more and more common across the region. When the two overlap, project proponents can find themselves in complicated situations. While frequent, low-intensity fire is an important component of natural ecosystem health, the high-intensity and large-scale fires that are now common pose adverse considerations. Wildfire may severely diminish the expected performance and/or delay the achievement of restoration goals at a site or throughout watersheds. Direct damages and secondary hazards after fires can create hazards and liabilities that present serious financial burdens or be physically infeasible to repair. Restoration designers, project owners and funders, land managers and regulators must prepare for the eventuality that even well-planned, thoughtfully designed and expertly implemented restoration projects will interact with wildfire. Our presentation will review several examples of the impacts of and responses to wildfire on riverine and riparian project sites in California including both direct and secondary impacts. We will address both voluntary and compulsory restoration (e.g., mitigation) cases, which can have distinct financial, temporal, and outcome metric issues. We will draw on those examples and discuss potential impacts of damaging wildfire to both form- and process-based design efforts and the importance of including climate change adaptation goals and objectives in defining project success. One example we will present is the Upper York Creek Dam Removal and Ecosystem Restoration project site which burned in the Glass Fire during construction. The post-fire response included repairs to large woody debris (LWD) structures and modified approaches to revegetation, erosion control, invasive species management and site maintenance. Long-term post fire monitoring has shown larger than expected amounts of woody debris travelling though the creek system from the fire-impacted watershed, heightening the importance of post-storm hazard monitoring for this process-based restoration. We will also highlight secondary impacts from fire equipment at the Soquel Canyon Mitigation Bank in Southern California and the factors that were considered in determining appropriate remedial actions in riparian and upland areas. The conflict between ecological uplift and fire wise planning can be challenging to implement, and we will use examples to show how the effects of fire can be mitigated in the planning, design, and maintenance phases of a project. A discussion of key adaptive management needs, strategic, tactical, and financial will be included to help buffer the uncertainty of wildfire effects during or following …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Chris Sturm Symposium Session: 2023 – 08 – Restoration as Risk Reduction: Wildfire Topics covered: climate change, colorado, community involvement, drought, flood, mountain west, risk and resilience, and wildfire ABSTRACTThe Colorado Water Conservation Board, an agency within Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, has developed a strategy and program that provides a proactive approach to address post wildfire impacts. Impacts are defined as risks posed by post wildfire hazards to community values such as water supplies, life and property, and transportation corridors. Common post fire hazards include increased runoff, debris flows, hillslope erosion, water quality impairments, flooding, and associated sediment erosion and deposition. The mission of the program is to assess the susceptibility of Colorado’s water resources, communities, and critical infrastructure to post-wildfire impacts and advance a framework for communities to plan and implement mitigation strategies to minimize these impacts – before wildfires occur. The program has a two-part focus: (1) a statewide post-fire susceptibility analysis and (2) a framework that communities can use to perform watershed scale planning to address post fire hazards. The susceptibility analysis is composed of several phases; data collection, data development, analysis, mapping, and reporting. This effort relies on existing and new statewide datasets for critical water supplies, populations at risk, aquatic species habitat, and other infrastructure layers. The data is used to perform a susceptibility analysis that intersects post wildfire hazards with known values at risk to determine impacts to life & safety, infrastructure, habitat, and property. This serves to further an understanding of which watersheds will be most susceptible to post wildfire impacts and where community stakeholders should focus their efforts in their wildfire mitigation efforts. The framework further describes and provides guidance on how to refine the susceptibility evaluations for local communities to utilize at smaller watershed scales. It serves as a guide for best planning practices in advance of a wildfire and supports post-fire mitigation strategies. This includes data collection and GIS preparedness, permitting and compliance, stakeholder development, hazard analysis and evaluations, engineering/modeling, pre and post fire management actions, design, and construction. Design and construction will include project types that can be implemented before and after wildfire. Historically, many projects implemented after a fire are for immediate protection of life, property, and water supplies and have limited success as they are treating point of impact problems with little regard to watershed health or stream function. Projects constructed before fire provide the same or better protections while also addressing multiple objectives in watershed health and water supply protection. These project types are designed to protect and enhance ecosystem structure and function within the watershed drainage network. Most implementation strategies will involve a mosaic of different project types employed across the …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Vaughn Collins Symposium Session: 2023 – 07 – Restoration as Risk Reduction: Flooding Topics covered: climate change, community involvement, flood, floodplain, lessons learned, and risk and resilience ABSTRACTMany restoration projects involve removal or modification of infrastructure such as roads and levees, due to the ecological impacts of these structures. Many of these structures, even when intended for flood control, increase flood risk on adjacent areas due lack of holistic analysis, changes in land use, and ad-hoc construction over many decades. As a result, it is not uncommon for restoration projects to claim tangential flood risk reduction benefits. Less common, however, is when a focused flood risk reduction study driven by damages to infrastructure and developed areas leads to selection of large-scale habitat restoration as the preferred alternative. Additionally, many restoration projects have ecologically based post-construction monitoring studies conducted, but rarely do these studies validate any expected flood risk reduction benefits. Two projects on the north Oregon Coast initiated to address highway flooding and economic flood damages serve as examples of restoration projects being constructed with flood mitigation as a primary objective, and where post-construction analysis and monitoring validated the expected flood risk reduction. The first project addressed chronic flooding of Highway 101 near Seaside that led to repeated roadway closures every winter. An alternatives analysis showed that structural solutions such as road elevation were far more expensive than implementing floodplain restoration on 300 acres of land across the river from the highway. Hydraulic modeling in the design phase was used to estimate reduction in flood levels and roadway inundation times: post-construction monitoring and modeling validated this analysis. In the second project, an alternatives analysis showed that large scale restoration of over 500 acres —well beyond that contemplated in prior studies—provided the best flood mitigation benefits for Highway 101 and thousands of acres of adjacent farm and urban lands in Tillamook. A rigorous benefit-cost analysis was used to justify award of $3.5 million in FEMA hazard mitigation funds based purely on flood mitigation benefits. As part of an extensive pre- and post-construction monitoring program, the flood level reduction benefits have been validated through modeling and analysis. These two projects provide examples of how past floodplain development has exacerbated flood risk and how restoration projects can provide significant and quantifiable risk reduction in addition to ecological …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Derek Booth Symposium Session: 2023 – 07 – Restoration as Risk Reduction: Flooding Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, lessons learned, riparian, and wood ABSTRACTKing County (Washington State) has undertaken a variety of large-river restoration projects for over a decade, with an associated commitment to monitor their performance over time and draw lessons for future project designs, here and throughout the greater Pacific Northwest. A retrospective evaluation of six such projects, from 1 to 13 years post-construction, has yielded the following generalized findings: The geomorphic responses to a restoration project do not depend only on the specific actions taken at the site. They also express: Geomorphic context, at the spatial scales of the valley and the entire watershed; Historical context, such as the prior disconnection of historical floodplains due to anthropogenically induced channel incision; Hydrologic context, particularly the size and sequencing of geomorphically “significant” flows (that may or may not align with preestablished post-project monitoring schedules); Other stochastic conditions and events, particularly the accumulation of large wood with the potential to create or initiate channel-shifting log jams; Other reach-scale conditions not affected by the project, such as the continued presence of fixed bridge openings or adjacent levees. Regardless of contextual differences, channel widening and associated channel shallowing is a near-ubiquitous response to levee removal. Edge habitat (i.e., the shallow, low-velocity habitats formed adjacent to bar, bank, backwater, and side channel units) generally increases, reflecting the release of lateral constraints and resulting greater morphologic heterogeneity of the channel. Occupation of side channels through a newly accessible floodplain is readily achieved as a simple function of grading and invert elevations. Substantial flow capture and/or full avulsion, however, does not typically occur without associated flow diversions (e.g., using in-channel engineered log jams). Downstream effects of typical-scale projects (100s to 1000s of feet) are generally not discernable, but onsite ecological improvements are broadly significant, measurable, and accrue from the variety of project elements: increased inundation area, invasive plant removal and native riparian plantings, imported LWD, and reduced geomorphic …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Steve Winter Symposium Session: 2023 – 07 – Restoration as Risk Reduction: Flooding Topics covered: flood, floodplain, risk and resilience, sediment transport, and urban ABSTRACTThe City of Sumner is advancing a 200-acre floodplain restoration project as the first step to create a new river corridor through the heart of the City, reversing a century-long trend of channel simplification and floodplain development. The Lower White River is one of the most modified in western Washington, including an avulsion to a different watershed, widespread channelization and bank hardening, numerous flow diversions, and gravel mining to address rapid aggradation. The Lower White River is home to many aquatic species, including three salmonid species on the Endangered Species List. The Lower White’s floodplain has been designated one of the state’s Manufacturing and Industrial Center to focus development in this area to take advantage of key shipping corridors. These divergent characteristics lead to the City’s overall goal to “Provide enduring flood protection for Sumner, while creating sustainable instream, floodplain, and wetland habitats in the Lower White River.” This is a story of the City’s dedication to building partnerships across Tribal and non-tribal governments, and national transportation and business sectors to embrace a different future for the Lower White River. The City set out an intentional process to build a collective vision for the White River by forming a Dialogue Group to bring together stakeholders and provide a venue to work out differences of opinion. Luckily, the early meetings happened in the police station, which helped with dispute resolution. Geomorphic and hydraulic analysis identified all the pitfalls of urban restoration – old floodplain maps, persistent overbank flow paths, complex property ownership, profound scour depths, water rights, and shallow utilities. In addition, the City is advancing the project in partnership with BNSF railroad, which added momentum to the project and increased the scope of the earthwork but added complexity to coordination and permitting. Working through these elements takes perseverance and a positive and forward thinking group dynamic in the Dialogue Group as fostered by the City. A general lesson from the design effort is that expectations for urban floodplain restoration need to be developed with a clear view of how the site is situated in the landscape and therefore its potential to influence floods. Floodplains and channels are the cumulative product that everything that has ever happened to them natural or anthropogenic, so it is incredibly difficult to apply general rules of thumb for the influence of floodplain restoration on flooding. The White River Restoration Project will lower water surface elevations, but does not solve all flooding issues off into the future. Understanding and embracing the limitations of the site are a key aspect of this work. By working together, the Dialogue Group was able to acknowledge and accept that the project will not solve every problem, but will establish a much more functional river corridor with space to adapt to future conditions and will meet multiple …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Alex Lincoln Symposium Session: 2023 – 07 – Restoration as Risk Reduction: Flooding Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, fish-salmon, flood, floodplain, geology, lessons learned, risk and resilience, sediment transport, and urban ABSTRACTIn 2009, extensive flooding on the White River impacted homes and caused flood damage in the City of Pacific, Washington. Following this flood event, the Countyline Levee Setback project was completed in 2017; this multi-benefit project reconnected 120 acres of historical floodplain to reduce flood risk for hundreds of residential and business properties in the City of Pacific and also restore habitat for three species of ESA-listed salmonids, including White River spring Chinook. It is the largest levee setback project completed to date by the King County Flood Control District. In the five years following floodplain reconnection, ongoing effectiveness monitoring is showing the physical, biological and flood risk reduction response to project actions. Using high-density LiDAR, bathymetric survey and cross-sections, aerial imagery, stage gages, and field surveys of large wood, vegetation, low-velocity aquatic habitat, and juvenile salmonid abundance, we have documented the ongoing transformation of this reach of the lower White River. The previously single-thread, confined mainstem river channel has become an evolving multi-thread (anastomosing) system, doubling the length of the pre-project channel. Mainstem water surface elevation at high flow decreased post-implementation, indicating reduced flood risk, and patterns of sediment deposition in the reach continue to influence flow patterns as the reach adjusts. Habitat improvements have also been observed; low-velocity edge habitat critical for juvenile salmonid rearing has increased substantially, juvenile salmonids including Chinook and coho have reoccupied the formerly isolated floodplain, and over 60,000 installed native plants have become established in addition to robust natural recruitment of native vegetation. Project monitoring will continue through 2028 to assess whether project goals are achieved, report on performance standards, inform design of future capital projects, and guide potential adaptive management …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Brandon Parsons Symposium Session: 2023 – 07 – Restoration as Risk Reduction: Flooding Topics covered: flood, lessons learned, and urban ABSTRACTFloodplain restoration has proven to reduce flood risk, increase ecosystem services and has the potential to create high quality public space which can drive economic growth. However, local decision makers are often unaware of these benefits and their contribution to community revenue and budgets. This talk presents new research to clarify the economic outcomes of urban floodplain restoration and provide tools to help restoration practitioners more effectively communicate outcomes to decision makers with the goal of informing new plans, policies, and funding mechanisms intended to drive floodplain restoration at scale. Over the last three years, we have compiled quantitative research from a national literature review, developed original case studies in Puget Sound and interviewed community leaders on the outcomes of urban floodplain restoration. Our findings show that restoring floodplains and promoting economic activity are not mutually exclusive and that floodplain restoration can yield positive net economic impacts in the form of avoided costs of flooding, increased job creation and business development, additional tax revenue, and provide a valuable community amenity. Positive impacts become more pronounced when projects are designed to include multiple benefits integrated across a corridor or watershed. Our research has been used to inform new integrated floodplain management policies and large-scale planning efforts such as the Lower Green River Flood Hazard Management Plan and the Chehalis Basin Strategy’s Local Actions Non-Dam Alternative …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Guillaume Mauger Symposium Session: 2023 – 00 Invited Speakers Topics covered: climate change, drought, fish-salmon, flood, and modeling ABSTRACTClimate Change and Rivers in the Pacific Northwest: What does it mean and what can you do about …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Kate Fitzpatrick Symposium Session: 2023 – 05 Restoration as Risk Reduction: Climate Resilience Topics covered: climate change, drought, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, flow augmentation, and traditional ecological knowledge ABSTRACTWater is the base element of functioning river systems, yet tools and methods to restore streamflows to dewatered and hydrologically-altered streams, prevalent in the arid west, can remain opaque or inaccessible to many. Generally, restoring streamflows requires an intensive knowledge of water rights, water policy, and law alongside the ability to build deep relationships and negotiate deals with those who have the rights to use water in these systems. This presentation will illustrate several examples that integrate flow restoration into physical habitat projects to optimize the benefits for fish, wildlife, water quality, and river geomorphology. These examples, ranging from site-specific projects and reach-scale work to basin-wide flow restoration in the Deschutes Basin will show what tools may be available to restoration practitioners trying to put the ‘hydrology’ back in ‘hydrologic function.’ The presentation will also touch on how flow work necessarily integrates with the disciplines of hydrology, biology, water quality, and physical geomorphology, along with the relevant water policy, cultural, and economic …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Justin Bezold Symposium Session: 2023 – 05 Restoration as Risk Reduction: Climate Resilience Topics covered: drought, flow augmentation, and risk and resilience ABSTRACTIn Washington’s Yakima Basin, water has been a source of conflict due to competing demands. The Yakima Basin Integrated Plan offers a collaborative approach to resolve conflicts and advance habitat protection and restoration, including streamflows, for future generations. Local flow restoration practitioners have used traditional streamflow projects (e.g., water right leases and purchases, irrigation efficiencies) for over 20 years to successfully improve streamflows. However, as the competition and demand for flows is projected to change due to climate change, a market-based multi-benefit approach also carries potential to improve streamflows and provide water for out-of-stream uses via a smart market. A recently completed Yakima Basin water market report, funded by the US Bureau of Reclamation and Washington Department of Ecology, presents a smart water market strategy that can improve short-term (<5 years) water transfers in years of scarcity. The proposed strategy includes a framework for how environmental buyers can participate in and leverage a market for consumptive uses of water. These transfers have the potential to improve tributary flows for environmental purposes, at a fraction of the cost, while also helping ensure water is available for out-of-stream uses, such as agriculture. The strategy, in addition to ongoing traditional and non-traditional streamflow restoration efforts, provides another tool for flow restoration practitioners to consider to improve streamflows and restore ecosystems faced with climate change and increasing demands for limited water …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Erica Gies Symposium Session: 2023 – 00 Invited Speakers Topics covered: _other ABSTRACT“Slow Water” Movement Is Harnessing the Power of Systems to Protect Us from Droughts and …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Roy Iwai Symposium Session: 2023 – 00 Invited Speakers Topics covered: environmental justice and equity and inclusion ABSTRACTConnection, Disconnection, and Reconnection: Sharing cultural values in a clean water outreach …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Luke Tillmann Symposium Session: 2023 – 05 Restoration as Risk Reduction: Climate Resilience Topics covered: climate change, flood, floodplain, groundwater, hydraulics, and modeling ABSTRACTIn riverine ecosystems throughout the Western United States, the convergence of water scarcity, competing land use priorities, climate change, and aging flood infrastructure requires urgent solutions to simultaneously sustain ecosystem functions, address flood risk, and secure water for agricultural use. Floodplain rehabilitation opportunities can be identified, prioritized, and designed to increase naturally occurring groundwater recharge leading to many benefits including aquifer replenishment, climate resilience, flood-risk reduction, and ecosystem enhancement. Ecological Floodplain Inundation Potential (EcoFIP) is a methodology and toolbox that facilitates multiple levels of identification, screening, and evaluation of multi-objective floodplain rehabilitation projects. EcoFIP leverages topographic data, hydrology, hydraulic modeling, soil characteristics, and groundwater data to estimate changes in ecosystem benefits resulting from physical alterations to river corridors (e.g., floodplain lowering, levee setbacks, revegetation) and changes in flow conditions (e.g., climate change, reservoir reoperation). EcoFIP can estimate these benefits at macro (river reach) and micro (site-level) scales, enabling evaluation of the ecological characteristics of any boundary of interest for various historical or potential flow regimes. These gains can be reported in metrics such as acre-days of inundated floodplain area, acre-days of suitable floodplain habitat (for salmonids or other species), and groundwater recharge volumes summarized over a range of water years. Using a computationally efficient architecture, EcoFIP solves the problem of needing to run time-intensive hydraulic simulations to quantify ecohydrological outcomes of different long-term hydrogeomorphic scenarios. A case study applies EcoFIP to assess a 50-mile reach of the Upper San Joaquin River between Friant Dam and Chowchilla Bifurcation Structure, in support of the California Department of Water Resources’ Central Valley Flood Protection Plan and Conservation Strategy. The analysis is evaluating current and future flow regimes with the goal of identifying potential multi-objective floodplain rehabilitation sites, that provide high-quality salmonid habitat, and maximize groundwater recharge from floodplain …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Aaron Kopp Symposium Session: 2023 – 05 Restoration as Risk Reduction: Climate Resilience Topics covered: climate change, fish-salmon, flood, floodplain, hydraulics, modeling, and risk and resilience ABSTRACTA flood hazard risk study was conducted on the Lower Skykomish River. The study provided not only the assessment of flood hazards but also the integration of fish habitat improvements with flood risk reduction. The intent is to offer a new approach to river management and floodplain land uses that is more sustainable, both economically and ecologically, than traditional river training. Our work will identify the locations where project actions would be the most effective, and least costly approach to flood risk reduction, climate change resilience, and restoration of ecosystems in a 50-year time frame. The unique aspect of this study is that we’ve taken the projected climate change increases from the hydrologic analysis and promulgated those through the detailed hydraulic analysis and then used that to inform geomorphic and risk assessments, all on a very broad scale of the Lower Skykomish River (river miles 23 to 0). As a second step, we are currently conducting a vulnerability assessment and cost/benefit analysis of three basic alternatives (status quo O&M, levee breach, levee setback or similar). The study provided a comprehensive summary of the recent projections on the hydrology and geomorphology of the Lower Skykomish River. Predictions emphasize future increases in peak flows, particularly in the 2- to 10-year frequency range (Mauger et al. 2018). The magnitude of these discharges is sufficiently large, and their recurrences sufficiently frequent, that they typically have the greatest influence on sediment transport and channel geomorphology. Their increase implies a future with more dynamic channel processes, with greater rates of bank erosion, wood recruitment, and sediment erosion and deposition. These impending changes, however, make quantitative prediction of long-term rates of channel change infeasible because our understanding of these rates is based solely on the historical record. A future that diverges from that record will be novel, and without precedent. It will present an even greater challenge to management of flood hazards in the valley, because larger flows will occur more frequently, but it also implies that those restoration actions specifically implemented to enhance channel processes are likely to become even more effective and beneficial over time. The results showed that in the Pacific Northwest, climate change is expected to impact flooding via three primary mechanisms: sea level rise, more intense heavy rains, and reduced snowpack. Peak flows are expected to increase by 10% by the 2050s. The hydraulic analysis showed that this will correspond to an approximate 1-foot increase in Lower Skykomish in 10-year flood depth by 2050s and 1.4 feet in 2080s. Specific leveed areas, particularly adjacent to Haskel and Riley sloughs near Monroe, WA will experience more significant overtopping and greater inundation with projected climate …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Sarah Koenigsberg Symposium Session: 2023 – 04 Cultural Values and Inclusion: Walking the Talk Topics covered: _other, climate change, community involvement, equity and inclusion, and lessons learned ABSTRACTAsk yourself: do you feel it’s more important for you to be right or to be effective? Climate change is upon us and our riverscapes desperately need landscape scale restoration and climate adaptation now. And yet, in our increasingly polarized society, far too many well-intentioned scientists and practitioners are unknowingly self-sabotaging their efforts, alienating potential project partners with triggering terminology or sloppy semantics, isolating themselves through ideological absolutism. But if we want to be successful at pushing through the restoration work that we know needs doing, we just prove that we’re right, right? Wrong. Though the data-driven among us may with otherwise, in our complex, emotional world things aren’t guaranteed to happen just because “the science says so.” Things happen––we become effective––when we learn to listen and observe, to identify common ground, and to employ intentional communication that empowers everyone to move forward together. Restoration isn’t a one-off, it’s a relationship. This humorous yet brutally honest talk will explore actionable tactics for better communication that are relevant across the riverscape restoration community. It will highlight a leadership and project management model of purpose-driven intentionality, and share how that lens effectively promotes self reflection, prioritizes an assessment of our stakeholders’ worldviews, and brings common goals and opportunity into focus. Deep down we all want to be the good guy, the hero of our personal narrative. The marketing world has long been capitalizing upon the power of social science to craft its sales pitch; it’s high time our world of stewardship caught up. Weaving together insights from science communication experts such as Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Bobette Buster, and Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, and building upon the climate adaptation framework of renowned institutions such as EcoAdapt and The University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group, these concepts will be brought into tangible context, grounding them in real world examples from beaver-based and process-based restoration projects across the Pacific and Intermountain West. Successes, surprises, and snafus galore, these reflections will help you view your own restoration goals and strategies in a new light. We’ll close by sharing a step by step process to identify and evaluate your own communication patterns, disfluencies, vocal inflections, and wonky jargon, and offer suggestions for how to gain more control over what pops out of your mouth when the pressure turns on. If we’re going to make a meaningful difference for climate adaptation, wildfire resilience, water security, floodplain reconnection, ecological uplift, and salmon and steelhead recovery, we must increase the pace, scale, and efficacy of riverscape restoration. Whatever your professional experience to date––high-tech or low-tech, adaptive management or engineered design––wrangling control of your own communication is a powerful step towards increasing your effectiveness on the …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Matthew Baerwalde Symposium Session: 2023 – 04 Cultural Values and Inclusion: Walking the Talk Topics covered: community involvement, equity and inclusion, fish-salmon, flood, floodplain, and risk and resilience ABSTRACTIn the Snoqualmie River Valley, there are clear areas of overlap between sacred places and areas planned for urban growth, where good relationships and respectful land and water use management decisions will sustain the long-term health of the river and all residents of the Upper Snoqualmie Valley. The Snoqualmie Tribe’s Resilient River Corridor Management Plan shows the state of natural processes of the Upper Snoqualmie River Valley as they were in the past, as they are today, and will be in the future and makes recommendations for changes to support a river corridor that is more resilient in regard to climate change. As a technical team of scientists gathered data to inform and fill gaps for the report section of this plan, others on the project team engaged and heard from the Snoqualmie Tribal community in particular, and the broader community at large, about what their experiences with the river are, what is important to them and their relationship to the Snoqualmie River, and how they think it will change in the future. The Snoqualmie Tribe’s holistic, multi-disciplinary approach to resilient river restoration of the Upper Snoqualmie River serves as an important new example of a locally led effort to achieve environmental returns on multiple spatial and temporal scales, emphasizing the importance and benefits of traditional ecological knowledge and long-term relationship with place. Our project’s extensive outreach process included surveys and small group interviews, but this outreach is also ongoing. One key finding was that tribal members find access to the river to be extremely challenging. As the plan is shared with the community, an ongoing grassroots conversation around resilient river management continues. Likewise, the Technical Team assessed the current state of river and floodplain processes in the project reach, and how these processes affect water quality, water quantity, floodplain function, and in-stream aquatic habitat, which all helps to inform our conversations. In addition to reporting on what was heard from the community, as well as the results of the scientific assessment, the Upper Snoqualmie Resilient River Corridor Management Plan is also designed to communicate to county and city river and managers that a more holistic approach is needed to respond to the constantly changing river environment, as these entities own and manage much of the land along the Upper Snoqualmie River. The plan is intended to be a conversation starter. The Upper Snoqualmie Resilient River Corridor Management Plan proposes 22 recommendations for restoration and activities to reconnect the floodplain along the different reaches of the planning area, as well as reunite people as stewards of the river. We intend for the plan to serve as a community knowledge source and discussion tool, and to invite everyone into the process. And, we hope that it promotes a collective understanding of a resilient river for …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Skuyler Herzog Symposium Session: 2023 – 03 Water Quality Considered in Restoration Design & Watershed Management Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, groundwater, lessons learned, temperature, urban, water quality, and wood ABSTRACTWater quality is a common motivation or ancillary benefit of stream restoration, but many projects fail to meet performance expectations. Such projects restore the hydrologic form of a river without also generating the desired hydrologic functions. Much of the self-purification capacity of streams is located in the saturated streambed sediments comprising the hyporheic zone, which is a natural bioreactor known as a “river’s liver”. Thus, poor water quality performance in stream restoration is often the result of improper hyporheic conditions beneath a project. Specifically, water quality performance will suffer if there is not enough water flowing through the saturated sediments beneath a structure, or if water moves through the sediments too quickly and returns to a river before pollutants are fully removed. Unfortunately, there is a design-to-function knowledge gap regarding how stream restoration structures can be optimized to maximize water quality functions. Here I synthesize results from a decade of study on hyporheic restoration for water quality benefits, spanning full-scale restoration projects, controlled flume experiments, and computer models. Restoration structures using surface elements (e.g., weir, plunge pool) and subsurface elements (e.g., baffle plates, hyporheic caps) can effectively tailor the amount of hyporheic exchange flow passing beneath the structure while also controlling the amount of treatment time. For example, treatment times may be shorter for fast or aerobic reactions (e.g., nitrification), or longer for slower or anaerobic reactions (e.g., denitrification). Results show that high flux, long transit time hyporheic flowpaths can be created under restoration structures with some combination of upstream baffle plates, longer hyporheic caps, and deeper or wider streambeds of more permeable, and more porous, material. The ideal dimensions of surface elements depend on specific water quality goals, with taller structures favored for faster or aerobic reactions, and shorter structures favored for slower or anaerobic reactions. These design concepts can improve pollutant removal many times greater than standard practices, particularly for anaerobic reactions. Indeed, results show that many common structures fail to produce any measurable anaerobic reactions, but the relatively minor design modifications described above can improve anaerobic reaction performance. Specific results depend on reactions of interest and local conditions, but restoration structures may be optimized for removal of any one pollutant (e.g., nitrate, 6-PPD quinone) or a suite of pollutants common in human-dominated watersheds. These conceptual designs are common across multiple kinds of restoration structures, such as plunge pools, weirs, and beaver dam analogues. Thus, how a structure is built may be more important than what kind of structure is built. Results are placed in the context of restored hyporheic zones along Thornton Creek (Seattle, WA) to show how ongoing design optimizations may further improve water quality outcomes of …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Katie Holzer Symposium Session: 2023 – 03 Water Quality Considered in Restoration Design & Watershed Management Topics covered: amphibians, beavers, fish passage, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), urban, and water quality ABSTRACTBeaver populations have been returning to urban watersheds in the Pacific Northwest, bringing with them both benefits and challenges. To better understand the effects on local watersheds, we conducted several studies of beaver activities within the city of Gresham, Oregon. We looked at pollutant removal efficiencies in a large stormwater treatment wetland with and without beaver activity, assessed the effect of beaver dams on stream temperatures, and documented the physical and biological changes to stream channels near dams. We found that pollutants of concern were generally removed more efficiently when beaver dams were present in the treatment wetlands. This is likely due to the water being filtered through the dams which are repaired after each storm. The effects of dams on stream temperatures varied depending on site characteristics, but all dams created ponds with temperature heterogeneity and stratification. Dams on higher order streams sometimes reduced overall stream temperature by pulling water from the entire stratified water column and increasing hyporheic flow. Within just a few years of beaver activity, several sites experienced increased stream complexity with new gravel bars, side channels, and braided streams. We also found increased macroinvertebrate diversity in the relatively sediment-free cobbles downstream of dams. These findings demonstrate multiple benefits of beavers in urban watersheds. After communicating these benefits to stakeholders, we have been working with beaver experts to adapt our systems to find ways to protect infrastructure while coexisting with beavers through targeted use of technologies such as pond levelers, culvert fencing, and tree …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Ken Vigil Symposium Session: 2023 – 03 Water Quality Considered in Restoration Design & Watershed Management Topics covered: lessons learned, stormwater, temperature, urban, and water quality ABSTRACTMany of our restoration efforts in the Northwest and beyond are focused on fish (salmonids, in particular) and their habitat. However, one of the key habitat elements for fish and other aquatic organisms (the quality of their waters) is often overlooked. This presentation introduces some of the most important aspects of water quality/chemistry and the effects of climate change and restoration efforts on water quality conditions. The physical, chemical, and biological properties of water are defined by water quality parameters such as temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand, bacteria, solids, metals, and toxics; and these parameters are regulated by key water quality regulations like the Federal Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. The author will summarize key parameters and regulations to provide a foundation and vocabulary for the discussion. He will describe some of the water quality aspects of climate change. For example, global warming is increasing the temperature of fresh and marine waters, which is dramatically affecting water chemistry; and wildfires are causing significant degradation to water quality. The bulk of the talk will include practical examples of water quality considerations on restoration projects in the Pacific Northwest. The presenter will put water quality in perspective for restoration professionals by discussing many of the topics listed below (as time allows) based on past and ongoing projects, and decades of experience. Water surface area considerations for temperature Providing additional shading through planting and large wood design Water depths in restoration The importance of alkalinity in pH buffering Aeration in restoration for dissolved oxygen Side slope design for excavation areas Sediment and turbidity management during construction and after Pollutant removal mechanisms in restoration (biodegradation, filtration, sorption, sedimentation) The impact of temperature, nutrients, and algae on pH fluctuations Marine and fresh water chemistry changes due to climate change (temperature, carbon dioxide, alkalinity) Riparian buffers for water quality control Mitigating water quality impacts from …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Lydia Staisch Symposium Session: 2023 – 01 Exploring Deep Geologic Time and Relevance to River Processes Topics covered: geology, idaho, mountain west, and outside PNW ABSTRACTThe details and mechanisms for Neogene river reorganization in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountains have been debated for over a century, with key implications on how tectonic and volcanic systems modulate topographic development and how aquatic biota respond to basin isolation and drainage reorganization. To evaluate paleo-drainage networks, we produced an expansive dataset and provenance analysis of detrital zircon U-Pb ages from Miocene to Pleistocene fluvial strata along proposed proto-Snake and Columbia River pathways. Statistical comparisons of Miocene-Pliocene detrital zircon spectra do not support previously hypothesized drainage routes of the Snake River. We use detrital zircon unmixing models to test prior Snake River routes against a newly hypothesized route, in which the Snake River circumnavigated the northern Rocky Mountains and entered the Columbia Basin from the northeast prior to incision of the Hells Canyon. Our proposed ancestral Snake River route best matches detrital zircon age spectra throughout the region. Furthermore, our newly proposed route satisfies and provides context for shifts in the sedimentology and fish faunal assemblages of the western Snake River Plain and Columbia Basin through Miocene – Pliocene time. We posit that eastward migration of the Yellowstone Hotspot and its effect on thermally induced buoyancy and topographic uplift, coupled with volcanic densification of the eastern SRP lithosphere, are largely the cause for drainage reorganization, and that the eastern and western SRP were isolated from one another until the early Pliocene. Following this basin integration, the substantial increase in drainage area to the western Snake River Plain likely overtopped a bedrock sill that previously contained Lake Idaho, leading to incision of Hells Canyon and establishment of the modern Snake and Columbia drainage network. Data and interpretations underlying this presentation are available at …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Alexa Whipple Symposium Session: 2023 – 02 One Species to Restore them All: Beaver-based Watershed Restoration Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, beavers, colorado, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, floodplain, lessons learned, mountain west, and wildfire ABSTRACTRiverscapes in North America were formed and maintained by the broad influence of hydrology, geology, and biology, but one biological organism is regarded as having influenced this biodiversity building triad more than any other… beavers, a quintessential keystone species. Most North American riverscapes are now degraded following the historical extirpation of beavers and subsequent land use conversion following the fur trade. There is growing recognition and appreciation of beavers as masters in creating, maintaining, and restoring complex riverscapes for their own benefit, while also benefiting people, biodiversity, and climate resilience. However, in many places, beaver populations aren’t making much headway reestablishing in degraded riverscapes and human dominated environments on their own, even 200 years after the collapse of the nation building yet ecologically disastrous fur trade. Could Beavers fare better with our help? Partnering with beavers to rebuild functional, sustaining and resilient riverscapes is a simple and ecologically proven concept but requires a different way of thinking, outside the box of traditional river restoration approaches including static, reach-based project design and economically driven endangered species recovery. Instead, we demonstrate the need and practice of ushering in the broader sustainable management of complexity relating to the restoration of watershed scale natural processes, prioritizing ecosystem resilience and adaptation, modernizing critical keystone species management, and reconnecting social values with ecological sustainability. Alexa and Mark explore and highlight the practical aspects and challenges, successes and pitfalls of restoring sustainable riverscapes by partnering with beavers and people in Washington and Colorado Watersheds. Sharing knowledge and experience leads to accelerated adoption and adaptation so please bring your questions and projects to share during the Q&A and …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Jennifer Weddle Symposium Session: 2023 – 02 One Species to Restore them All: Beaver-based Watershed Restoration Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, beavers, floodplain, lessons learned, and wetlands ABSTRACTThe Triple Creek Wetland Restoration Project (the Project), located near Chesaw, WA, is intended to restore a functional and diverse ecosystem in the wetland formed near the confluences of Myers, Thorp, and Bolster Creeks. Historically, a series of beaver ponds on and near the project site slowed and stored water high in the watershed and supported diverse flora and fauna. In the late 1990s, a rain-on-snow flood event deeply incised Myers Creek (up to 15 feet). Much of the wetland drained, and the stream disconnected from the floodplain. Subsequently, the native willows and other riparian vegetation perished, beaver and other animals abandoned this habitat, and invasive reed canarygrass became the dominant vegetation in a simplified and degraded system. Starting in 2016, Okanogan Highlands Alliance (OHA) has led the effort to restore conditions that will allow ecological processes to establish and continue into the future. Process-based, low-tech restoration techniques, applied in concert with adaptive management encourage complexity, diversity, and resiliency in and near the stream. Ultimately, native species, including beaver, will take over long-term management of the system. In the stream, Beaver Dam Analogs (BDAs; wooden structures that mimic the form and function of natural beaver dams) have been installed, repaired and modified each year in order to aggrade the streambed and develop meanders. Monitoring has shown faster-than-expected changes, including: 24% increase in stream length over the ½ mile reach, and up to 7 ft of streambed aggradation. On the floodplain and, more recently, on the banks and BDAs themselves, more than 2,000 native plants have become established in about 30,000 ft2 of riparian area. Riparian plantings thrive thanks to: fencing and expanding enclosures as plants grow, mowing, weeding and mulching (and re-mulching) to give the plantings a competitive advantage over invasive reed canarygrass, and planting new areas as conditions allow. Ongoing efforts at Triple Creek are guided by a systematic cycle of adaptive management: monitoring of changes in and near the creek, evaluating needs and resources, and taking actions that maximize the interplay of geomorphic changes and biological changes. The Project has not only made tremendous progress towards restoring the habitat, it has also developed into a collaborative learning lab for restoration practitioners, local students, and the general public; the generous contributions of expertise, equipment, time, funding, and labor by partnering agencies, organizations and individuals have greatly expanded OHA’s capacity to do this work. The Project represents a long-term commitment to learning, adapting, and collaborating, with the end goal being a healthy, diverse, resilient wetland-stream system managed by nature’s most effective engineers: …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Elyssa Kerr Symposium Session: 2023 – 02 One Species to Restore them All: Beaver-based Watershed Restoration Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, beavers, community involvement, fish passage, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), and urban ABSTRACTIn urban and rural environs, beavers working to engineer ecosystems often encounter pushback from humans. Homes, roads, and other infrastructure that occupy historic floodplains and wetlands are particularly susceptible to impacts when beavers work on stream restoration of their own. While it is widely accepted that beaver ponds benefit native fish species, water quality, and water quantity, our human-modified stream systems and declining salmon runs raise a growing number of questions about how humans can best coexist with aquatic habitats. Beaver coexistence flow devices have been a happy compromise to balance the needs of people, beavers, and the other animals that call beaver ponds home. In order to retain more beavers on the landscape and support ecosystem resilience, Beavers Northwest has implemented flow devices and other coexistence practices across a wide geographic region in Washington State. Beavers Northwest has worked closely with regulators and other organizations to develop best management practices for maintaining natural processes that occur at beaver dams including fish passage. However, poorly worded regulations impede implementation of traditional flow devices in some places. In this talk, we will explore the uneven regulatory landscape in Washington that impacts beaver coexistence implementation and dive into the best practices and innovations for flow devices to meet the varied needs of people, beavers, and fish. These adaptive management strategies support beaver powered restoration, serving as vital tools for any practitioners that have encountered wanted or unwanted beaver impacts. The examples presented will be widely transferrable to other regions working to address the balance between coexistence and human modified systems while maintaining natural …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Jim O’Connor Symposium Session: 2023 – 01 Exploring Deep Geologic Time and Relevance to River Processes Topics covered: california and sediment transport ABSTRACTRiverine measurements of sediment and solute transport give empirical basin-scale estimates of bedload, suspended sediment, and silicate solute fluxes for 100,000 km2 of northwestern California and western Oregon. This spatially explicit sediment budget shows the multi-faceted control of geology and physiography on the rates and processes of fluvial denudation. Bedload transport is greatest for steep basins, particularly areas underlain by the accreted Klamath Terrane. Bedload flux commonly decreases downstream as clasts convert to suspended load by breakage and attrition, especially for softer rock types. Suspended load correlates strongly with lithology, basin slope, precipitation, and wildfire disturbance. It is highest in steep regions of soft rocks, and our estimates suggest that much of the suspended load is derived from bedload comminution. Dissolution, measured by basin-scale silicate solute yield, constitutes a third of regional landscape denudation. Solute yield correlates with precipitation and is proportionally greatest in low-gradient and wet basins and for high parts of the Cascade Range, where undissected Quaternary volcanic rocks soak in 2–3 meters of annual precipitation. Combined, these estimates provide basin-scale erosion rates, ranging from ~50 tonnes per square kilometer per year (0.02 millimeters per year) for low gradient basins such as the Willamette River, to 500 tonnes per square kilometer per year (0.2 millimeters per year) for steep coastal drainages. The denudation rates determined here from modern measurements are less than those estimated by longer-term geologic assessments, suggesting episodic disturbances such as fire, flood, seismic shaking, and climate significantly add to long-term landscape denudation. This abstract derives from O’Connor and others (2021), Geological Society of America Bulletin, …

Year: 2023 Presenter/s: Gordon Grant Symposium Session: 2023 – 01 Exploring Deep Geologic Time and Relevance to River Processes Topics covered: climate change, floodplain, geology, and sediment transport ABSTRACTGeology may or may not be destiny, but it does provide a useful and deeply informative framework for stream restoration. Specifically, most stream restoration projects occur within alluvial or semi-alluvial settings with distinctive architectures and stratigraphic histories that provide insights into the range and timing of processes driving and shaping the geomorphic structure of channels. Interpreting those landforms and deposits can be challenging, but is essential for understanding how and why streams look and behave the way they do today. Drawing on examples from both the eastern and western U.S. I will explore how landform analysis and stratigraphic interpretation can be used to provide a useful context for stream restoration. In the mid-Atlantic Piedmont, detailed stratigraphy of valley bottoms revealed that prior to European settlement, valley floors were vegetated wetlands with few single-thread channels, very different than they appear today. In western Oregon, morphology of pre-settlement streams was strongly influenced by post-glacial aggradation of valley floors; many streams are now incised into glacial outwash and fans due to reduction in sediment loads during the Holocene. Given this history, efforts to “reconnect” channels with their surrounding surfaces may be challenging. Understanding this geological history, and appreciating the role of Pleistocene processes and landforms provides a sound foundation for anticipating stream response to …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Ian Machan Symposium Session: 2022 – 10 Complex, High-Risk, Climate-Resilient Floodplain Restoration Topics covered: fish-salmon, floodplain, lessons learned, and risk and resilience ABSTRACTThe Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership (Estuary Partnership) embarked on the planning and design of the high profile, high risk Steigerwald Reconnection Project nearly a decade ago. This $30M restoration effort in the Columbia River floodplain involved ten landowners, eleven real estate acquisitions, five funders, eleven regulatory agencies, two setback levees, and 1.5 million cubic yards of earthwork. Over the course of seven years, the project design was refined with the goal of contracting with a construction contractor in early 2020. During this time, the project team identified key challenges that presented significant risk to the project with considerable ramifications. With the immense effort that went into project development, the team realized that similar emphasis needed to be placed on the procurement and management of the contractor and construction phase. The Estuary Partnership employed several means of risk mitigation to reduce exposure to the potential of negative cost or schedule impacts, namely by: Providing prospective contractors with vital pre-bid information including geotechnical reports, test pit locations for observation during bidding, and guided site tours, resulting in more thoughtfully prepared contractor approaches. Requiring prequalification of specialty Aquatic Habitat Restoration Specialist (AHRS) subcontractors eligible to contract with prime contractors and required the prime to use the AHRS for ecologically sensitive aspects of the project. Including a significant incentive/disincentive clause to motivate contractors to aggressively pursue work to hit hard deadlines imposed by USACE. Implementing a two-step Best Value Procurement methodology that required qualifications and a detailed approach to short-list prime contractors (Step 1), and a more detailed approach to construction, interview, and competitive bids to complete the selection process (Step 2). The short-listing process and opportunity to place 50% of the scoring criteria on project approach incentivized contractors to invest time in determining ways to manage the complex project staging. We will present an overview of Best Value Procurement and a case history that provides examples of risk management to both minimize exposure to the Owner and incentivize the prime contractor to perform at the highest level. The importance of an integrated team and the collaboration between Owner and Contractor will be explored and highlighted, as this partnership allowed the project team to work through several large design changes efficiently, effectively, and without significant changes to contract terms or timelines. The partnership approach and buy-in from all parties to make the project’s success a priority saved the project from a potentially difficult and confrontational finish. This presentation will explain the benefits of this delivery method and risk management, and provide agencies an example of how properly implementing these risk mitigation strategies can set a project up for success before construction even …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Chris Collins Symposium Session: 2022 – 10 Complex, High-Risk, Climate-Resilient Floodplain Restoration Topics covered: climate change, community involvement, fish-salmon, floodplain, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), lessons learned, and risk and resilience ABSTRACTThe dire prospects for many imperiled salmonid runs combined with the increasing need for climate resilient infrastructure necessitates increasing the scale and magnitude of floodplain restoration; however, these larger, more impactful projects inherently have greater social and technical risks and complexities. They also require long-term financial commitments that typically are not compatible with standard grant cycles. These risks, complexities, and funding requirements necessitate a different approach than is used for more typical habitat enhancement projects. The Steigerwald Reconnection Project successfully navigated those challenges and offers a case study that may benefit similarly complex, high-risk efforts in the future. The purpose of this presentation is to provide a brief overview of the $30M Steigerwald Reconnection Project, which spanned nine years and nearly 1,000 acres of Columbia River floodplain. The project also involved nine landowners and eleven regulatory agencies. We present keys to the project’s success during each phase of the project along with lessons learned. We end the presentation with a framework for successfully developing large-scale projects in the …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Janine Castro Symposium Session: 2022 – 00- Invited Speaker Topics covered: lessons learned ABSTRACTRRNW is 20 — and hindsight is 20/20! This retrospective will cover where we’ve been, where we are, and where we might be going with stream restoration in the Pacific Northwest. When River Restoration Northwest convened for the first time over 20 years ago, most restoration projects were channel-centric and large wood focused. “Channel Reconstruction” projects were designed to maintain sediment transport through a comparatively stable, single-thread channel that connected to its floodplain during relatively infrequent flows. We thought about large wood in terms of pieces per mile and habitat units in terms of multiples of channel width. During the early years of RRNW, restoration work was longitudinal in nature and metrics tended to be in feet and miles. Jump ahead 20 years and the river restoration world has laterally expanded into two dimensions. There is broad recognition by the scientific community that increased floodplain connectivity is correlated to increased habitat complexity through fully integrated wetland-floodplain-channel systems. “Floodplain Reconnection” projects are now more often designed to connect at very frequent flow events and inundate the floodplain for weeks or even months each year. While there may still be a main channel, there are often multiple, interconnected channels. We now think about large wood in terms of total wood loads across the floodplain. Restoration work is both longitudinal and lateral in nature and metrics are often reported in acres rather than feet. That bring us back to the future. Where will we be 20 years from now? Will we be restoring river-wetland corridors in 3 dimensions, fully embracing the vertical components in restoration design? In the same way that Lidar opened our eyes to floodplain microtopography, perhaps ground-penetrating radar will help us more fully understand, and then restore, the river corridor that flows beneath our …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Ted Perkins Symposium Session: 2022 – 03 Navigating the National Flood Insurance Program and Floodplain Regulations Topics covered: fish-salmon, floodplain, hydraulics, modeling, permits, and stream ABSTRACTThe National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created in 1968 to provide federally backed flood insurance to communities in response to major floods in the Mississippi basin and is administered by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and participating local communities. To participate in the NFIP, local communities must adhere to minimum floodplain regulations that are intended to discourage and reduce risks of development within the floodplain. Aimed at easing the burden for communities advancing restoration actions within regulated floodways and in support of Threatened and Endangered salmonids, the previous 1999 FEMA Region X policy and 2013 clarification allowed fish enhancement projects that have minimal impacts to be permitted if a qualified professional could provide a hydraulic analysis and certify that the project was designed to keep any rise in 100-year floodway levels as close to zero as possible and that no structures would be impacted by a potential rise. This policy was initiated out of recognition that no-rise analysis requirements would likely exceed the cost of enhancement projects, unduly impeding these projects. The August 2020 rescindment of this policy means that all such restoration projects within a designated floodway will now require either a “no-rise” analysis and certification or Conditional Letter of Map Revision (CLOMR) and Letter of Map Revision (LOMR), increasing the time, cost and expertise needed to advance many fish enhancement …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Jessi Kershner Symposium Session: 2022 – 01 Addressing Climate Science + Environmental Justice Topics covered: climate change, estuary, fish-salmon, and permits ABSTRACTClick to watch the Presentation Recording Watershed restoration and protection projects provide many climate benefits, both directly and indirectly. Addressing climate change requires a coordinated approach among funders, restoration practitioners, and scientific experts, to ensure watershed restoration and conservation are planned and implemented in ways that mitigate for or adapt to climate change. In Oregon, the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB) provides grants for monitoring, planning, and restoration actions. OWEB has initiated work to ensure climate change considerations are a key part of these actions. A summary of recent efforts will be presented to describe how OWEB is incorporating and addressing the challenges of climate change. In 2021, OWEB assisted the Oregon Global Warming Commission with developing a proposal for enhanced carbon sequestration on Oregon’s natural and working lands. The proposal included broad public and stakeholder outreach, resulting in a series of specific recommendations to enhance and account for carbon sequestration for the first time. Key recommendations for how state agencies can advance carbon sequestration and data inventory in the land sector will be shared, including data gaps and research needs. The Board intends to account for climate resilience, adaptation, mitigation, and co-benefits more directly in the agency’s grant-making and has identified a need to help local partners find climate-related information to understand how climate change could impact projects funded by OWEB. Several of the agency’s grant applications now include questions about climate considerations for proposed project designs, potential barriers to incorporating climate considerations, and solutions to these barriers. The presentation will include a summary of responses and demonstrate how that information will help guide the development of additional resources for applicants. To assist applicants with the new climate questions, OWEB is providing technical resources on anticipated climate impacts on Oregon’s watersheds and potential climate benefits from OWEB project activities. The purpose is to summarize select information and make available interactive climate planning tools to assist applicants find information relevant to their project area. These technical resources will be updated as new information becomes available. Examples of these technical resources will be highlighted. Finally, we will demonstrate how OWEB’s monitoring investments have contributed science towards answering climate related questions. These investments cover a wide range of topics and ecoregions, from monitoring ocean acidification and hypoxia conditions in the Tillamook Bay to measuring blue carbon storage in tidal wetland restoration projects along the Oregon Coast. In addition, OWEB’s monitoring investments have contributed towards the development of tools to plan restoration projects. For example, tools have been developed that examine the potential for riparian restoration to mitigate temperature increases in a warming climate and to help plan and prioritize tidal wetland habitat conservation into the future. OWEB will use the information generated from all of these efforts to help our grantees address climate change when planning future restoration actions, understand how these actions are contributing to the state’s climate goals and to continue to develop technical resources for …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Rob Zisette Symposium Session: 2022 – 01 Addressing Climate Science + Environmental Justice Topics covered: climate change, community involvement, tidal, urban, and wetlands ABSTRACTGlobal populations have become increasingly urban and as cities expand so have water quality and aquatic habitat impacts. Over half of the major urban centers are established on rivers, estuaries, and wetland areas that have been heavily modified. Constructed floating wetlands are a cost-effective method for establishing natural wetland ecosystem services to hard-edged urban environments and help manage the increased pollutant loading from stormwater and CSOs while also providing aquatic habitat and aesthetic benefits. In the evaluation of the efficacy of various approaches, we examine several example projects from the USA and EU extracting key lessons which can be transferred to other locations and scaled to specific site constraints. For example, the City of Rennes in France has recently installed 268 interlocking structural floating ecosystem modules with 6,800 native aquatic plants. This project is the largest floating riverbank of its kind ever constructed and provides wetland habitat in constant deep water with regular flood events rising over 2 meters. In a second example, a series of floating ecosystems installed in the town of Hastings, UK is actively treating sewage-contaminated runoff and has been a key feature to improving water quality on a public beach. Water treatment by the floating wetlands reduced Enterococci by over 80% and E. coli by over 90% in this project. Similarly, in Manchester, UK a series of floating ecosystems on a public pond has been key to reducing chemical oxygen demand from >40 to 1 meter. In Chicago, the NGO Urban Rivers has been carrying out mesocosm research and tests in partnership with the Chicago Botanic Gardens using water drawn from the Chicago River in a controlled experiment focused on evaluating the nutrient sorption capacity of floating wetlands over time. Meanwhile, a series of floating wetlands have been installed in the Chicago River with funding from sponsors including the Shedd Aquarium, National Geographic, Patagonia, and Whole Foods Market with plans set to expand the project into a mile long engineered urban wetland park called The Wild Mile. This presentation investigates these case studies examples in detail comparing water quality results before and after floating wetland construction and the resulting project outcomes and …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Michael Thai Symposium Session: 2022 – 02 Big Challenges Need Adaptive Management Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, floodplain, hydraulics, lessons learned, modeling, riparian, risk and resilience, sediment transport, stream, and wood ABSTRACTThe unpredictable dynamism of the riverine environment makes it challenging for restoration professionals to decide which actions should be incorporated into a restoration project. In King County, design teams encounter this challenge at an enhanced level due to increased floodplain development and constraints on local river basins – staff strive to figure out how much action is needed to release sites from severely degraded conditions, while also managing risk to adjacent property and infrastructure. Over a decade of effectiveness monitoring at levee removal sites suggests restoration actions have varied from just the right amount to too little or occasionally too much action taken. Located in a reach of the Cedar River that had been locked in place since the 1930’s, the Rainbow Bend project is an example of evaluating and responding “just right” to the common problem of how to restore in a cost-effective manner. The project consisted of a levee removal, pilot channel excavation, and floodplain wood placement in 2013. These simple actions allowed natural processes to transform the site into one of the highest quality areas for salmon rearing and spawning within the basin. Since the project’s completion, King County staff have tracked channel migration, sediment accumulation, wood recruitment, water surface elevation, edge habitat, and fish use. Through a series of Digital Elevation Models, aerial images, habitat surveys and water surface gaging, staff will demonstrate how natural processes have shaped the geomorphic and ecological site attributes since construction, within the context of the initial project actions. Staff will also discuss how what we know now about the project has shaped how we view the original design and influenced current and future restoration projects in King County. At this time, the project has far exceeded the expectations of the original design team and provides a dramatic example of how small actions, when combined with mother nature and a bit of good luck, can create big lifts in salmon habitat in developed floodplains. This presentation will also serve as an expanded, technical companion to the Rainbow Bend video that has been submitted to River Restoration …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Aaron Zettler-Mann Symposium Session: 2022 – 02 Big Challenges Need Adaptive Management Topics covered: fish-salmon, floodplain, lessons learned, permits, riparian, and stream ABSTRACTDuring the California gold rush, hydraulic mining was prevalent throughout the Sierra Nevada. In the Yuba River watershed alone, three times more material was washed into the river than was excavated to construct the Panama Canal. This material was washed down river and settled in the lower Yuba River, burying the adjacent Central Valley farmland and aggrading the Yuba River channel up to 40 feet. Channel aggradation triggered increased flooding in surrounding farmland and downstream communities and in 1874 the Sawyer Decision banned hydraulic mining in the Yuba watershed and throughout California. The result of this was that the hydraulic mining debris was ‘re-worked’ using dredge mining creating the Yuba River Goldfields, an area of roughly 5,500 acres of gravel and cobble with piles more than 100 feet high. The California Debris Commission began to rework the gravels in 1899 and created ‘training walls’ to help convey flood flows and allow the material outside of the river channel to be more easily mined. Today, the Goldfields are a combination of privately held and BLM land which is largely unmanaged. Englebright Dam is the rim dam in the Yuba River watershed limiting spawning and rearing habitat for salmonids to roughly 25 miles. Over this 25 miles, the lower Yuba River (LYR) remains largely a single thread channel with disconnected, unvegetated floodplains, and course substrate. The LYR is home to wild fall and spring-run Chinook salmon and steelhead/Rainbow Trout. Like the rest of the California Central Valley, LYR salmonid populations have experienced declines since the 1850’s due to habitat loss from the presence of impassible dams, mining activities, introduction of invasive piscivorous species, and other anthropogenic factors. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife have all identified rearing and spawning habitat as a significant hurdle to salmonid population recovery. In the LYR, restoration involves removing millions of cubic yards (CY) of gravels and cobbles from the floodplain, and then building side channels and backwaters and planting woody riparian vegetation which can be utilized by juvenile salmonids. Two challenges exist here: 1) prohibitively expensive cost to remove material and 2) where do you dispose of millions of CY of gravel and cobble? By partnering with the existing aggregate mines in the Yuba Goldfields, we are able to address both challenges while encouraging economic investment in rural communities. The mining industry all but destroyed LYR salmonid populations, but today we are partnering with that same industry to work together towards restoring salmonid habitat to support population …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: John Stofleth Symposium Session: 2022 – 02 Big Challenges Need Adaptive Management Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, fish-salmon, floodplain, hydraulics, lessons learned, modeling, outside PNW, riparian, risk and resilience, sediment transport, and urban ABSTRACTMany flood control levees along rivers in the California Central Valley originated as dredged material removed from the channel following massive sedimentation associated with the 19th century gold rush. Dredge spoils were placed on natural levees and therefore eliminated most of the active floodplain. Despite various improvements, much of the flood control infrastructure remains unsound and riparian and floodplain resources (e.g., salmonid rearing habitat) are degraded. To address these issues, a major levee setback was constructed along a five-mile reach of the Sacramento River in West Sacramento in 2018, creating 140 acres of riparian and floodplain habitat. The new floodplain was about 10 ft lower than the existing floodplain, requiring excavation of about 2.1 million yd3 of material. The new floodplain design comprised hydrodynamic modeling and geomorphic interpretation to maximize ecological functions. We used the two-dimensional hydrodynamic and sediment transport model, MIKE21C, as an analytical tool for assessing floodplain inundation relative to specific ecological criteria and morphological change (erosion and sedimentation) under existing and design conditions. The resulting restoration design fell within the constraints of the overall flood protection project with special habitat features such as instream wood structures, variation in floodplain topography, and large-scale plantings to enhance salmonid rearing habitat. Inundation modeling allowed delineation of zones for riparian forest, shaded riverine aquatic, and seasonal wetland habitat. Project plans included monitoring and adaptive management. Vegetation monitoring followed standard protocols for on-the-ground visual inspection to document plant survival, cover, and health to meet regulatory requirements for mitigation. Aerial surveys provided supplemental support when delineating vegetation zones required for the post-project wetland delineation. Erosion and sedimentation were monitored using visual inspection, drone photography, and ground surveys. Monitoring revealed that the hydrologic regime following construction activated adaptive management plans. An extended period of inundation occurred during the 2018-2019 flood season causing minor localized erosion and significant localized sediment deposition. Adaptive management measures included excavating a low-flow swale that provided connection to the river after it filled with sediment during the first high flow season and adjusting the planting palette following sediment deposition / topographic change. The following two years (2019 – 2021) were very dry, which required supplemental irrigation for the planted vegetation and adjusting the delineation of the designed vegetation zones after native riparian species colonists outcompeted plantings in areas initially intended as wetlands. In hindsight, project implementation might have been more efficient if final topographic contouring and planting of the new floodplain had been delayed until after the first major high flow. This approach might have eliminated the need to develop predetermined vegetation zones, as natural recruitment could have been leveraged to produce a more sustainable plant community mosaic. Furthermore, the allowance of access routes for continued maintenance and adaptive management of sedimentation in the low-flow swales could reduce the potential for fish stranding in the new floodplain …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Christina Merten Symposium Session: 2022 – 02 Big Challenges Need Adaptive Management Topics covered: fish-salmon, lessons learned, permits, and wetlands ABSTRACTPermitting is a major obstacle to implementing multi-phase, large-scale restoration projects. These projects often involve numerous agencies all operating under an evolving “rule book”. An excellent study of this evolving process is the WSDOT SR 167 Completion Project, Hylebos Riparian Restoration Program (RRP) and Wapato RRP. WSDOT is in the process of planning, designing, and constructing this three-phase project, which entails 6 miles of new highway to connect the Port of Tacoma to the existing SR 167 in Puyallup. The SR 167 Completion Project represents a unique opportunity, which WSDOT is maximizing, to alleviate chronic flooding problems while providing substantial ecological lift for fish and wildlife through creation of the Hylebos and Wapato RRPs. The Hylebos and Wapato RRPs will mitigate for wetland and stream impacts proposed through large-scale river and floodplain restoration adjacent to the highway development. The project is within the Puyallup Tribe of Indians (PTOI) reservation and crosses the jurisdiction of 5 cities and Pierce County. New highway construction will result in placement of fill in more than 20 acres of existing wetlands and over a mile of stream channel. Permitting will require approvals from Corps of Engineers, EPA, PTOI, Department of Ecology, WDFW, as well as the variety of local permitting agencies. The phasing of this project over a period of years provides an ability for WSDOT to implement lessons learned along the way to improve permitting timelines, while grappling with the changing rule book. The first phase of the project was successfully permitted in 2019 and construction will wrap up in 2021. The second phase, including construction of the Hylebos RRP, submitted permit requests on September 10, 2020, qualifying for permit review under the CWA 404 and CWA 401 regulations in place at that time. The third phase of the project will submit for permits in 2022 and be subject to the CWA Section 404 and 401 regulations that will be in effect at the time of submittal. This changing federal permit framework along with multiple local jurisdiction permits has created a very dynamic permitting environment for the project and a great opportunity to implement improvements in each successive phase. The project team has successfully jumped regulatory and policy hurdles, including JARPA drawings size restrictions that created the largest application package ever seen by the Seattle District Corps. JARPA drawings have become more complicated in later phases as construction, restoration activities, and policies are changing the types of impacts that are occurring. This presentation includes review of the hurdles faced and examples of innovative approaches to addressing these challenges. For example, the permitting approach included development of GIS web-based mapping for these phases that allows for interactive reviews by the regulatory agencies. Approaches like these will support better communication and efficiency for the review of impacts and mitigation needs for large-scale river restoration projects. This and similar large restoration projects implemented during this historic time of the changing rule book can serve as examples to be discussed at future RRNW roundtables around learning lessons in the permitting …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Gardner Johnston Symposium Session: 2022 – 02 Big Challenges Need Adaptive Management Topics covered: community involvement, fish-salmon, floodplain, lessons learned, riparian, and stream ABSTRACTThe first National Stream Restoration Conference will be held in Nashville, TN this August. Gardner Johnston, former President of the RRNW Board, will be giving the “Regional Perspective” talk for the Pacific Northwest. In order to accurately represent our collective practice here in the PNW, Gardner would like to present his initial thoughts and solicit feedback and ideas from the audience. A brief morning presentation will be followed by open discussion, with time set aside later in the afternoon to continue the conversation. Please be thinking about what defines our current practice—where we’ve been and how we’ve evolved—and where we might be …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Erin Cooper Symposium Session: 2022 – 03 Navigating the National Flood Insurance Program and Floodplain Regulations Topics covered: fish-salmon, floodplain, hydraulics, modeling, and permits ABSTRACTMany stream, river, and floodplain restoration projects in the PacNW and nationwide are focused on increasing floodplain connectivity due to the beneficial habitat and flood attenuation effects associated with frequently flooded floodplains. In addition, improving channel complexity through the placement of stable large wood (LW) within the channel has become a large focus of restoration efforts in the PacNW due to the beneficial effects to salmonid habitat and associated ESA listing of salmon. Many of these efforts work to reverse anthropogenic caused changes (channelization, removal of LW, urbanization, etc) that have resulted in significant channel incision, degradation, and poor habitat conditions for ESA listed species. The effect of these efforts is often an increase water surface elevations during both frequent floods and the 100-year flood which presents a conflict with minimum NFIP floodplain …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Kaz Guillozet Symposium Session: 2022 – 03 Navigating the National Flood Insurance Program and Floodplain Regulations Topics covered: fish-salmon, floodplain, hydraulics, modeling, and permits ABSTRACTThis presentation will describe the efforts of a Washington State working group convened by the Floodplains by Design network to understand and respond to FEMA’s rescindment of a 20-year policy governing permitting for fish enhancement structures in floodways. Aimed at easing the burden for communities advancing restoration actions in support of Threatened and Endangered salmonids, the previous 1999 FEMA Region X policy and 2013 clarification allowed fish enhancement projects that have minimal impacts in floodways to be permitted if a qualified professional could provide a hydraulic analysis and certify that the project was designed to keep any rise in 100-year floodway levels as close to zero as possible and that no structures would be impacted by a potential rise. This policy was initiated out of recognition that no-rise analysis requirements would likely exceed the cost of enhancement projects, unduly impeding these projects. The August 2020 rescindment of this policy means that all such floodway projects will now require CLOMR/LOMRs (flood hazard map revisions), increasing the time, cost and expertise needed to advance many fish enhancement projects. In addition to impacting tribal, agency and other NGO projects, this rescindment will likely have significant effects on court-mandated culvert replacement timelines, costs, and other actions in support of imperiled fish species, with implications for tribal treaty rights and ESA listed species, occurring at a time of severe heat waves and drought. Additionally, the 1999 policy focused on fish enhancement structures, which are almost always large wood structures. Concurrent with their rescindment of the 1999 policy, FEMA Region X has asserted that large wood used in fish enhancement structures in the floodway is not exempt from being considered fill. This will require the calculation of volume of each piece of wood put in the river, and excavation of that volume at corresponding elevations. Requiring compensatory storage for all large wood structures used in salmon recovery projects will further increase the time and costs, including excavation and disposal, and possibly right-of-way acquisition cost to advance these types of fish enhancement projects. The goals of the working group are to communicate the implications of this policy, which impact tribal governments, agencies and non-profits, and to support: a) information sharing about rescindment, including early findings regarding effects on project costs and timelines; b) brainstorming around alternatives, including pilot efforts that could include investment in actions such as reach-scale models, batched CLOMRs, multi-phased permits, and provision of additional technical assistance; c) reflection upon long term goals and actions, and identification of potential conflicts with the BiOp and other intersecting policy issues; and d) co-development of creative long term solutions. This presentation will describe the formation and composition of the working group, highlight key learnings and challenges from working group efforts and share highlights from two webinars on this topic. We will outline next steps and identify how the RRNW community may …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Simon Page Symposium Session: 2022 – 04 Stream Restoration from the (WSDOT) Transportation Perspective Topics covered: climate change, fish passage, fish-salmon, hydraulics, risk and resilience, and stream ABSTRACTRecognizing the vulnerability of our transportation system and the value of the system to the community it serves, WSDOT has adopted polices and developed guidance to improve the resiliency of the transportation system considering anticipated climate change. This presentation will provide an overarching discussion of WSDOT’s role in FHWA pilot projects to develop and improve FHWA’s Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Framework. These work efforts resulted in a Statewide Climate Vulnerability Assessment, more detailed analysis of vulnerabilities and adaptations on a county level and then a project-based evaluation that included both sea level rise and changes in precipitation. The presentation will introduce two projects that have incorporated resiliency in both transportation and restoration project aspects: The I5/SR 167 Gateway Project along Hylebos Creek near Tacoma and the Granite Creek Bridge Replacement Project on SR 542 on Mount Baker. The projects have very different concerns. In Tacoma, sea level rise will likely affect the I5 corridor in the Puyallup River delta and the local communities and industries that support the Port of Tacoma. On Mount Baker there are changes in the precipitation relationships be rain or snow as well as changes in snow accumulation and snowmelt rates that affect runoff. Finally, the presentation will summarize WSDOTs current practices to ensure that the fish passage projects in development will remain safe to the communities served and passable to fish throughout their design …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Piper Petit Symposium Session: 2022 – 04 Stream Restoration from the (WSDOT) Transportation Perspective Topics covered: community involvement, fish passage, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), and lessons learned ABSTRACTFish Passage is not new to WSDOT, we have been working to retrofit and replace barriers under our highways since the early ‘90’s, using the best available science of the day. However, our pace has quickened significantly since 2013, when the Federal Injunction set the goal of opening 90% of the habitat for 850 listed barriers in Western Washington by 2030, and the science around fish passage & stream restoration has evolved. In our undertaking of this immense task, we have come to know many challenges in designing & constructing these complex projects, but none is more paramount to successfully fulfill our commitments to our partnering agencies and co-managers than good communication. The differences in the technical backgrounds & perspectives of those informing the project’s restoration components, compared to the engineering team members preparing the plans, and then those overseeing & performing construction activities can act as a language barrier and are often the root of our issues. Simply put, Scientists, Engineers, & Contractors do not speak the same language and sometimes have divergent priorities that can unintentionally cause us to fall short of meeting our restoration goals, resulting in failures to follow through with commitments that were made in good faith. This presentation will review how Science, Engineering, and Construction roles play into stream restoration projects and some of the inherent process-driven challenges to keeping those projects moving smoothly. Using the selection and implementation of streambed material mix designs, channel cross-sectional shapes, and habitat features as examples, we can demonstrate the differences in the distinct perspectives and priorities of each contributing group. With these differences understood, it is easy to recognize ways communication can be tailored to each specific group to improve collaborative problem solving based on a common understanding of design intent. The need for effective communication amplifies significantly when we are faced with finding solutions on projects that do not fit within the guidelines of our established standards. One such project on the Olympic Peninsula, US 101 Lees Creek, has presented a number of challenges to the design team. This crossing is in a severely degrading system, with high potential for significant scour and long-term degradation through the very weak bedrock (on the order of 20+ feet). Good communication and collaboration between WSDOT and our project partners have been the key to finding a solution that is best suited to the natural system, yet still constructable and resilient. We hope that by sharing our observations of common communication barriers, we can help others coordinating stream restoration projects be more successful in meeting restoration goals and fostering trust with project …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Gabe Ng Symposium Session: 2022 – 04 Stream Restoration from the (WSDOT) Transportation Perspective Topics covered: fish passage, fish-salmon, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), lessons learned, stream, and wood ABSTRACTThe Washington State Department of Transportation is the steward of a multimodal transportation system and responsible for ensuring that people and goods (fish?) move safely and efficiently. WSDOT has evolved from replacing fish barrier culverts with stream simulation designs (openings; 1.2 x BFW +2 feet) to considering larger scale channel continuity and stream restoration beyond the project limits to better support our natural resources. What are we learning from the natural world, our past successes and failures and how do we apply these improvements inside our crossings and within our project limits? How does our in-water features, channel complexities, mimic the surrounding natural processes and geomorphic characteristics using biomimicry? How are we developing bank strength inside crossings where soils and root structure is limited? Where can we get better, what ideas do you have? The greatest challenge is balancing stewardship of our natural resources and stewardship to our transportation system in a fiscally responsible manner. What is the benefit and at what cost? Effort to create larger openings can be minimal at times. Effort to add LWM adjacent to the project when you’re already doing work, seems trivial. WSDOT is designing for the future of a stream and recognizing channel response after a project is built by accounting for changes to future flow, long-term aggradation or degradation as well as ensuring forward compatibility with future upstream/downstream barrier corrections. This presentation will share the evolution of WSDOT’s journey to improve on fish barrier removal projects; identify our mistakes and taking pride in our successes as well as see where we are moving for a better tomorrow. Project examples may include SR530 Schoolyard Creek, SR9 Gribble Creek, SR9 Landingstrip Creek, SR203 Loutsis Creek, SR504 Wooster Creek, SR532 Secret Creek and …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Bryan Mercier Symposium Session: 2022 – 00- Invited Speaker Topics covered: climate change, community involvement, and environmental justice ABSTRACTTribal Leadership in Fish and Wildlife Management Indigenous Tribes of the NW have been building capacity in Fish and Wildlife management for decades. Their capacity (i.e., staff and resources) now outpaces many state and local governments, placing them in a position to lead the region in efforts to combat climate change and restore fish and wildlife. How do NW Tribes’ unique political, legal and cultural attributes provide an opportunity for other practitioners to collaborate and make real progress in Fish and Wildlife. Tribes have been contracting with the federal government for decades through “638 contracts”. The Indian Self-Determination and Education Act (PL 93-638) provided Tribe the ability to administer federal programs through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) initially, but the vehicle is available across the federal government and could be replicated with States. In the NW, Tribes have led the country in the successful utilization of 638 contracts to administer programs ranging from Social Services to Fish and Wildlife from the BIA. However, while 638 contracts are available for other federal agencies, use outside of the BIA has been limited. This underutilization of 639 contracts is likely a missed opportunity that could stretch limited resources and leverage tribal expertise and capacity. I’ll discuss this opportunity cost and engage in debate about the pros and cons of contracting with …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Michael Belchik Symposium Session: 2022 – 06 Klamath River Dam Removal is the Largest and Most Complex Fish Restoration Project Ever Attempted Topics covered: fish passage, fish-salmon, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), lessons learned, permits, risk and resilience, and stream ABSTRACTRestoration projects are subject to regulatory scrutiny similar to that of many hard-infrastructure development projects. Regulatory requirements for projects of this nature often stem from need to protect against perceived or real risk of third-party litigation or other forms of legal, administrative, or regulatory challenge. Efforts to decommission the Lower Klamath Project – which involves removing the four mainstem Klamath River dams and restoring upward of 8000 acres of lands – face a broad, deep, and complicated regulatory framework. This requires project proponents to develop and implement resilient practices to ensure necessary authorizations can be obtained, while acknowledging and leveraging the self-mitigating nature of the restoration activities and ensuring the desired project outcomes. Common approaches to solving challenges used in planning large-scale dam removal include: creating stable project descriptions early; including alternative means and methods for analysis; bracketing impacts to inform permit conditions; building in operational flexibility to select critical-path project components; and adaptively managing implementation of restoration activities to accommodate field conditions or other variables. These measures will be described in additional detail with application, along with overviews of dam removal and restoration designs for the lower Klamath dam removal project. Beyond these measures, solutions often derive from organizational dynamics among project proponents, including the regulated parties, as well as unregulated advocates. When the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a partial license transfer order for the Lower Klamath Project in July 2020, the settlement agreement that is the framework for dam removal was perceived by many to be at risk of failure. The principal parties to the agreement employed a resilient negotiations framework to get the project back on track and secure a new path forward for dam removal. Details of this approach and applications to full project implementation will be presented along with take home lessons and implications for large-scale dam removal and restoration …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Mark Hereford Symposium Session: 2022 – 06 Klamath River Dam Removal is the Largest and Most Complex Fish Restoration Project Ever Attempted Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, fish passage, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, and instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam) ABSTRACTAnadromous fishes have been eliminated from over 400 miles of stream habitat in the Upper Klamath Basin since the construction of hydroelectric dams began on the Klamath River in 1912. Prior to construction of dams on the Klamath River, spring-run and fall-run Chinook Salmon, Coho Salmon, Steelhead Trout, and Pacific Lamprey occupied habitat in the upper basin. The four Klamath River hydroelectric dams that block anadromous fish are scheduled to be removed in 2023. It is anticipated with a high degree of certainty that fall-run Chinook Salmon, Coho Salmon, Steelhead Trout and Pacific Lamprey, which occur immediately below the lower-most hydroelectric dam, will repopulate habitat above the removed dams on their own. On the other hand, restoring spring-run Chinook Salmon to the upper basin will require a more active approach due to the lack of a source population immediately below the dams. In preparation for this large-scale restoration project, agencies, tribes, and other organizations are working together to formulate a strategy to monitor the natural repopulation of anadromous fishes into upper basin habitat as well as an active approach for restoring spring-run Chinook. The Upper Klamath Basin contains some of the most diverse and climate change resilient habitat in the Klamath River Basin due to the many groundwater-sourced streams. While a good portion of available habitat remains intact and currently supports resident salmonid populations, much of the available habitat has been altered since salmon last occupied it over 100 years ago. An adaptive approach to monitoring repopulation will be necessary to inform where habitat restoration is needed. This presentation will focus on a brief summary of the historical fisheries of the upper basin, describe the current habitat above the dams, describe species-specific approaches to repopulation, and summarize recent and on-going pre-dam removal studies that will help guide those …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Phil Roni Symposium Session: 2022 – 07 Putting the Fish into Fish Habitat Restoration Topics covered: fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, and modeling ABSTRACTAdvances in remote sensing, monitoring, and data analysis have results in numerous approaches to quantify current and future fish habitat and fish abundance and capacity at multiple scales. These approaches range from models that estimate fish survival, capacity, and productivity at a watershed-scale to site-specific habitat suitability or food web models that examine fish production at a reach scale. Many of these models are being used as tools to improve the identification, prioritization, design, implementation, and evaluation of restoration projects for salmon and steelhead recovery. In this talk, we provide an overview of existing and novel fish-habitat models and their utility in various stages of the habitat restoration planning and implementation process. We first describe the various types of life cycle, limiting factors, food web, and habitat suitability models and analyses that are being used to assist with watershed assessment and habitat restoration. Next, we discuss the utility of these various fish-habitat models at identifying, prioritizing, and designing habitat restoration projects for fish. We then examine their ability to evaluate the effectiveness of habitat restoration projects at increasing fish abundance, survival, and capacity. We discuss the pros and cons of different models and analytical approaches and how they can be used to adaptively manage restoration projects and programs to create projects that benefit salmon and steelhead. Finally, we close with recommendations for additional data collection and analyses needed to improve the utility of fish-habitat models to assist with implementing successful fish-habitat restoration …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Dan Isaak Symposium Session: 2022 – 07 Putting the Fish into Fish Habitat Restoration Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, climate change, fish-cutthroat, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, modeling, and riparian ABSTRACTSignificant investments have been made by numerous agencies to monitor anadromous salmonids by conducting thousands of density surveys within streams across the Columbia River Basin. We aggregated these surveys from CRITFC, ODFW, IDFG, USFS, CHaMP, and BioMark for the period of 2000–2018 for Idaho and northeastern Oregon streams into a single database and applied spatial stream network (SSN) models to describe habitat relationships of juvenile Chinook salmon (n = 6,757) and steelhead (n = 7,436). Twenty-eight covariates were assessed, but only seven were statistically significant for Chinook salmon (reach slope, mean summer flow, mean August temperature, baseflow index, riparian canopy density, brook trout density, and inter-annual variation in juvenile densities) and these explained 57% of the variation in densities at the survey sites. The final model for steelhead accounted for 48% of the variation in densities and included six of the same seven covariates as the Chinook salmon model. Response curves describing habitat relationships indicated Chinook salmon densities were highest in medium sized streams with low reach slopes, cool temperatures, higher brook trout densities, and intermediate levels of riparian canopy and baseflows. Conversely, steelhead densities were highest in small streams with greater slopes, warmer temperatures, low brook trout densities, high proportions of watershed conifers, and intermediate levels of riparian canopy. The SSN models were used to create 24 prediction scenarios of juvenile densities for all reaches in the study area networks, and included baseline composite scenarios of average densities for 2000-2018, annual density scenarios, and three future scenarios indicative of climate warming (scenarios available online as ArcGIS shapefile at the StreamNet Data Store: https://app.streamnet.org/datastore_search_classic.cfm). Our results highlight the utility of existing fish density survey data for creating new information when integrated to a consistent database and used with SSN models and other publicly available geospatial resources. The density scenarios can be used with other geospatial resources by conservation planners to display fish densities in areas of interest and allocate restoration …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Paul DeVries Symposium Session: 2022 – 07 Putting the Fish into Fish Habitat Restoration Topics covered: fish-cutthroat, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, lessons learned, modeling, and stream ABSTRACTThe Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) concept has a long history of application in habitat assessment and instream flow studies, and is more recently being extended to quantifying expected habitat lift in response to stream restoration. Typically, the method involves quantifying the suitability of specific physical fish habitat metrics such as depth, velocity, substrate, cover, water temperature, dissolved oxygen, and other features as a probability of use curve function, comparing curves against specific metric values, and combining the results into an overall measure of ‘useable’ habitat area. While in principle the concept has intuitive appeal and appears simple to apply in practice, there are numerous aspects of HSI development and interpretation that can preclude HSI analyses from being a cost effective approach to estimating habitat lift in restoration projects, when other, simpler approaches can yield the information needed. The author draws on more than 30 years of experience developing and applying HSI curves in habitat and instream flow studies to summarize the finer points of the method, to help inform and guide restoration planners and practitioners interested in demonstrating the benefits of their …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Kevin See Symposium Session: 2022 – 07 Putting the Fish into Fish Habitat Restoration Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, and modeling ABSTRACTEstimating habitat capacity is an effective way to evaluate deficits, prioritize watersheds, and focus restoration efforts based on watershed, location, and life stage specific capacity deficits. We developed a quantile random forest (QRF) model to estimate habitat capacity based on measured fish-habitat data and relationships. We used empirically-based habitat capacity deficits from that model, in combination with ESA de-listing criteria, to prioritize habitat restoration efforts among populations of spring/summer Chinook salmon at the scale of a Major Population Group. Within watersheds, we leveraged the same fish-habitat relationships to identify the types and locations of habitat restoration most likely to reduce deficits in carrying capacity based on specific life stages. This process can be used to decrease long-term effectiveness monitoring costs and support strategic decisions about the distribution of habitat restoration …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Kris Fischer Symposium Session: 2022 – 09 20 Years Back, 20 Years Forward Topics covered: lessons learned ABSTRACTWhere were you in your river restoration career 20 years ago? Or 30 years ago? Or dare we say, even 40 years ago? Have you attended RRNW 10 times? 15 times? 20 times? What changes have you seen in your river restoration discipline and in the watersheds you work or live in? How has your understanding and approach to restoration projects and programs in the last two (or more) decades evolved? How have public attitudes and perceptions changed about river restoration in that time? If you could boil down your most important lesson learned from the last 20 years in river restoration, what would that be? Please joins us for a frank discussion of these topics, and more, in this Lessons Learned session as seasoned professionals share their personal insights and experiences. This session will include an interdisciplinary panel discussion of biologists, ecologists, engineers, and geomorphologists with experience in academia, tribes, consulting, federal, state and local government, private industry, non-profits and more for a combined experience of more than 150 years! This interactive panel session will be a chance for the audience to ask questions and tell their stories as we learn insights and hear predictions for the future of restoration from a dynamic group, who all happen to be former RRNW Board members! To view the recorded presentation by Sue Niezgoda, click here: …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Curtis Loeb Symposium Session: 2022 – 10 Complex, High-Risk, Climate-Resilient Floodplain Restoration Topics covered: climate change, fish-salmon, floodplain, groundwater, risk and resilience, temperature, and wood ABSTRACTThe Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership, Port of Camas-Washougal, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bonneville Power Administration, and others have partnered to reconnect 965 acres of historic Columbia River floodplain and reduce flood risks at the Steigerwald National Wildlife Refuge located southeast of Washougal in Clark County, Washington. Restoration and reconnection of the floodplain presented numerous technical challenges, including ensuring no adverse impacts to WA State Route 14 and designing a levee that meets strict regulatory, flood risk reduction, and habitat objectives. Reconnection was particularly challenging given anticipated changes in climate (higher winter flows and higher summer stream temperatures) and future increases in watershed development. Three distinct measures were developed to improve resiliency to climate risk and uncertainty. (1) A vegetated wind-wave overbuild berm was designed in lieu of riprap to protect the levee from extreme winds and associated wave erosion that is anticipated to increase in the future. The berm also accommodates transitioning wetland and riparian habitats up the topographic slope due to changing river stages. (2) When analyzing site hydrology and hydraulics, the design also incorporated peak flows scaled to account for anticipated future development and higher intensity winter storms, as predicted by climate models. Consequently, site infrastructure including the west setback levee/floodwall were designed for Gibbons Creek discharges that are 20% larger than current peaks. (3) Finally, the design targeted full floodplain connectivity (Stage Zero condition) in restoring Gibbons Creek’s 80-acre alluvial fan while also ensuring functionality of instream habitat at the base of the alluvial fan. Maximizing hyporheic exchange to cool water temperatures along with wood structures for initial floodplain roughness and cover habitat for juvenile salmonids in turn maximizes thermal refuge for salmonids throughout the warm summer months. These three climate resiliency design measures were based on several simple yet often underestimated concepts including space, scale, imprecision, and redundancy, and the focus of the presentation will be on how these ideas can be applied in constrained environments. This presentation will include both broad concepts and specific recommendations that are useful for landowners, planners, agencies, as well as restoration scientists and …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Cygnia Rapp Symposium Session: 2022 – 04 Stream Restoration from the (WSDOT) Transportation Perspective Topics covered: fish passage, fish-salmon, floodplain, hydraulics, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), risk and resilience, sediment transport, stream, and wood ABSTRACTImplementing a region-wide fish passage restoration program offers opportunities for innovating floodplain restoration design, particularly where fish passage projects are co-listed as Chronic Environmental Deficiency (CED) sites. As an example, Childs Creek is a tributary of the Skagit River along State Route 20 near Lyman, WA. The existing stream crossing represents a frequent dilemma for WSDOT of how to restore sediment transport processes through a stream crossing within a highway alignment that crosses an alluvial fan. The Childs Creek stream crossing is both a fish passage barrier and recurring maintenance problem due to the loss of the natural sediment storage capacity of the now impaired alluvial fan. Historically, Childs Creek was relocated west of its original alluvial fan floodplain around 1905 with the construction of a logging railroad that truncated the toe of the fan. The current alignment of SR 20 was built in 1961 utilizing the 1905 railroad grade. Childs Creek has been confined between berms (sugar dikes) for 100+ years in an alignment that enhances localized deposition near the highway and reduces the area for sediment to deposit across its historical alluvial fan. Aggradation upstream and downstream of the undersized 1962 culvert results in erosion of the SR 20 road prism, erosion and overtopping of the berm along the highway, and regular inundation of the roadway during high-frequency, low-magnitude storm events. WSDOT is proposing to acquire about 7 acres of land directly north of SR 20 and west of the historical alluvial fan to re-establish a floodplain that can serve as an alluvial fan for long-term sediment storage while accommodating multiple channel configurations. The intent is to decrease the sediment load at the crossing downstream by storing it across the floodplain, thereby decreasing the need for maintenance through a new, wider crossing. Large wood integrated into floodplain design emulates the functions of a mature riparian forest by creating areas of long-term sediment storage, substrate for conifers to grow, enhanced revegetation ability, storage potential for wood originating upstream, and serving as hard-points to encourage multiple potential flow pathways – all of which provide benefits to aquatic habitat over the current confined system. The proposed crossing is based on geomorphic parameters (about 4.4x of the bankfull width) instead of stream simulation to accommodate multiple channel configurations during low flow conditions and flood …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Sarah Kidd Symposium Session: 2022 – 10 Complex, High-Risk, Climate-Resilient Floodplain Restoration Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, floodplain, lessons learned, modeling, riparian, water quality, and wetlands ABSTRACTUnderstanding how our restoration actions change the landscape and benefit the ecology of a system are critical to both accounting for these efforts and providing feedback for adapting and improving our restoration actions. Monitoring of the Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge (Steigerwald) after implementation of the Steigerwald Reconnection Project must meet multiple objectives to ensure project success which includes monitoring to achieve regulatory compliance, inform adaptive management, and track project success. While these monitoring objectives are not unique, monitoring Steigerwald is a challenge due to both its size (1,000 acres) and the dynamic nature of the project. The project involves major changes to the landscape including removal of an elevated channel, Gibbons Creek, re-creating Gibbon’s creek historic channel and alluvial fan, and reconnecting the wetland floodplain to Gibbons Creek and the Columbia River, including multiple high flow channel connections. Across the site we will focus our monitoring on multiple restoration targets including 1) plant community changes in the floodplain, 2) water quality changes in the reconnected channel and Steigerwald Lake, 3) channel, alluvial fan, and floodplain geomorphic development, 4) and fish use. In this talk, we will provide a clear example of how pre and post-project monitoring was planned using testable hypotheses. Hypotheses were established during the design phase by using a paired hydraulic model (HEC-RAS), and ecological functions model (HEC- EFM) which integrated long-term reference site data into predicting post-restoration outcomes across the site. This approach provided a template of anticipated outcomes for identifying if proposed geomorphic, hydrologic, wetland plant community, and overall fish habitat objectives are being met post-restoration. The hypotheses will be tested though a combination of traditional ground surveys, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) data collection, and with the use of a flexible two-way PIT-tag array for fish detection. We will outline how the use of UAV data collection increases the efficiency and effectiveness of traditional floodplain and stream survey methods, which make full site surveying possible and affordable for such a large-scale restoration project. Additionally, we will provide an overview of the new more affordable, and reliable fish PIT-tag detection technology that will be installed and tested at Steigerwald and its reference site, providing continuous fish use data post-project construction. This overview of monitoring design, methods, and preliminary results for Steigerwald will provide the audience an example of new techniques that can be affordably deployed across their own restoration projects to aid ongoing restoration and adaptive management …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Kyle De Juilio Symposium Session: 2022 – 08 Beyond Dam Removal: Ecological Restoration of the Klamath Basin Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, fish-salmon, flow augmentation, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), lessons learned, riparian, sediment transport, stream, and temperature ABSTRACTWatch the recorded presentation here: https://youtu.be/y3iZf7d8e8M The Trinity River is the largest and southernmost Tributary to the Klamath River, and in recent decades has produced roughly half of returning adult salmon to the Klamath Basin. Although the Trinity is home to the longest free-flowing river in California (South Fork Trinity River), and vast tracts of wilderness, it is heavily managed with a large hatchery, two large hydroelectric dams blocking fish passage to valuable habitat, and an inter-basin diversion carrying 50 to 90% of runoff from the upper watershed to the Central Valley Project and the Sacramento River since construction in the 1960s. Major efforts to restore historically productive fisheries of the Trinity River have been underway for decades and have left managers with the responsibility of augmenting flows, fish, and sediment to the system, as well as re-imagining and constructing the river channel and valley floor to allow function and buoy productivity. As the Trinity River Restoration Program (TRRP) approaches 20 years of implementation it’s assessing restoration results, looking ahead, and proposing new strategies. Through compilation and synthesis of decades of data, conceptual models are being revised and important factors not previously investigated are being identified. This presentation will share some lessons learned and new directions. As it turns out you can have too little fine sediment, water temperatures can be too cold, and the streambed sediment conveyor belt has holes in it. Growing evidence suggests that current environmental releases intended to restore form and function through allowing geomorphic change and riparian regeneration are causing unnatural cooling during the salmonid rearing period causing fish to be smaller at outmigration and delaying the development of invertebrates and amphibians. The TRRP is now pursuing changes to all its management actions through adaptive management and revised environmental permits, including an Environmental Assessment to redistribute flows to reflect a more natural pattern and “piggyback” on storm events to more efficiently accomplish geomorphic work, inundate habitat and improve temperatures for growth and outmigration of salmonids. Prior to environmental flow releases, the streambed of the Trinity was overwhelmed by fines and starved of gravels. Scouring flows have restored a gravel bed river and resulted in a deficit of fines below the dam, which can impact spawning success and productivity, causing some to consider augmentation of fine grains. While gravel augmentation is a vested restoration action, gravel transport is not as orderly as originally envisioned. Rather than continual movement downstream there appear to be sources and sinks resulting in storage and flux, causing practitioners to develop site-specific intent for gravel additions. Many of the prospective changes to management on the Trinity beg the questions: What do managers do when they accomplish an objective or perhaps go too far?; How do we adjust within existing constraints to address new objectives?; How do scientists combat effective but simplistic messaging from the 20th century with a more nuanced approach?, or in other words; How do we replace the black and white of Smokey Bear with the shades of …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Sarah Beesley Symposium Session: 2022 – 08 Beyond Dam Removal: Ecological Restoration of the Klamath Basin Topics covered: climate change, community involvement, environmental justice, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, floodplain, groundwater, riparian, temperature, terrestrial species, traditional ecological knowledge, uplands, water quality, wetlands, wildfire, and wood ABSTRACTThe Yurok Tribe is the largest tribe in California. Ancestral Territory includes several north coast watersheds with the Lower Klamath River Sub-basin at its heart. The river is the life blood of the Yurok and they hold sacred their role as stewards and protectors of the land and water. The Yurok Tribe Reservation encompasses a one-mile strip along each side of the lower 44 miles of the river. Tragically, most of the Reservation and sub-basin have been subjected to intensive land use under non-Tribal management since the mid-1800s. However, with new partnerships and creative means, the Yurok Tribe is regaining ownership and responsibility for their lands. Yurok Fisheries has built strong partnerships with non-Tribal landholders to implement needed fisheries habitat enhancements. Work to date has primarily occurred on privately owned industrial timberlands with land management constraints limiting the scope and scale of restoration. Even under these constraints, Yurok Fisheries and our partner Fiori GeoSciences are implementing innovative and effective, process-based restoration which includes complementary use of constructed log jams, creation of off-channel wetlands and other floodplain enhancements, bioengineering, and installation/stewardship of beaver dam analogues. Now, as the Yurok Tribe regains ownership of their lands, opportunities exist to expand from project or reach level treatments to more holistic regenerative actions at the landscape scale. Key to this effort is re-acquisition and designation of lower Blue Creek as a forest and salmon sanctuary. Blue Creek is the largest Lower Klamath tributary and is of significant cultural and biological importance. Blue Creek Sanctuary goals focus on 1) enhancing water quality and climate resiliency; 2) greatly improving conditions for native fish and wildlife; 3) promoting healthy late seral forests; 4) re-establishing vital prairies and oak woodlands; and 5) strengthening Yurok culture and sustainability by revitalizing traditional lifeways such as tending to the health of the land and water. The Sanctuary offers an amazing opportunity for an indigenous nation to rewild tribal lands ravaged by industrial timber operations through ecological stewardship that incorporates traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), tribal-led western science, and innovative restoration. Evolution and expansion of fisheries restoration in Yurok Country demonstrates effective use of innovative techniques and ecological stewardship that can help inform other tribes and restoration scientists facing similar challenges (loss of ecological function, species declines, climate change). Techniques include biogeomorphic valley floor restoration and comprehensive road removal treatments (full recontouring to restore surface and ground water hydrology, improve summer baseflow quality and quantity, and promote healthy forest regeneration). Although there are challenges to actualizing Tribal stewardship (navigating within a colonial-based regulatory system, entrenchment of outdated practices, overcoming paradigms such as the promotion of a one and done approach rather than embracing active wild tending to actualize reciprocal benefits) tribes of the Klamath River and other basin partners are gaining ground in this movement. Our overall experience shows that land sovereignty is critical to implementing effective ridge to river stewardship and reinforces the recognition that integrating TEK and western science is key to boosting and maintaining ecological function, sustainability, and …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Will Harling Symposium Session: 2022 – 08 Beyond Dam Removal: Ecological Restoration of the Klamath Basin Topics covered: climate change, community involvement, fish-cutthroat, fish-salmon, risk and resilience, traditional ecological knowledge, uplands, and wildfire ABSTRACTThe Western Klamath Mountains in far northern California have experienced megafires (wildfires over 100,000 acres in size) regularly since 1977. Large scale high severity wildfires, and importantly, the century of fire suppression/exclusion that preceded these fires, have significantly impacted threatened and endangered salmon habitat, pushing Spring Chinook and coho salmon populations closer to extinction. Fish habitat, and fish habitat restoration projects on key tributaries to the Klamath River have been affected both positively and negatively by episodic pulse disturbances related to current altered fire regimes. Extreme wildfires, coupled with post-fire debris flows, can now be predicted with more accuracy and can provide information to help stream restorationists better anticipate and accommodate for the eventuality of wildfire. Indigenous fire knowledge regarding the use of fire as a critical tool for both specific resource and landscape scale fire management has greatly influenced fire management in the region, and is also being covered in national and international media. Indigenous fire knowledge has guided the Western Klamath Restoration Partnership (WKRP), a diverse group of local, tribal, state, and federal partners, to address both instream and upslope restoration simultaneously in 70 anadromous tributaries to the Klamath River through process based restoration actions. Projects that include combined upslope and instream habitat restoration objectives, including helicopter wood loading and mechanical wood loading projects, and fuels treatments including prescribed fire, have been planned through WKRP in a holistic manner. Tools for understanding both fire risk and opportunities for restoring fire process at the landscape scale from the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) to the wildlands, in an effort to both protect and enhance alluvial process and function, are being developed for the 1.2 million acre WKRP planning area. These include both the Potential Operational Delineations (PODs) model for analyzing the effectiveness of fire management strategies, as well as the REBURN State-and-Transition vegetation model for visualizing pre-contact vegetation and fire on fire interactions, and stress testing proposed treatment strategies with current and predicted environmental conditions. This presentation will equip fisheries biologists and watershed restorationists with the tools to address both fire risk and opportunity in the context of habitat restoration on their …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Eli Asarian Symposium Session: 2022 – 08 Beyond Dam Removal: Ecological Restoration of the Klamath Basin Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, climate change, fish-cutthroat, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), lessons learned, riparian, stream, temperature, and wildfire ABSTRACTFor the past few decades, Native American Tribes, federal and state agencies, non-governmental organizations, and universities have monitored water temperatures in rivers and streams throughout the Klamath Basin. Beginning in 2015 and continuing through the present, Riverbend Sciences and an assemblage of colleagues compiled and analyzed this massive dataset in a series of seven projects covering nearly every sub-basin of the Klamath (Lower Klamath, Middle Klamath, Upper Klamath, Salmon, Scott, Trinity, and South Fork Trinity), each with its own objectives. A variety of statistical methods (including generalized additive models, linear mixed models, and spatial stream network models) were used to assess relationships between water temperatures and hydroclimatic factors such as river flow, snowpack, air temperature, and wildfire smoke; evaluate long-term trends; and make climate change projections. Study sites span diverse landscapes including coastal redwood rainforests, mountain wilderness snowmelt-fed streams, intensively-farmed agricultural valleys, and prodigious springs in the semi-arid Upper Klamath Basin. In this presentation, we summarize key findings from these analyses. Summer water temperatures (especially in July) have warmed in recent decades, coincident with climate-driven increases in air temperatures and decreases in snowpack and river flow. Water temperatures have increased most dramatically at sites that are cool during high-flow years but warm during droughts. Wildfire smoke has helped limit increases in August water temperatures, but has not affected annual maximum water temperatures because in most years fires do not start until after the hottest water temperatures have already occurred. At some sites, summer water temperatures have cooled as riparian vegetation and stream channel morphology recovered from previous disturbances including a major flood in 1997. High river flows have a greater cooling effect on water temperatures in the spring and early summer than in late summer and fall. Climate change analyses for the Salmon River sub-basin indicate that August water temperatures will warm by 1.7–3.3 °C (3.1–5.9 °F) (magnitude varies by stream reach) by the end of the 21st century (2070-2099) if global greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced substantially. Reduced emissions would limit these increases and help maintain cool water temperatures. Insights from these analyses can inform climate-resilient restoration strategies. For example, creek mouth thermal refugia deserve special attention for habitat restoration and watershed management because they will become increasingly important as peak summer river temperatures become increasingly inhospitable to coldwater species. Similarly, dam removal would allow anadromous fish to access Upper Basin cold volcanic springs that will be more climate-resilient than Lower Basin rivers with dwindling snowpack. To counter warming trends, restorationists and regulators will need to find ways to reduce costs and accelerate implementation of complex projects like floodplain restoration that can increase thermal diversity by promoting interactions between surface water and groundwater. Decreased snow and increased rain will necessitate greater flood control capacity, increasing the risk of depleting Trinity Reservoir’s cold-water pool and releasing warm water into the Trinity River during fall salmon spawning. Retrofitting Trinity Dam to allow water releases from multiple depths would help preserve cold water and improve conditions for anadromous …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Joshua Chenoweth Symposium Session: 2022 – 08 Beyond Dam Removal: Ecological Restoration of the Klamath Basin Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, community involvement, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), riparian, terrestrial species, and uplands ABSTRACTThe removal of four dams on the Klamath River will expose nearly 2,000 acres of uplands, riparian habitats, tributary, and main stem river channels that will be devoid of vegetation and critical aquatic habitat. The goal of the project is to create a free-flowing river; allow for access to over 400 stream-miles of historic spawning area upstream of the dams to salmon, steelhead, and lamprey; and to enhance riparian and upland habitats. Dam removal also is expected to lower fall water temperatures and alleviate poor ecological conditions that contribute to fish diseases below the dams. Currently, there is an estimated 13 million cubic yards of fine sediments deposited in the reservoirs. A majority of the sediments are expected to remain and will require establishing a strong foundation of native vegetation and biological conditions to promote physical processes and place the Klamath on a positive ecological trajectory. A detailed restoration plan is outlined in the Reservoir Area Management Plan, a collaboration of multiple organizations including Resource Environmental Solutions (RES) and the Yurok and Karuk Tribes under Klamath River Renewal Corporation’s leadership. Ecological restoration is informed by the latest scientific guidance and requires a careful coordination of Invasive Exotic Vegetation (IEV) management, revegetation, and in-channel habitat monitoring and restoration. The surrounding landscape harbors abundant populations of IEV poised to dominate the dewatered reservoir landscapes. IEV requires pre-dam removal management, a robust early detection and rapid response plan post-removal, and aggressive revegetation strategies. Revegetation will consist of seeding native species, and planting native bare root plants, live cuttings and herbaceous plugs. Seeding native grasses and forbs immediately during and after dam removal will minimize erosion of fine sediments, preclude IEV species, and enhance natural regeneration while residual moisture from the reservoirs is available. Bare root plants will be installed in priority tributary habitats and in select, concentrated upland areas in dense patches referred to as facilitation patches. In addition to revegetation efforts there will be volitional fish passage restoration work in high priority tributaries designed to improve habitat conditions. Current restoration designs target five tributaries including: Spencer, Jenny, Camp, Scotch, and Beaver Creek areas. Restoration actions include large wood placement, strategic grading to promote fish passage, in-channel and off-channel habitat enhancement, sediment evacuation, and wetland development. In-channel restoration will occur during drawdown and after dam removal to allow for natural river processes and restore connectivity the upper watershed. All ecological revegetation and restoration actions will be coordinated and implemented together based on field observations and monitoring during the drawdown process. Restoration on the scale of the Klamath project requires multiple years of preparation. Seed collection from genetically appropriate native species began in 2018 and is ongoing. To date nearly 2,000 lbs. of seed from 80+ species has been collected and used to establish over 37 acres of seed increase fields that produced over 25,000 lbs. in 2020. The next few years are critical for revegetation preparation to ensure native plant materials are ready for this monumental …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Chauncey Anderson Symposium Session: 2022 – 06 Klamath River Dam Removal is the Largest and Most Complex Fish Restoration Project Ever Attempted Topics covered: fish passage, fish-salmon, hydraulics, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), modeling, risk and resilience, and sediment transport ABSTRACTThe USGS is engaged in a multi-phase study to collect baseline data and to investigate the effects of dam removal on sediment transport, habitat and the geomorphologic features of the mainstem Klamath River. Four hydroelectric dams are slated to be removed in 2023 to improve flow, water quality, sediment transport, volitional fish passage and salmonid habitat for endangered and threatened salmonid species in the basin. The four dams currently store approximately 10-12×106 m3 of mostly fine sediment (~85% clay or silt). The simultaneous removal of these dams will deliver a substantial fraction of the stored sediment to over 190 miles of unregulated river downstream. Most of the released fine sediment is expected to be transported in suspension to the river mouth within two winters. In contrast, the coarse sediment is predicted to move more slowly, as suspended and bedload depending on flow conditions, resulting in more dynamic geomorphic processes in reaches where habitat is currently degraded by the presence of the dams. The USGS is developing a sediment budget prior to dam removal to provide a baseline for comparison to a post removal sediment budget, and to quantify the amounts and characteristics of sediment transported from the system or deposited along its length. In addition to yielding results that will be used to assess the effects of dam removal, the study is investigating new methods to track pulses of fine-sediment (sand/silt/clay) through coarse-grained river corridors (cobble/boulder) including the differentiation of sediment sources (e.g. reservoir sediments versus downstream tributary sources). Several complementary methods are being used to characterize and quantify the baseline sediment budget. A cornerstone of this effort is a2 018 integrated topo-bathymetric terrain dataset, which we are using to select intensive study reaches distributed downstream of the lowermost dam along the mainstem river corridor. The system-wide terrain dataset provides context to the data collected at the intensive study reaches. We are using traditional methods (e.g. gaged data, bed-material sampling, and vegetation, habitat and geomorphic mapping) and remote-sensing technologies (e.g. sedcams, sonar, UAV surveys, and LiDAR) to monitor fine-sediment dynamics (e.g. bed-fining and changes in sediment storage) along the river corridor. We are using sediment tracing methods (fingerprinting, macroinvertebrate bioaccumulation of metals) to detect and differentiate reservoir sediment from tributary, landslide, and other sources downstream of the dams. The combination of approaches provides an assessment of pre-dam-removal sediment loads and geomorphic attributes of the river, setting the stage for evaluation of the effects of dam removal on these attributes. This presentation will include a discussion of the methods and monitoring strategies to predict and document sediment dynamics at the intensive study sites and will discuss implications of dam removal for restoration of riverine …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: John Monahan Symposium Session: 2022 – 04 Stream Restoration from the (WSDOT) Transportation Perspective Topics covered: fish passage, fish-salmon, hydraulics, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), modeling, and stream ABSTRACTIn March 2013 the State of Washington was required, by Federal injunction, to correct hundreds of fish passage barriers in the Puget Sound by the year 2030. This presentation provides an overview of several advancements and challenges with hydraulic designs being completed for Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) fish passage and stream restoration design projects, in response to the injunction. WSDOT’s Hydraulics Manual (HM) and the Water Crossing Design Guidelines (WCDG) produced by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) serve as primary references for design teams, and continue to be updated and refined as restoration practices adapt to the widely varying natural and anthropogenic conditions, and project delivery methods. For example, practitioners are challenged to produce robust preliminary designs that may be used by WSDOT as reference documents in design-build bid packages, but preliminary designs do not have important final design refinements like scour, large woody material design placement, wood stability, or streambed material placement. Designs represent a static, as-built condition, but are typically intended to include deformable elements to foster natural channel processes resulting in hydraulic and habitat complexity and associated sediment and channel response for improved performance. Therefore, involvement of interdisciplinary fish passage and stream restoration design practitioners, from concept to completion of construction, is essential to successful completion of fish passage and stream restoration design projects. However, WSDOT staff, WFDW and Tribal partners are heavily loaded with projects and cannot support contractors at all sites. With an ever-growing urgency to complete projects to meet Federal injunction requirements by the year 2030, WSDOT continues to solicit external support and has developed fish passage and stream restoration design certification training. We recommend that fish passage and stream restoration design practitioners not already engaged in this project, but available to do so, look into the training and contract opportunities. There is much to do, and little time to do it …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Garrett Jackson Symposium Session: 2022 – 04 Stream Restoration from the (WSDOT) Transportation Perspective Topics covered: fish passage, fish-salmon, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), risk and resilience, stream, and wood ABSTRACTAlthough many aspects of wood behavior in streams are still being studied, the value of wood to habitat and geomorphic function has been understood for decades now. However, in past years, transportation agencies’ use of wood was limited to stream bank protection and mitigation projects. Stream crossing projects did not place wood below the 100-year water surface elevation. There really was no framework for evaluating infrastructure risk. Since then, what used to be viewed with great reservation has been embraced by WSDOT, resulting in agency-wide acceptance and a sea change in the approach to stream restoration design and construction. WSDOT actually began using wood in the early 2000s, through the Chronic Environmental Deficiencies program. That program’s mission is to reduce maintenance and elevate habitat functions at problem sites. However, most of that work remained siloed from the rest of the agency for a long time. A 2013 court injunction required the state of Washington to fix hundreds of fish passage barriers by the year 2030. As a portion of that effort, each project reach needs to be passable from day 1 after construction and remain passable into the future. With early fish passage projects, and little to no guidance, WSDOT staff developed large wood designs that reflected a background in highway engineering. Wood was over-anchored, placed far to the margins of the channel cross-sections, was quite sparse and very much like bank protection with little habitat value. Through collaboration with the tribes, the WSDOT State Hydraulics Section incorporated more habitat complexity and features as part of the fish passage design process. One of the guidance documents is the leading paper on large wood quantities in streams in Washington State (Fox and Bolton, 2007). These recommendations – the target of the 75th percentile of key pieces and non-key pieces in undisturbed streams, have been adopted as the targeted starting point for conceptual large wood design. Once the length of the project reach is determined, the large wood targets are applied and the project specific targets are determined. There are often constraints, particularly in urbanized watersheds, that may make meeting the large wood targets difficult or impossible, but we work through those on a case by case basis. In addition, WSDOT has begun to embrace use of large wood for specific hydraulic and habitat objectives, such as restoration of alluvial fan processes, floodplain reconnection, and shear stress partitioning. The WSDOT Hydraulics Manual was updated to include a chapter on large wood as well as a comprehensive water crossings chapter to achieve fish passage. WSDOT has also committed to following best available science and technology as we continue to learn with every crossing in this dynamic program. This includes participating in research opportunities that are state and nationally valued. The WSDOT Hydraulics Manual is being updated regularly as we learn new information and techniques through our detailed fish passage monitoring program. Finally, use of large wood in emergency situations is now much more common. When site conditions allow, we now incorporate wood into embankment stabilization …

Year: 2022 Presenter/s: Jennifer Schmidt Symposium Session: 2022 – 01 Addressing Climate Science + Environmental Justice Topics covered: climate change, environmental justice, risk and resilience, and urban ABSTRACTCentering environmental justice in restoration project identification and planning requires thinking beyond technical, outcome-driven considerations. This session will focus on a GIS-based framework that can be applied at the watershed scale to help guide the equitable investment of resources and subsequent project benefits of watershed restoration actions. The goal of this framework is to provide repeatable, quantitative steps that can be used to compare and prioritize potential restoration projects based on the impact and benefit to the community, particularly those populations that have traditionally been underserved or overly burdened by environmental injustice. Specific topics that will be covered in this presentation include: 1) using technology and mapping to effectively engage stakeholders and the community through all project phases; 2) guidance for developing spatial metrics and scoring criteria to create GIS “heat maps” to identify the intersection of project need, opportunity, and potential for equitable ecological and community lift; 3) tools for reporting project progress and results back to the community; and 4) potential limitations, pitfalls, and considerations for mapping equity considerations responsibly. This presentation will focus on several watershed-scale case studies throughout the Pacific NW to illustrate this framework in …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: David (DJ) Bandrowski Symposium Session: 2020 – 11 Dam removal in the Pacific Northwest Topics covered: beavers, community involvement, fish passage, floodplain, hydraulics, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), riparian, risk and resilience, sediment transport, and stream ABSTRACTFour dams on the Klamath River are planned for removal in 2022 to restore volitional fish passage and salmonid habitat across more than 400 miles of river in the upper Klamath basin. During dam removal a substantial portion of the accumulated sediment will be released to the river downstream in a relatively short period of time. The release of reservoir sediment has the potential to impact downstream reaches in a variety of ways across a range of temporal and spatial scales. Sediment erosion, transport, and deposition provide the underlying physical framework for the responses of aquatic and riparian ecosystems to dam removal. Thus, pre-dam removal baseline survey of river bed bathymetry and near shore terrestrial topography are necessary to understand potential responses and impacts to flood hydraulics, geomorphic evolution, and sediment transport dynamics. System-wide topographic surveys will underpin a quantitative understanding of both the short and long term river response to dam removal. This data collection effort will also serve as the foundational dataset to be used in the future to quantify and compare physical change and sediment transport processes over time. During the summer of 2018 a multi-agency team collected this topographic data across the Klamath basin from the estuary to Iron Gate Dam. Phase I of the project was an Aerial Imagery and LiDAR (topo-bathy) survey flown in June of 2018 by Quantum Spatial Inc. (QSI) with funding support from USGS, NOAA, KRRC, and others. Phase II was a bathymetric boat-based hydrographic multi-beam sonar survey through a collaboration between the Yurok Tribe, Hewlett Foundation and US Army Corps of Engineers – Engineering Research and Development Center (ERDC). Currently the multiagency team is in the process of completing Phase III which is the post-processing of the entire data set into a fully integrated mosaic that will produce a seamless topographic Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the entire Klamath River. Phase IV will be the development of a 2D-Hydrodynamic Model of the river’s existing flow conditions that will be implemented by the Bureau of Reclamation – Technical Service Center (TSC) – Sedimentation and River Hydraulics (SRH) Group. The final goal of the project is to have a foundational data set that management and the scientific community will utilize to better understand the effects of dam removal, measure geomorphic evolution, and help monitor the biological response of a newly free-flowing Klamath …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Matthew Prociv Symposium Session: 2020 – 11 Dam removal in the Pacific Northwest Topics covered: beavers, fish passage, hydraulics, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), stream, and urban ABSTRACTImpoundment structures, such as dams, are a reliable method to divert water from otherwise naturally flowing water courses to other locations and consumptive uses, but are also impediments or full barriers to fish passage and alter the natural habitat and hydraulic and sediment conveyance characteristics of the water courses. Several projects, currently in various stages of implementation, from in design to constructed and operating, are attempting to improve/restore fish passage by returning rivers to more nature-like channels while maintaining reliable water supplies. In this presentation we will examine the needs driving these projects, the physical improvements to the rivers, infrastructure, and affected environment, and the potential pitfalls involved in the replacement of impoundment structures with regraded, stabilized, nature-like channels while simultaneously maintaining or expanding water supply diversions. We will also explore the geomorphic and hydraulic characteristics that make impoundment structures good candidates for replacement with regraded channels; discuss how fish and lamprey run timing and biomechanics are incorporated into design of the regraded channels to make them successful; examine how natural hydraulic and sediment conveyance processes of the water course may be restored; and discuss management related considerations such as risk, uncertainty, maintenance, and …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: April McEwen Symposium Session: 2020 – 11 Dam removal in the Pacific Northwest Topics covered: beavers, fish passage, hydraulics, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), risk and resilience, and sediment transport ABSTRACTThe Middle Fork Nooksack River Fish Passage Project, near Bellingham, WA, will reestablish access to approximately 16 miles of critical spawning and rearing habitat for Puget Sound ESA-listed Chinook salmon, Steelhead, and Bull Trout in 2020 while maintaining the City of Bellingham’s supplemental water supply. Project elements include: (1) removal of the City of Bellingham’s diversion dam and channel restoration to restore fish passage; (2) relocating/constructing the water intake upstream to maintain municipal water supply; and (3) installing an off-channel fish screen for fish protection and reduced environmental impact footprint. The project design uses innovative engineering and modern technology to meet the purpose of the dam in providing the City of Bellingham’s supplemental water supply, without need for the dam. A geomorphic-based design approach based in thorough site assessment targets native fish species passage, and best addresses risk and inherent uncertainty associated with the Nooksack River system’s physical drivers and channel conditions in meeting the project goals and objectives. The $17 million project was re-initiated in 2017, with the entire planning phase (i.e., feasibility evaluation, alternatives analysis, design, permitting, and fundraising) completed in 1.5 years. This included final design plans for the following project elements: dam removal, restoration of ~200ft of river channel, construction of a gravity-fed water intake ~600ft upstream, extension of the existing water diversion pipeline through the historical dam construction spoils, and an automated off-channel fish screen and bypass facility. Thirteen federal, state, and local permits were secured, including an extended in-water work period for completion in one season. American Rivers secured significant seed funding from private foundations for project management, design, and construction ($4.1 million), which allowed the remaining $13.5 million to be leveraged from local, state, and federal sources. The project is currently in construction, and in-water work will begin in June 2020 with completion in October 2020. This project demonstrates best practices in efficient project planning and management, with the following primary conclusions and implications. Water resource needs can be met with less environmental impact for longer-term sustainability through use of smart modern infrastructure. A complex multi-benefit project can be planned and funded in record time through development of a strategic yet agile Project Management framework, application of efficient project management processes, and public-private funding …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Steve Thompson Symposium Session: 2020 – 10 Prioritizing restoration Topics covered: beavers, floodplain, hydraulics, permits, riparian, stormwater, and urban ABSTRACTThis talk presents the case for using stream restoration to achieve the same goals and objectives as conventional stormwater flow control BMPs (i.e. detention/infiltration/Low Impact Development) in certain locations in the watershed. This presentation begins by covering some of the background of stormwater flow control BMPs (flow control), the theory behind why we use them, and where they are most effective in the watershed. Flow control measures are very beneficial in the upper watershed, where they can reduce peak flows on small tributary streams and help recharge the aquifer. However, these same measures are less effective lower in the watershed. They are a good preventative tool to reduce the risk of downstream channel incision, but offer only limited benefit for alluvial channels that have already scoured down to bedrock or a hard armoring. Once the damage is done the need for prevention is diminished. Flow control requirements are governed by a one-size-fits-all policy, which strives to recover impaired rivers and streams by creating a more natural hydrologic flow regime. The limitation to flow control is that it only considers impacts from impervious surfaces, neglects all other direct human modifications to the stream channels, and assumes that channel restoration can be achieved through better stormwater infiltration. Changes in flow regimes, such as increased peak flows resulting from urbanization, can have significant impacts, but clearing of in-stream wood and riparian vegetation, hardening of banks and loss of floodplain can have even more severe impacts. All of these alterations can lead to channel incision and can exaggerate changes in flow regime. Channel incision also leads to a loss of in-stream alluvium which in turn reduces hyporheic flow quantities which lowers water tables and worsens water quality. We must consider all of these factors if our goal is to restore natural stream functions. This presentation offers examples of how to use stream restoration to meet the same goals and objectives as stormwater flow control requirements. For example, restoring floodplain connectivity and floodplain storage instead of building artificial ponds to store floodwater. We will discuss the regulatory framework that must be followed. We will also make a case for out-of-kind stream restoration in lieu of conventional flow control. In some locations correcting fish passage barriers, restoring riparian buffers and floodplains, and adding in-stream wood in strategic locations can offer much greater environmental benefits than building stormwater ponds or underground detention …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Robyn Pepin Symposium Session: 2020 – 10 Prioritizing restoration Topics covered: beavers, fish passage, floodplain, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), modeling, riparian, and risk and resilience ABSTRACTThe Upper Columbia has over 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of salmon, steelhead, and bull trout habitat, a substantial portion of which is inaccessible to fish due to anthropogenic barriers. Since 1999, partners working in the region have addressed over 135 high priority fish passage barriers. As the list of barriers to address began to shrink, the region now faced the challenge of prioritizing the removal or replacement of the remaining smaller barriers. After a comprehensive assessment of hundreds of new potential fish passage barriers in the Wenatchee subbasin in 2016-2017, the Upper Columbia Salmon Recovery Board and its partners completed a GIS-based prioritization of barriers using species, habitat, and barrier metrics. This talk will include a description of the strategy that was developed and adopted to prioritize fish passage projects in the Upper Columbia and a discussion of the collaboration and technical review efforts to produce a reliable prioritization tool. An ArcGIS model was used as a tool which used spatial analysis in a reliable, repeatable fashion – as input datasets improve and barrier projects are completed, the prioritization can be repeated to give stakeholders the most up-to-date information. Using this tool, the region now has a common language and an apples-to-apples comparison of ecological conditions surrounding each barrier to inform project and funding decisions. Additionally, this talk will address how the concepts behind the barrier prioritization are currently being adapted to prioritize HUC12 watersheds within the Upper Columbia region, as well as individual stream reach segments, for funding opportunities and project …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Tracy Drury Symposium Session: 2020 – 10 Prioritizing restoration Topics covered: beavers, fish passage, fish-salmon, floodplain, hydraulics, lessons learned, modeling, and sediment transport ABSTRACTThe Tucannon River was identified as a priority watershed in the 2008 BiOp and determined to be critical to recovery of Snake River Spring Chinook. Geomorphic analysis and restoration prioritization was conducted in 2010 and more than 12 million dollars has been spent implementing restoration projects based on that prioritization effort. Given the large investment over the past decade, extensive additional data available, and continued restoration effort, a more in-depth, data driven, analysis and prioritization was desired by project proponents. A part of the newly available data was fish presence and use within the watershed that was previously mostly unknown. In addition, we developed a 2-D model for 50 miles of the watershed and conducted various hydraulic and physical process analyses using green LiDAR collected in 2017. We also conducted a physical change analysis comparing the 2017 green LiDAR to red LiDAR collected in 2010. Key components of the geomorphic analysis and restoration prioritization were floodplain connectivity analysis, channel complexity analysis, and excess transport capacity analysis. Connectivity analysis looked at the potential floodplain available for connection to floodwaters during a 5-year recurrence flow or lower. These potential floodplain areas were compared to current 2-year recurrence floodplain areas and the ability to extend them to the 5-year extent by removing blocking features such as levees, or placing log structures to retain mobile sediments and raise the river bed elevation. Complexity analysis utilized a complexity index based initially on the River Complexity Index (RCI) that added in a parameter to better capture the size, or perimeter of an island feature to better value channel margins critical for juvenile salmonids. Excess transport capacity was evaluated to help identify high energy areas to treat in order to help promote temporary storage of sediment and identify potential locations for gravel augmentation. The prioritization is a data driven analysis that is largely comprised of the connectivity and complexity analyses with the excess transport capacity being more of an indicator and differentiator among closely rated river segments. Excess transport capacity was also used to help develop the basin scale gravel augmentation plan and identify key locations for gravel reintroduction to help “jump start” natural processes and minimize the timeline to reaching restoration potential within a given project site. Project sites are easily compared and key elements necessary of realizing restoration potential are documented and easily retrievable for all sites. The end product from this effort in not a list, but a tool that can be constantly updated as projects are completed and more information becomes available. This method presents a new look at how to use widely available information to help maximize the use of our limited restoration dollars as salmonid stocks continue to dwindle and competition for funding continues to …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Nick Southall Symposium Session: 2020 – 10 Prioritizing restoration Topics covered: beavers, fish passage, fish-cutthroat, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, floodplain, hydraulics, lessons learned, modeling, and riparian ABSTRACTToday’s salmon runs in California’s Central Valley have decreased to a small fraction of their historic abundance (Yoshiyama, 1998). Salmonid populations have suffered due to the impacts of the 1849 California gold rush, subsequent settlement and agricultural development, overfishing, and the damming of nearly all Central Valley rivers. Rim dams on the major tributaries have substantially limited the extents of anadromy, regulated flows, and interrupted natural downstream processes. As part of the Central Valley Project, Folsom and Nimbus Dams were constructed in 1955 on the American River, limiting anadromy to the lower 23 miles of the American River. Over the last 12 years, salmonid recovery efforts on the lower American River have focused on gravel augmentation efforts to improve spawning conditions. Following the completion of nine successful projects, the focus has evolved to include the enhancement and creation of rearing habitat. A key question for decision makers is how much rearing habitat is needed and where should it be located? This presentation will provide an overview of a rigorous science-based planning effort to quantitatively identify and prioritize potential rearing habitat enhancement projects. Using the USFWS Anadromous Fish Restoration Program’s doubling goal for Chinook salmon on the lower American River, the overall spatial and temporal need for rearing habitat was estimated with the Emigrating Salmonid Habitat Estimator (ESHE) Model. Results from a detailed two-dimensional hydrodynamic model were combined with habitat suitability indices to estimate the spatial distribution of existing rearing habitat across a wide range of flows. The rearing habitat deficit was calculated as the difference between the habitat required to reach the doubling goal and the habitat currently available, which varies both spatially and temporally. A high-resolution digital elevation model of the river corridor and results of the hydrodynamic model were combined to calculate the relative elevation of floodplain areas above typical rearing season flows. Findings of this assessment were used to identify potential floodplain enhancement (lowering), side channel connection, backwater channel enhancement, and structural improvement (large wood and revegetation) opportunities. Initial prioritization employed the methods described above and identified over 60 opportunities ranging in scale and type. Using various cost/benefit criteria, sites were ranked and the leading opportunities reviewed with stakeholders. The leading sites were subsequently refined and reprioritized through evaluation of grading boundaries, minimization of impacts to existing vegetation, optimization of rearing conditions for juvenile salmonids and evaluation of additional factors including the thermal regime, the quality of existing rearing habitat, and recent geomorphic evolution. In future phases of the project, the highest ranked sites will be advanced for further design, permitting and implementation. The innovative application of the ESHE model, multi-dimensional hydrodynamic modeling, rearing habitat quantification and the relative elevation analysis, provides a quantifiable science-based approach to identify and prioritize a variety of rearing habitat restoration opportunities aimed to address limiting factors necessary to recover declining salmon stocks. Ronald M. Yoshiyama, Frank W. Fisher & Peter B. Moyle (1998) Historical Abundance and Decline of Chinook Salmon in the Central Valley Region of California, NAJFM, 18:3, …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Jennifer Riedmayer Symposium Session: 2020 – 09 A watershed in transition: Salmon recovery in the East Fork Lewis River Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, beavers, community involvement, floodplain, lessons learned, riparian, risk and resilience, stormwater, and stream ABSTRACTThe East Fork Lewis River and its tributaries are listed on the state’s polluted waters list (303d list) for warm water temperatures and fecal coliform bacteria problems. Keeping the watershed clean is important because high levels of bacteria increase risks to people swimming, wading, or fishing. Also, high temperatures create poor conditions for fish and other wildlife. The Washington State Department of Ecology’s Water Quality Program has been a key partner in the EFLR watershed since 2005, when Ecology prioritized the watershed for the development of a TMDL Alternative (Water Cleanup Plan). In 2018, the East Fork Lewis River Watershed Bacteria and Temperature Source Assessment was published to support water cleanup planning and implementation. This is the first Source Assessment completed by Ecology in Southwest Washington to analyze water quality data, identify critical areas, and develop general recommendations to improve water quality. Priority areas for bacteria and temperature improvement are located in the middle and lower sections of the watershed. All mainstem sites sampled in the East Fork Lewis River did not meet temperature water quality standards. Shade deficits over 40% are located in the middle watershed between river miles 9 to 13. Priority areas to address bacteria are tributaries in the lower watershed. To meet bacteria standards in the lower tributaries, bacteria reductions of 81-96% are needed. To implement recommendations from the Source Assessment, the East Fork Lewis River Partnership was launched in May 2018 to work collaboratively with local, state, federal, and tribal governments, non-profits, watershed groups, and private landowners to develop and implement a Water Cleanup Plan. Since the partnership was launched, over 50 different partners from 30 different organizations have engaged in East Fork Lewis River Partnership activities. The success of water cleanup plans relies on establishing, maintaining, and leveraging partnerships, and increasing public awareness as principal tools to achieve improved water quality. Currently, multiple new projects and programs are being developed in the watershed. All of these programs are voluntary, and help achieve water quality and salmon recovery goals, while reducing threats identified in the recent LCFRB East Fork Lewis River Recovery Plan Review. Priorities for long-term implementation include addressing threats from septic systems, stormwater, and agriculture, and enhancing riparian forest restoration efforts in the watershed. This presentations highlights: How Ecology developed a Source Assessment and Water Cleanup Plan for the East Fork Lewis River watershed. How a shade deficit analysis was completed to identify priority locations for future riparian restoration efforts. Past restoration and acquisition successes in the watershed will also be highlighted. New efforts to reduce bacteria in the watershed which include proactive nonpoint source investigation, manure lagoon decommissioning, stormwater management activities, and the development of a new pollution identification and correction program to address failing septic systems and agricultural challenges in the watershed. This session will end with recommended next steps to achieve water quality and salmon recovery goals in the East Fork Lewis River …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Katie Blauvelt Symposium Session: 2020 – 09 A watershed in transition: Salmon recovery in the East Fork Lewis River Topics covered: beavers, fish-cutthroat, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, lessons learned, modeling, riparian, sediment transport, stream, and urban ABSTRACTThe Washington Lower Columbia Salmon Recovery and Fish & Wildlife Subbasin Plan was the first locally-driven salmon recovery plan on the West Coast. Among a wealth of essential recovery information, the plan identifies actions designed to address threats that had taken southwest Washington salmonid populations to the brink of extinction. Voluntary in nature, the plan relies on partner programs at various levels of federal, tribal, state, local, and non-profit entities to implement the actions and achieve key biological objectives. Fifteen years have passed since the recovery plan was first developed. Throughout the past 15 years, have partner programs met the expectations of the recovery plan? How central is the recovery plan to partner program operations? How do we measure the implementation of qualitative recovery plan actions? To help answer these questions, the Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board commissioned a pilot study in the East Fork Lewis River subbasin to evaluate implementation of the habitat-portion of the recovery plan. PC Trask and Associates conducted the review in 2018-2019, which involved conversations with over 60 different staff from recovery partner programs, the collection and synthesis of numerous geospatial datasets to help characterize a landscape perspective of program implementation, and research on over 27 different habitat protection and restoration program processes. The final report depicts a unique story about a subbasin under immense pressures (population growth, development, and resource extraction) matched with immense recovery plan expectations (bringing five salmonid populations from very low or medium viability to very high or high viability). Several key datasets provide a bases to evaluate how partner program activities have manifested on the ground by assessing temporal trends in forest cover and harvest activity, rural and urban development, impervious surfaces, and restoration and conservation actions. Additionally, subsetting these analyses to key habitat protection areas, like Critical Areas, Shorelines, and priority subwatersheds, provides important context about assumptions fundamental to the success of the recovery plan. Given the intensity of threats, the East Fork Lewis River subbasin proved to be an ideal test-case to evaluate how well the mechanisms between the recovery plan and partner programs are functioning. Themes from interviews and data analyses were translated into key findings about habitat-related recovery plan implementation strengths, weaknesses, and gaps. The first of its kind, this pilot study provides a unique perspective by evaluating how partner programs operate independently, how they relate to one another, and how well they collectively translate into recovery plan implementation. Identifying strengths and weaknesses of the recovery plan’s fundamental mechanisms is an important step in adaptive management. This study is a step forward in reconciling recovery plan expectations with on-the-ground program …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Amelia Johnson Symposium Session: 2020 – 09 A watershed in transition: Salmon recovery in the East Fork Lewis River Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, beavers, community involvement, fish-cutthroat, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, floodplain, lessons learned, and risk and resilience ABSTRACTSalmon and steelhead recovery in the Lower Columbia River region relies on threat reductions and viability improvements to support Endangered Species Act (ESA) delisting and the long-term goal of establishing healthy and harvestable populations. To support these efforts, the Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board (LCFRB) led the development of the Washington Lower Columbia Salmon Recovery and Fish & Wildlife Subbasin Plan (Washington Recovery Plan), which identifies ESA delisting viability targets for each population as well as 364 recovery actions across seven “all-H” threat categories to salmon and steelhead: stream habitat, estuarine habitat, ocean and climate conditions, hatcheries, harvest, hydropower, and ecological interactions. A 25-year planning horizon beginning with initial ESA listings (1998 – 1999) was identified in the Washington Recovery Plan for action implementation, although it is expected that threat reduction and fish responses will take much longer. Implementation of actions is voluntary, and may not occur or change over time as funding, new information, or other challenges and successes occur. Recovery partners are associated with individual actions, emphasizing the highly collaborative and grassroots level implementation necessary to achieve recovery. Twenty years since the initial ESA listings, the LCFRB is reaching out to recovery partners to better understand action implementation and to assess viability progress at population and species-scales. This information is essential for determining 1.) if recovery actions are being implemented within the 25-year planning horizon identified in the Washington Recovery Plan, 2.) if action implementation is leading to expected threat reductions, and 3.) if salmon and steelhead are responding as expected. Preliminarily, LCFRB and its partners are finding that action implementation is occurring, although many efforts are still ongoing without sufficient monitoring to determine success. For instance, the majority of hatchery and harvest recovery actions have been or are actively being implemented. However, monitoring of these actions, and any necessary management adjustments, are still in progress. With regard to salmon viability, estimates of natural original returns for Chinook and coho populations are too limited to assess long-term trends relative to delisting targets. In contrast, steelhead are doing well from an abundance perspective when 12-year median return estimates are compared to delisting targets. With the exception of three populations, chum salmon are struggling with very low returns for the majority of populations. Although these efforts span the full region, a story is also emerging specific to the East Fork Lewis River watershed, which supports five high priority salmon and steelhead populations for recovery. Today, the LCFRB will share 1.) how region-wide Washington Recovery Plan reporting efforts are being linked to more local watershed planning and monitoring efforts in the East Fork Lewis River watershed and 2.) how local watershed efforts can in turn inform regional recovery implementation. This type of collaborative assessment is essential to adaptively managing the Washington Recovery Plan by providing support for more efficient and effective threat reduction efforts and, ultimately, salmon and steelhead …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Kathy Eichenberger Symposium Session: 2020 – 00 Invited Speaker Topics covered: beavers, canada, climate change, community involvement, and permits ABSTRACTThe Columbia River Treaty was ratified in 1964 and has been implemented collaboratively by the U.S. and Canada for over 50 years, much of the time under the radar. The Treaty has been very successful in meeting its two prime objectives: preventing damaging floods and enhancing power generation. However much has changed since the 60’s: different social values and interests, an evolving policy and legal landscape, advances in science, transformational technologies, a changing climate and many more voices clamoring to be heard. It was therefore very timely for both countries to review the benefits and impacts of the Treaty and assess its future: should it be terminated, continued or changed? To answer this question, separate comprehensive stakeholder engagement processes were held in 2012-2013 on each side of the border, resulting in recommendations to the respective governments on the future of the Treaty. What were the key interests, what did the respective recommendations cover, and is there alignment between them to be found? How will ecosystems feature in a renewed Treaty and what role will First Nations and tribes play? Formal binational negotiations began in May 2018. As these talks continue, both countries need to reflect on why the Columbia River Treaty is important today and in decades to come, and what are the challenges and opportunities facing Canada and the U.S. as we negotiate a modernized Treaty that is resilient and will serve future …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Wendy Weaver Symposium Session: 2020 – 08 Pre-Disaster: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure Topics covered: beavers, climate change, community involvement, floodplain, outside PNW, permits, riparian, risk and resilience, and stream ABSTRACTThe expansion of bank armor on the Yellowstone River in Montana has resulted in a reduction in floodplain turnover rates of about 180 acres per year since the 1970s. As a result, the cottonwood forests for which the river corridor is known are aging with dampened rates of forest regeneration associated with channel migration and disturbance. In order to better understand rates and patterns of channel movement on the Yellowstone, Channel Migration Zone (CMZ) maps generated over a decade ago have been extensively used for education, outreach and planning, as the maps are non-regulatory. Recent applications of the maps include the development of a Channel Migration Easement (CME) corridor which prioritizes areas based on rates of channel movement, riparian habitats, cottonwood recruitment potential and flood storage. These footprints have been used to prioritize properties for easements, deed restrictions, and/or acquisition in support of general project development, compensatory mitigation, and in support of a Natural Resource Damage Program settlement following an oil spill on the river. Over the past several years the non-profit organization that operates the in-lieu fee mitigation program for the State of Montana, Montana Aquatic Resources Services (MARS) has implemented channel migration easements and tracked intensive landowner interest for future projects. These easements preclude bank armoring in a defined floodplain area, and may include broader conservation easement footprints that extend beyond the CMZ. This allows ground identified as part of the active river corridor to remain unarmored in perpetuity. Challenges with the CME program include securing easement holders in these non-traditional settings, identifying funding sources and identifying appropriate market values for …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Katie Jagt Symposium Session: 2020 – 08 Pre-Disaster: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure Topics covered: beavers, community involvement, lessons learned, outside PNW, risk and resilience, and urban ABSTRACTIn order to recognize and assess the hazards associated with erosion, sediment deposition and other dynamic river processes, the Colorado Water Conservation Board has developed a program to identify and map fluvial hazards to help communities better understand all hazards associated with flood events. The State of Colorado’s Fluvial Hazard Zone (FHZ) mapping program represents a significant and necessary step forward in stream corridor management, flood and wildfire mitigation and preparedness and conservation practices. This presentation will discuss the Colorado FHZ Program establishment and evolution as well as its goals, funding sources, technical advancements, regulatory recommendations, and communication strategies. Flood insurance claims and on-going property loss data demonstrate that in Colorado, reliance on flood inundation maps alone does not provide a comprehensive characterization of hazards imposed by river processes. Recognizing this gap and spurred by four billion dollars in damage in 2013, in 2014 the Colorado legislature allocated funding to study the feasibility of and develop an “Erosion Hazard” mapping program. The program began with a proof-of-concept study in 2015 where several existing technical standards were reviewed and tested for their applicability within the state. Major recommendations from this work were: 1) Colorado develop more flexible and robust technical standards 2) Colorado implement a locally-sponsored, voluntary, and incentive-based hazard mapping program and 3) The name of the program be changed to “Fluvial Hazard Zone Mapping” rather than “erosion hazard mapping” as there are substantial hazards in addition to erosion that must be considered. In 2017, Colorado began the Fluvial Hazard Zone Mapping Pilot program. The program is built on three goals: 1) to develop a scientifically defensible set of mapping standards for Colorado (i.e. develop a protocol that can be used anywhere within the state) 2) implement fluvial hazard mapping throughout the state and 3) reduce damage from future flood events by increasing awareness of fluvial hazards thereby leading to better land use decisions. The technical work has been executed with several partners and has resulted in an advancement of the understanding of both the driving forces (hydrology) and the fluvial responses after disturbance, particularly as they relate to stream power. Several studies were completed that assessed the response and associated damages that communities sustained and correlated this with geomorphic characteristics. FHZ mapping was completed for 8 pilot communities in a diversity of physiographic regions throughout the state and covered approximately 450 miles of stream corridors. For communities who sought to adopt regulations for land use within the FHZ, a model ordinance was developed to provide to pilot communities. After several iterations, it was clear that the best regulatory support that could be provided to communities was a short, concise ordnance from which each community could build regulations that were both applicable and palatable with the overall objective of avoiding damages during future floods. As the FHZ program evolves, it is showing value to the State of Colorado in wildfire planning and response as well as for the identification of conservation areas and watershed-scale restoration …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Nick Wobbrock Symposium Session: 2020 – 08 Pre-Disaster: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure Topics covered: _other, beavers, community involvement, outside PNW, riparian, risk and resilience, and stream ABSTRACTIn 2018, wildfires in the United States caused an estimated $24 billion in economic losses—a record-high—claiming human lives, damaging property, releasing greenhouse gases, contaminating water supplies and harming the forest products and tourism industries. This could be a sign of things to come, as climate change raises temperatures and exacerbates drought conditions and forest degradation in the American West. A new $4.6 million-dollar pilot project in the Tahoe National Forest—called the Forest Resilience Bond—is looking for a creative solution to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire by financing forest restoration through a public-private partnership. WRI’s research on Protecting Drinking Water at the Source shows that natural infrastructure such as forests can help reduce wildfire risks, protect water quality and make communities more resilient if disaster strikes. WRI collaborated with Blue Forest Conservation and Encourage Capital, two environmentally-minded investment firms, to develop a way to proactively finance forest restoration. To help make the financial case for this first transaction, WRI provided economic analysis to beneficiaries, investors and partners including the U.S. Forest Service, the state of California, Yuba Water Agency, and the National Forest Foundation. Communities in the area were consulted to make sure stakeholders understood the bond’s benefits, including the protection of recreational resources, less exposure to smoke and more forest-related job opportunities. In 2018, the first Forest Resilience Bond secured $4.6 million in blended private finance for the upfront costs of forest restoration and to provide flexibility to accelerate restoration as needed. The bond will fund the restoration of 15,000 acres of forest in the North Yuba River Watershed in the Sierra Nevada. WRI and Blue Forest Conservation are preparing for future Forest Resilience Bond transactions to benefit other at-risk landscapes across the American West. WRI is also working with development agencies, investors and conservation partners to explore similar finance mechanisms for flood risk reduction and community resiliency in the developing world. Wildfires endanger the environment, economies, and health across the western United States. To avoid future catastrophic fires, more innovative partnerships like the Forest Resilience Bond will be needed to pay for forest health interventions across the fire-prone West. This pilot in the Yuba River Watershed is the first instance in which private capital has been mobilized to fight wildfires in the U.S., but with more than 50 million acres of National Forest land at risk of burning over the coming year, more new ideas like this one will be …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Virginia Mahacek Symposium Session: 2020 – 08 Pre-Disaster: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure Topics covered: beavers, climate change, floodplain, lessons learned, outside PNW, riparian, risk and resilience, and sediment transport ABSTRACTRecent catastrophic wildfires have caused devastating human impacts including deaths, injuries, health risk exposures, and emotional trauma. These are compelling motives well beyond the watershed and ecosystem benefits we will focus on herein. Over the last decade, annual wildfire property losses across the United States ranged from $0.5 billion to as much as $24 billion in 2018. California has by far the highest number of properties at risk from wildfire of any state, estimated to be approximately 2.1 million properties. The ten most costly catastrophic wildfires (based on property loss) in our nation’s history all occurred in California, with six of the top ten occurring in 2017 and 2018. Annual Federal fire suppression spending (by USFS and DOI agencies) has risen sharply to around $3.1 billion in 2018, even as acreages burned and damages incurred also increased. California’s state spending on fire suppression soared to $947 million in 2017/18. On top of the enormous costs in property losses and fire suppression, destructive wildfires have required emergency response, clean-up and recovery support on a scale previously associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. As of November 2019, the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund cumulative obligations for California’s 2017 and 2018 Wildfires exceeded $2 billion. The State’s contribution is nearly another billion. This presentation explores how the increasing economic burden of response, property damage, and recovery after catastrophic wildfire, along with a growing demand for resilient landscapes as a means of wildfire hazard reduction, are becoming drivers of watershed management. Recovery activities, resilience planning and funding trends will be described, with examples from the 2017 Sonoma Complex Fires and other recent California wildfires. Despite decades of scientifically-driven technical advances and substantial investment on salmonids, the degradation of watersheds and river systems continues to outpace fish population recovery and ecosystem sustainability. While the science and practice of river restoration has progressed beyond site-scale treatment, effective implementation remains challenged by complex and compartmentalized mandates and funding limitations, while suffering uneven public support and political will. We consider how demand for wildfire hazard reduction using multi-benefit approaches is an emerging driver on forest and water resource management decisions, particularly in light of climate change and population growth pressure. Viewing river restoration through the lens of catastrophic wildfire provides a means to: 1) expand beyond traditional goals and outcome metrics; 2) engage at scale across jurisdictions and ownerships; 3) diversify stakeholders; 4) improve upland material and process contributions to aquatic ecosystems; and, 5) access additional resources and expertise for innovative solutions. Opportunities to restore natural and working uplands, riparian corridors, and wetlands with State investments on air quality, human health, carbon sequestration, and water supply security are growing. FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) and Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program (PDM) support for watershed planning as well as implementation of a range of treatments is expanding. Finally, river restoration planning that fails to consider the hydrologic, sediment, and wood loads from either catastrophic fire or wildfire hazard reduction treatments may overlook pertinent context as well as …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Paul DeVries Symposium Session: 2020 – 07 Selling the solution: Piloting projects and stakeholder engagement Topics covered: beavers, community involvement, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, floodplain, and riparian ABSTRACTThis talk is a case study of implementing reach scale restoration projects while working under changing physical conditions and landowner perspectives, and learning from both successes and failures. The North Touchet River is a steep, dynamic channel that flows predominantly through private lands. The river has been confined extensively by levees including many constructed after the 1996 flood, resulting in a plane bed channel with coarse substrates that has been described as a “firehose”. Salmonid habitat quality is consequently poor, especially for juvenile rearing. In general, landowners along the river view the removal of levees and addition of large wood with trepidation. A sentiment exists that the river will unravel and affect property integrity and value, where no action is preferred by most. Much of this stems from uncertainty associated with active channel processes, and the belief that these processes should and can be controlled. Nonetheless, notable channel instability still exists within various reaches. After extensive interactions between the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) and landowners, general agreement to proceed was obtained, and 100% designs were prepared for two such unstable reaches. One was built, the other not. This talk focuses primarily on the project that was built in the vicinity of the confluence with the Wolf Fork. This involved creating instream habitat structure, working with channel sedimentation and migration processes, and increasing floodplain connectivity while increasing flood protection with a strategically designed levee setback. Extensive sediment deposition, channel changes, and flooding of a residence have occurred periodically, reflecting both natural processes and previous unsuccessful attempts to control the river. Extensive flooding, erosion, and deposition affected the project reach throughout the project duration, requiring adaptive planning, design and construction. At the same time, the nature of the changes provided a context for discussing uncertainty in design, construction, and expected outcomes with the landowner. An acceptance of risks, and understanding how the design was conceived to help reduce but not eliminate those risks while working towards restoring salmon and steelhead habitat, was achieved in a way that met goals of both the project and the landowner. Now, with successful construction and landowner approval of the finished product, the Wolf Fork project will provide the CTUIR with a tangible example to other landowners for discussing uncertainty in designing, building, functioning, and impacts of such projects elsewhere in the basin. This includes potentially the one that has not been built yet. In that instance, the design changed substantially from a relic channel remeander to various fish passage structures at a headcut, and multiple times in response to changing and contrasting landowner and funding agency requirements. In the long view, it is possible our preferred, remeander concept may be resurrected with completion of the Wolf Fork …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Reid Camp Symposium Session: 2020 – 07 Selling the solution: Piloting projects and stakeholder engagement Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, beavers, community involvement, estuary, fish-cutthroat, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, lessons learned, riparian, and stream ABSTRACTReid Camp The Middle Nemah River drains approximately 6,000 hectares (nearly 15,000 acres) into Willapa Bay (Washington), and is important habitat for chum (Oncorhynchus keta), Chinook (O. tshawytscha), coho (O. kisutch), and steelhead (O. mykiss). However, legacy impacts from construction of a railroad within the channel migration zone, stream cleaning, and other land-use activities have impaired salmonid productivity in this sub-basin. Willapa Bay Lead Entity (WBLE) and Pacific Conservation District (PCD) recently selected the Middle Nemah as a pilot watershed, to demonstrate potential for “complete restoration.” Under this emerging model of restoration, the primary goal is implementation of restoration actions across an entire watershed, at a level sufficient to restore currently impaired river and riparian functions, within a relatively short timeframe (five years in this case). Working with a team of stakeholders that included landowners (WDNR and Hancock Natural Resources Group), WBLE, PCD, WDFW, the Willapa Bay Fisheries Enhancement Group, Coast Salmon Partnership, and our partners Biohabitats, we developed and implemented a rapid habitat protocol to survey the mapped current anadromous zone within the watershed, approximately 35 km (22 miles) of mainstem and tributary channels. Survey results were then analyzed and coupled with existing land-use data to develop an assessment of current river and riparian functions and processes throughout the watershed, identify process impairments, and develop recommendations for a suite of actions that would mitigate these impairments. In collaboration with the stakeholder group, these actions were then prioritized along a simplified scoring schema focusing on ecological improvement. A single project was then brought forward to the preliminary design phase, and concepts were developed for total restoration of the entire watershed. Recommended restoration actions included a combination of engineered approaches and “low-tech process-based” restoration (LTPBR). Results from this effort suggest that a comprehensive plan for restoration of moderate-sized river sub-basins is possible, at a reasonable economic …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Kenneth Balcomb Symposium Session: 2020 – 00 Invited Speaker Topics covered: _other, adaptive management and monitoring, estuary, lessons learned, and tidal ABSTRACTKiller whales have been known since antiquity as voracious marine predators in all oceans, and they have played an iconic role in the mythology of indigenous coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Only in the recent 50 years have scientists been able to really “know” killer whales as a result of individual recognition techniques (photo-identification), molecular genetic techniques, and innovative studies involving drones, fecal sampling, and acoustic research. The speaker will provide a brief history of the development of these techniques so that participants may appreciate and distinguish knowledge gained by scientific methods in contrast mythologies in past and present human …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Mary E. Power Symposium Session: 2020 – 00 Invited Speaker Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, beavers, floodplain, hydraulics, sediment transport, and stream ABSTRACTIn sunlit western rivers, winter and summer flows determine the production, types, and fate of algae in summertime food webs. Ecologically critical flows depend not only on precipitation regimes, but also on how precipitation is stored and released from a watershed’s “Critical Zone”: the weathered rock, soil, and vegetation that receives, transforms, and exchanges water between the atmosphere, subsurface storage, and runoff feeding surface waters. Different flow regimes lead to different alternative food web states, with different consequences for fish production and riverine linkages to upland and coastal ecosystems. The Eel River, a river along the California North Coast under Mediterranean seasonality, has shown us three alternative summer food web states, with food chains of different length that determine the production, food quality, and fate of attached algae and of the aquatic consumers that depend on …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: John Jorgensen Symposium Session: 2020 – 05 Assessing biotic response to environmental change Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, amphibians, beavers, fish-cutthroat, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, riparian, and stream ABSTRACTQuantifying carrying capacity in lotic ecosystems is central to identifying limiting factors and prioritizing restoration actions for native anadromous salmonid populations. Geomorphic and habitat-based monitoring metrics, models, and assessments are available to evaluate ongoing physical limitations in stream reaches. However, these approaches have inherently limited ability to resolve ongoing uncertainties of biologically mediated limitation, such as food preference, food availability, and competition with non-native species. Further, biological assessment tools that use static metrics (abundance, biomass and diversity) cannot directly measure energetic limitations (food availability and trophic routing), and therefore remain inadequate for quantitatively defining biotic limitations, contributing to carrying capacity. Thus, alternative monitoring protocols and subsequent analytical procedures are needed to capture food web processes that directly affect energetic routing. To understand the effectiveness of habitat restoration treatments designed to increase carrying capacity in co-limited streams, we measured food web responses within a spring creek over multiple years in the Upper Columbia River Basin (WA). We used trophic basis of production and bioenergetic methods to identify and quantify co-limited drivers. Here we present and discuss: 1) a quantitative food web approach and its associated advantages and disadvantages in the context of stream restoration, 2) initial project results using estimates of energy routing to evaluate habitat restoration and potential impacts of non-native fish, and 3) a new quantitative analysis tool (R package) and its application in a broader management …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Daniel March Symposium Session: 2020 – 05 Assessing biotic response to environmental change Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, amphibians, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), lessons learned, outside PNW, stream, and terrestrial species ABSTRACTTreatment of stream channels, and the environment in general, half a century ago was much different than the thought process today. At that time, things like stream channels and floodplains were nuisance items that needed proper engineering to improve nature and make more efficient use of resources and valuable space. It was common practice to put streams into pipes for long distances and fill the adjacent floodplain. This is especially true in narrow valleys were space is limited. A prime example is South Clear Creek (SCC) near Georgetown, CO. During construction of a series of hydroelectric dams and the associated infrastructure in the early 60s, staging area for equipment and materials was limited. A ready solution was to place South Clear Creek in a pipe and fill the adjacent floodplain to facilitate construction of adjacent infrastructure. The result was fracturing of habitat for the Boreal Toad, currently listed as an endangered species. Restoration of SCC was a condition of recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) relicensing of the Cabin Creek Hydroelectric Generating Station. The goal of the restoration project is reconnection of Boreal Toad habitat through the removal of ~400’ of CMP and restoration of ~500’ of stream channel and floodplain. The presentation will discuss: project history, pre-construction conditions, Boreal Toad needs, stream/floodplain restoration metrics, site restrictions and high altitude (>10,000’) construction …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Mark Beardsley Symposium Session: 2020 – 05 Assessing biotic response to environmental change Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, beavers, community involvement, floodplain, lessons learned, riparian, risk and resilience, and stream ABSTRACTBiotic processes are now recognized as key drivers of stream form and function that work in concert with hydrological and geomorphic processes, not separately from them. When we understand streams as integrated biophysical ecosystems rather than as physical habitat that simply houses plants and animals, restoration appears less like less like a physical engineering exercise and more like an organic healing process. Restoration efforts can be thought of less like construction projects and more like medical treatments. From this view, streams are like patients. They are complex organic systems that we help heal—not physical things that we design and build. We cannot simply design biotic processes or build biotic communities. Healing takes time and organic restoration requires patience. As in medicine, careful management over time (rehabilitation) is often necessary in addition to, or instead of, instant fixes (surgery). Health, healing, and medical analogies are nothing new to the field of ecological restoration. As stream conservation and restoration practitioners, we feel the health concept should be more than a metaphor. It is a mindset and a model—a way of thinking and a practical approach to stream restoration that respects the inherent complexity of natural functioning stream ecosystems. What does it mean for a stream to be healthy? We think it is a lot like what it means for a person or other living organism to be healthy. Medical definitions of human health are based on the ability to perform vital functions normally or properly; ability to perform valued roles; ability to deal with stress; and anatomic, physiologic, and psychological integrity. These traits apply to streams and other ecosystems in much the same way. Like organisms, streams are very complex systems (eco-systems) whose ability to perform vital functions and valuable roles, and to deal with stress (that is, to be resilient), depends on hydrological, physicochemical, and biological integrity. The shift from an engineering/construction mindset to a medical/healing mindset opens the door to process-based restoration. It fits neatly with the four principles of process-based restoration (Beechie et al. 2010) and the five guidelines for ecologically successful river restoration (Palmer et al. 2005). In this talk, we share how the stream health model guides our assessment, diagnosis, treatment, monitoring, and evaluation of projects. Our examples come from work on small streams in the Colorado Rockies, but we think the concepts apply to all stream and river restoration efforts that seek natural and sustainable …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Barry Chilibeck Symposium Session: 2020 – 00 Invited Speaker Topics covered: beavers, canada, fish passage, hydraulics, lessons learned, risk and resilience, sediment transport, and stream ABSTRACTLandslides are a physical process that had an undeniable effect on the landscapes within the Pacific Northwest. Recently, they have been experienced on several rivers that have affected Pacific salmon in profound ways. This talk is going to look at several recent landslides on rivers with Pacific Salmon and other fisheries resources, the effects on the communities and people that depend on fish, the work done to mitigate the physical and biological damage, and lasting influences and future risks. The Seymour River is a small coastal watershed in the heart of Vancouver’s North Shore mountains. The upper watershed forms part of Metro Vancouver’s water supply while the lower areas provide recreational and park values. A 50,000 m3 rockslide in the lower Seymour River canyon in December 2014 resulted in a complete blockage of the river and the migration of Steelhead, Coho, Pink and Chinook salmon upstream – and downstream. This river’s story chronicles the community-led efforts and success in ensuring salmon prevail and restoring access to the river for fish for future generations. Technically, this mitigation work examines the trade-off analysis completed to assess the potential slide mitigation, and the issues that led to a passive, river-based approach that utilized the stream power of the slide to mobilize, reform and distribute the slide debris downstream, effectively re-grading the rockfall cascade. The process was not without risk due to the time required to seasonally work on the slide during the low flow period and then monitor and assess the slide during the interim months. The approach relied on determining the size of slide debris that could be mobilized, as well as the configuration of the slide debris as it shifted and moved during high flow events. By continually oversteepening the instream face of the rockslide by selective rock breaking, the slide was removed. Biological programs and monitoring played a key part in ensuring that the salmon and steelhead stocks native to the Seymour were not extirpated during the 5 years of seasonal work. Without the efforts of community partners – notably the Seymour Salmonid Society – both the slide mitigation and support work would not have happened. They led the operation of the floating fish fence and fish collection; conservation hatchery restocking of the river; and continued assessment of downstream and upstream migrants. Shortly after completion of the 2019 work program on the slide, late summer rains brought some high flows into the watershed and in late August 2019, the first adult coho was observed above the slide. Follow-up radio tagging confirmed passage through the slide in September 2019 and there are ongoing efforts to monitor the movement and recovery of salmon and steelhead. The Fraser River is one of North America’s foremost freshwater habitat for wild salmon encompassing largely an undammed, unregulated ecosystem from the Canadian Rockies to Vancouver, BC. While most people know about Hell’s Gate and the fishways that continues to mitigate that rockslide, they are largely unaware that the Fraser River continues to flow through hundreds of kilometers of canyons and bedrock formations that have inherent rock fall and slide risks. Roughly 100 years after Hell’s Gate Slide, the Big Bar Slide is proving that history repeats itself. On or about November 1st 2018, a massive slide event occurred near Big Bar on the Fraser River, 40 km North of Lillooet, BC. Unbeknownst for months, the slide was discovered in early spring 2019 before freshet by local ranchers and river rafters. The chain of events and actions triggered by the impacts of the slide on one of the largest natural salmon-producing rivers is a continuing story. While the biological and cultural implications of this event are much better understood than Hell’s gate, the technical challenges are perhaps even more daunting given the location and local topography of the Big Bar slide. This presentation highlights the capcity and effort that can be harnessed when organizational barriers are dissolved and people come together for a common cause, the limits that still persist and challenges of what can be achieved to mitigate a slide to restore fish passage on a massive river in a remote isolated …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Daniel Scott Symposium Session: 2020 – 04 Observe Stage 0 Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, beavers, lessons learned, and sediment transport ABSTRACTStage 0 Restoration seeks to restore natural fluvial processes to valley bottoms to sustain a spatially heterogeneous and dynamic morphologic state that can then support a robust and resilient fluvial ecosystem. While monitoring the ecological response of Stage 0 restoration is feasible and effective, the multi-channel, dynamic, and wood-rich state produced by restoration complicates monitoring of the geomorphic response that underpins fluvial ecology. We address these monitoring challenges by testing a geomorphic complexity-based monitoring approach that integrates both spatial and temporal data from a Stage 0 restoration site on Deer Creek, Oregon. We present the geomorphic and wood dynamics outcomes immediately following restoration, the moderate-term geomorphic trajectory pre- and post-restoration, and short-term wood jam dynamics post-restoration. Our monitoring framework seeks to capture how restoration influences: valley bottom spatial heterogeneity; variability, or dynamism, in valley bottom morphology through time; and the trajectory of geomorphic response before and after restoration. We accomplish this by mapping high- and low-altitude aerial imagery to quantify valley bottom metrics of spatial heterogeneity. We contextualize these measurements of spatial heterogeneity by conducting this mapping over a period covering 11 years pre-restoration and 3 years post-restoration, which allows us to evaluate both the dynamism of channel morphology from year to year and the moderate-term trend in geomorphic response both pre- and post-restoration. Because the geomorphic response to Stage 0 restoration depends on wood jam dynamics, we also apply the recently developed Wood jam Dynamics Database and Assessment Model (WooDDAM; a standardized field protocol and online database for monitoring and understanding wood jam dynamics) to survey wood jam characteristics and dynamics along Deer Creek. We use the broader WooDDAM database, consisting of hundreds of observations of wood jam dynamics, to contextualize and explain wood jam dynamics in Deer Creek. We find that valley bottom-focused metrics, such as the ratio of active channel to valley bottom area and the Shannon equitability index (a measure of the relative distribution of morphologic patches across the valley bottom) are most representative of the ecogeomorphic processes targeted by Stage 0 restoration, such as channel migration, avulsion, widening, vegetation establishment on deposited surfaces, and vegetation recruitment to the channel. They are also more robust to data quality issues and mapping errors than more traditional metrics such as braiding indices. We use data and observations from Deer Creek to make recommendations on how to effectively monitor the geomorphic response of other Stage 0 restoration projects. We also present results from monitoring of Deer Creek, demonstrating that monitoring must both capture relevant indicators of processes and account for flow history. We present this research to help improve monitoring and understanding of the geomorphic effects of complex, valley bottom-scale river …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: William Brignon Symposium Session: 2020 – 04 Observe Stage 0 Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, beavers, hydraulics, lessons learned, riparian, and stream ABSTRACTStage 0 is the initial, pre-disturbance condition in the Stream Evolution Model described by Cluer and Thorne (2013). Recently, a group of US Forest Service restoration practitioners and their partners have been restoring depositional valley bottoms to Stage 0 to reverse the effects of historic land-use practices that degraded dynamic wetland-stream complexes (Powers et al. 2018) which support abundant native biota. Twenty-five of these process-based restoration projects have been implemented throughout Oregon. Several of them are comprehensive projects designed to completely reconnect depositional valley bottoms over extended areas, whereas others applied more traditional techniques to return smaller areas of the valley bottom to a pre-disturbance condition. Regardless of the methods and scale of these projects, the goal of restoring dynamic valley bottom processes is the same. In response to scientific, legal, and policy questions about these projects we gathered US Forest Service restoration practitioners and their colleagues for a series of workshops to specifically define this type of restoration and build influence diagrams of key ecological processes at play. This presentation will provide an overview of the workshop outcomes and share how they will be used to develop a programmatic monitoring plan for US Forest Service projects that aim to restore valley bottoms to Stage 0. There will be a complimentary poster presentation so RRNW attendees can delve deeper into the influence diagram and offer feedback about the definition, as well as the ecological parameters and their …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Joe Wheaton Symposium Session: 2020 – 04 Observe Stage 0 Topics covered: _other, beavers, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), and stream ABSTRACTThe scope of riverscape degradation far exceeds the modest footprint and scalability of most traditional restoration techniques with expensive price tags. Modern restoration practice borrows from a design process and logic entirely from engineering practice. Low-tech process-based restoration of riverscapes provides a potentially scalable solution that could rival the scope of degradation, but requires a fundamentally different and more efficient design approach drawing on physical and ecological principles. In this presentation we present riverscapes restoration principles and describe a robust, and rigorous design process that is agile enough to be carried out at the reach-scale within hours to day(s), as opposed to weeks to months. While individual low-tech, hand-built structures are specified in the design, the focus is at initiating and promoting processes at the “complex-scale” (a collection of structures), and these complexes help keep a focus on improving conditions at the reach scale. Unlike most designs, the focus here is not on stability of the structures, but on the processes and dynamics they are designed to initially mimic, quickly promote and eventually sustain. Key processes in structurally-starved riverscapes we focus on are wood accumulation and beaver dam activity. Examples from projects throughout the western US will be highlighted to show how the design process plays out. The upshot is that the footprint of restoration for the same amount of design effort can spent 10’s to 100’s of miles instead of 100’s to 1000’s of …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Neil Goeller Symposium Session: 2020 – 03 An ecological approach to restoration Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, canada, floodplain, riparian, stream, and wetlands ABSTRACTA restoration program which the planning team will never live to see the result, San It is said that “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”, (Nelson Henderson) Forest harvesting in the San Juan River extends to the early 1900’s and little evidence remains of the pre-harvest channel conditions. Effects of historic activities emerged in the 1980s following assessments of fish habitat, channel morphology and riparian conditions. In the mid-1990s, the recently created San Juan Roundtable, composed of First Nations, Provincial and Federal Governments, Industry and other stakeholders brought a structured approach to watershed management and restoration leveraging government funding for projects. Fish habitat, channel stability and landslide sediment delivery assessments prompted an upland restoration program targeting sediment source areas. Upslope remediation and improvements in forest management practices in the basin are generally accepted to have mitigated the majority of sediment sources with economical remediation potential. Sediment transport estimates have shown that the higher gradient upland streams are recovering as they are able to convey sediment to the floodplain. However; sediment delivered to the floodplain has had a detrimental impact to channel morphology and fish habitat. Loss of riparian structure and strength has resulted in morphological changes in the floodplain mainstem channel from which the river appears unable to recover. In the 2010’s a process based restoration program was initiated by the roundtable. This program established the seeds from which the recovery of the river would eventually grow. The two primary projects undertaken by the roundtable partners were willow plantings on gravel bars and inter-planting conifer saplings in a broad corridor along the river. Willow plantings were intended to accelerate gravel bar vegetation succession and stabilization and attenuate sediment. The riparian planting was intended to begin establishing a resilient corridor of trees which will hopefully survive to maturity and begin to have an impact in the next 60 to 100 years. The long-term goal is to counteract the rivers aggressive reworking of the floodplain. The British Columbia Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development (FLNR) developed a research project to study this work. Current research has extended previous studies examining sediment dynamics, morphological changes and hydrological changes and their implications for fish habitat and restoration activities. Data collection included multiple LiDAR flights, drone based DEMs, historic air photos, sediment mapping, time lapse camera footage and a detailed sediment movement study using passive integrated transponder (PIT) tagged rocks. Results have begun to show the channel changes in response to weakened riparian structure and historic restoration efforts. Gravel bar plantings are rarely lost due to erosion. Sediment tracking shows deposition occurs primarily at bar apexes. Sediment transport rates have been calculated using LiDAR differencing. Bank erosion is widely variable, with three bars (of 18 mapped) yielding the majority of sediment. High rates of bank erosion are associated with decaying riparian alder stands. The unstable channel morphology poses serious challenges for fisheries management in addition to the changing nature of flows attributed to climate change.Juan River, British Columbia, …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Travis Stroth Symposium Session: 2020 – 02 Considering sediment dynamics in river restoration design Topics covered: modeling, outside PNW, and sediment transport ABSTRACTThe complex nature of river systems presents many challenges to understanding, analyzing, and designing in the context of stream management and restoration. River science and practice has progressed greatly through the years, but still has much room to grow to increase the effectiveness and sustainability of our management and restoration activities. The most efficient path moving forward will need to continue a feedback loop between academia and practice to apply the most current science and guide future research focus areas. River science and research has recognized and promoted the importance of considering sediment transport dynamics in the context of river restoration design for many years; however, design practitioners have adopted the use of sediment transport concepts and tools for design at widely varying levels within the field. Many potential constraints exist for design projects that limit the consideration of sediment transport, including project timeline-budget and the lack of available data, knowledge of available tools and associated limitations, and confidence in calculations due to uncertainties and often erratic results. Despite constraints, our design team believes sediment transport analyses can still provide a useful line of evidence for design within typical project constraints by utilizing a combination of new concepts and tools and older techniques. Recent research conducted by Colorado State University for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) developed new perspectives and tools to consider sediment transport in river restoration design, including a risk-based level of design approach and the spreadsheet-based Capacity-Supply Ratio design tool (CSR Tool). A summary of the key findings from this research will be presented, including how sediment transport analyses relate to the risk-based level of design approach and the development of the CSR Tool, created as part of my Master’s research, to aid in channel design based on reach-scale sediment transport balance and the ‘total effectiveness’ technique. The remainder of the presentation will discuss insights from the application of these techniques and tools for a river restoration design project on the Cache la Poudre River at River Bluffs Open Space near Windsor, Colorado. Monitoring data from pre-post construction and post runoff support the utility of these new techniques as an informative and effective line of evidence in the design process. The risk-based level of design approach and streamlined programs such as the CSR Tool can provide a useful basis for practitioners to consider sediment transport dynamics in river restoration design within typical project budget and timeline constraints. A discussion of the application of these techniques and tools contributes useful insight into amalgamating the latest scientific research and restoration design practice to support the larger session topic ‘Considering Sediment Transport Dynamics in River Restoration Design: The State of …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Damion Ciotti Symposium Session: 2020 – 04 Observe Stage 0 Topics covered: beavers, floodplain, hydraulics, lessons learned, outside PNW, riparian, sediment transport, and stream ABSTRACTDevelopments in our understanding of stream channel evolution and application of ecological design have changed not only the restoration approach in degraded valley bottoms but also the vision and measure of success. Disconnected alluvial streams are unable to rework floodplain surfaces and have lost their ability to maintain a shifting mosaic of aquatic and terrestrial habitat heterogeneity. In Sierra foothill streams of California this has significant negative consequences for anadromous fish, migratory birds and other ecosystem services such as water and carbon storage. Most valley bottoms in the Sierra foothills have been desiccated for over a century due to mining activities, agricultural and urban development. Common restoration practices aim to stabilize channel banks or construct habitat features in streams that remain isolated from their floodplains. The cumulative effect is a stream corridor that is dominated by oak savanna and blackberry with limited ability to evolve to higher ecosystem value. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is now in its fourth year of applying ecological design principles to the restoration of streams in agricultural and suburban communities of the Sierra foothills. We believe societal and individual landowner needs and goals are compatible with a more functional and dynamic stream corridor. Design attention has moved from the single stream channel focus to modifying the human components of the stream corridor so it may evolve. This involves assessing the constraints to fluvial dynamics including flood risks, transportation and water infrastructure, livestock management, and mitigation projects. Important design components of this shift in approach include; design at the valley scale; assessing natural and artificial geomorphic controls; assisting valley bottom communities and landowners accommodate a more dynamic river; and designing a minimum dosage approach that relies on the ecosystems capacity to recover. Metrics of success focus on the amount of fluvial space and connectivity attained and biogeomorphic processes restored. This approach is not suited for programs or practitioners aiming to immediately construct a specific stream habitat type. By instead working to evolve stream corridors towards higher levels of complexity the practitioner is able to build a more resilient project at a larger spatial scale. A completed demonstration project along with others under various stages of development will be …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: John Palmer Symposium Session: 2020 – 01 Protecting critical flows Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, climate change, estuary, fish passage, fish-cutthroat, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, floodplain, hydraulics, and stream ABSTRACTCold water refuges (CWR) in the Columbia River provide important resting areas for threatened and endangered species, steelhead and fall chinook, during their summer migration from the Pacific Ocean to spawning grounds in the Snake River Basin. Scientists (Goniea et al 2006, Keefer et al 2009, Keefer et al 2018) have documented the use of cold tributaries of the Columbia River for migrating salmonids in the summer when temperatures in the mainstem are higher than optimum for fish health. With rising temperature trends predicted from climate change models in the Columbia River, migrating salmonids may seek relief in greater numbers and over a longer period of time making CWR even more important in the future. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in partnership with agencies, tribes, and organizations is nearing the end of a four-year project to evaluate CWR in the lower Columbia River basin from the mouth of the Columbia River to its confluence with the Snake River. EPA released a draft Columbia River CWR Plan in October 2019 for stakeholder review and plans on issuing the final plan in 2020. The objectives of EPA’s Columbia River CWR Plan are to: 1) Identify CWR currently available for use by migrating salmon; 2) Assess the sufficiency of the refuges for current and future populations; and 3) Identify strategies to protect and restore high quality CWR in the future. This presentation provides an overview of EPA’s draft Columbia River CWR Plan. In the plan, EPA has identified 12 primary CWR tributaries to the lower Columbia River currently used by migrating salmonids or that have features (e.g., temperature, flow, depth, no physical barriers) that make them important cold water areas for migrating salmonids. EPA completed “snapshot” watershed assessments of the 12 primary CWR tributaries and 2 “restore” CWR tributaries to protect and restore. These tributaries are the Cowlitz River, Lewis River, Sandy River, Tanner Creek, Eagle Creek, Herman Creek, Wind River, White Salmon River, Little White Salmon River, Klickitat River, Hood River, Deschutes River, 15 Mile-Creek, and Umatilla River. The purpose of these “snapshots” is to provide scientific information to local watershed groups and other users information on: 1) the extent and quality of the CWR in their watershed; 2) the features that make it a good CWR; 3) factors affecting watershed temperatures (e.g., shade, dams and hydromodifications, water use, climate change); 4) the alignment of other watershed restoration work with CWR protection goals for multi-objective planning; and 5) recommendations for protection and restoration. In this presentation, we will discuss our findings and recommendations to protect and restore CWR, our outreach efforts and community involvement, and our goal for accurate and relevant information to enable local users to leverage funding to support their ongoing efforts that may also benefit cold water refuge …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Peter Downs Symposium Session: 2020 – 00 Invited Speaker Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, climate change, floodplain, lessons learned, sediment transport, and stream ABSTRACTThe (inter)discipline of river restoration has now been practiced for 30 years. Following several decades of growing environmental awareness and scientific recognition of human-induced ‘river stresses’, the 1980s saw the global uptake of environmental assessment legislation, recognition of the performance and cost benefits of integrating conservation into river management, and concerns for achieving sustainable actions. Since ca.1990, river restoration has become a global phenomenon and multi-billion-dollar business. While deliberations continue about the ultimate goal in restoring rivers, restoration in practise adds a conservation-focused third element to river management, joining far longer-held concerns for water resource provision and river hazard minimization to result in an interdisciplinary ‘river management …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Marjorie Wolfe Symposium Session: 2020 – 03 An ecological approach to restoration Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, beavers, climate change, estuary, fish passage, floodplain, hydraulics, risk and resilience, sediment transport, and stream ABSTRACTIn a future featuring climate and land-use changes, enduring success in delivering ecosystem resilience relies on restoring the capacity of the river to adapt to the impacts of those changes. Yet we continue to design for stability, selecting channel dimensions, gradients and planforms suited to past and current flow and sediment regimes, and making little or no allowance for adjustment and evolution of the fluvial system. Further, we make clear the delineations between the river’s channel (or channels), its associated wetlands, and its floodplains, often to fit permitting requirements. The unintended consequences of designing for stability and rigidly defining each component of the complex channel-wetland-floodplain system are that the habitats provided by the restoration are only functional within a narrow range of hydrologic, sediment and environmental conditions. When these conditions change, a fixed, stable channel-wetland-floodplain design cannot adapt progressively to accommodate change, and this may lead to abrupt and radical adjustment that are, in engineering terms, regarded as catastrophic failure of the project. We must recognize that it is not a matter of if an engineered log jam will be mobilized or a meander bend will shift, but when and how. The fact is that wood rots and banks erode in nature and, in a restored reach, if they don’t move when they should, this may be the worst possible outcome for habitats and biodiversity in a river. This presentation uses case studies to help us rethink restoration design approaches appropriate to a future that is not just uncertain but unknowable. Issues addressed include designing for failure, monitoring for success, and meeting the challenges posed by permitting and funding requirements. Case studies include: projects that have been stable but haven’t been resilient, due to permitting or funding restrictions, and; projects that have delivered more resilient habitat, even though they have ‘failed’ when judged against their stable design …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Tim Abbe Symposium Session: 2020 – 02 Considering sediment dynamics in river restoration design Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, estuary, fish passage, fish-salmon, floodplain, hydraulics, lessons learned, riparian, sediment transport, and wood ABSTRACTWood material can directly influence fluvial processes that control channel planform, substrate characteristics, alluvial topography and floodplain vegetation. The role of wood in trapping sediment and partitioning stress is well established. The removal of wood has also been recognized as a trigger for channel incision. But there is very little work regarding the influence of wood on channel bed stability, particularly with respect to the implications to salmonid redds and egg mortality. Field observations and professional judgement have led some to postulate that in-stream wood improves bed stability as it if would affect scour related to egg incubation survival. For instance, this has been coded into the widely used the Ecosystem Diagnostics and Treatment (EDT) model which increases the probability of egg to fry survival when wood is added to a channel. Yet, to date no one has developed even a basic framework to address the question of whether wood can decrease the general scour depth to which bed material is mobilized and thus impact salmonid eggs. By compiling empirical research into general bed scour and the hydraulic effects of wood, we constructed a framework describing how wood could reduce scour depth. We then proposed that stable wood integrated into the channel bed is effectively an immobile constituent of the substrate affecting the grain size distribution thereby altering dimensionless shear stress that defines the threshold for bed mobility. This provided a means to predict and compare scour depths in channels with different quantities of wood. We applied our reasoning to an incised alluvial channel segment that retains spawning gravels but sees very little salmon spawning relative to upstream and downstream river segments. Our predictions indicate that under existing conditions, general scour during a bed mobilizing event regularly exceeds typical egg burial depths of all Pacific salmon species. When we calculated the effect on bed mobility and general scour depth under a hypothetical scenario where the channel’s wood loading is at a level well within naturally occurring ranges in the PNW, the predictions show a substantial reduction in scour depths which implies an improvement in egg to fry survival. This work is also consistent with the argument that when wood increases bed substrate diversity, as well documented in the literature, it results in a greater distribution of local scour that creates patches of stable gravel that don’t occur in channels lacking wood. Our approach appears to be the first predictive tool which can be field-tested and refined to provide the restoration community with a quantitative tool for designing stable wood placements with the intent of improving spawning habitat. We are looking for additional empirical evidence of scour depths, both from previous studies and scour chains we’ve installed for water year …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Andrew Nelson Symposium Session: 2020 – 02 Considering sediment dynamics in river restoration design Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, floodplain, hydraulics, modeling, outside PNW, sediment transport, and stream ABSTRACTBed material transport rate is a first-order control over channel morphology and geomorphic processes in alluvial rivers—but reliable estimation of bed material transport rates in natural rivers remains one of the most fundamental problems in fluvial geomorphology. This limitation hampers efforts both to understand the fundamental relationship between bed material transport rate and channel morphodynamics and to sustainably manage rivers. Because of the cost, explicit accounting of bed material transport rates has been largely neglected as a part of the restoration design process. Channel classification schemes (e.g. Schumm, 1985; Church, 2006) have often shown a qualitative link between active channel width and the magnitude of bed material transport, but relatively few quantitative data are available demonstrating this relationship. We illustrate an application of the morphologic approach—a traditional approach that relies on quantification of a channel’s sediment budget—as a practical tool to examine relations between bed material sediment transport rates and channel width, braiding index, and bank erosion rates. Our focus is on two alluvial rivers in southcentral Alaska that have high, and highly spatially variable, bed material sediment transport rates. Contrasting histories and boundary controls for each system result in one being strongly degradational, resulting in an upstream-to-downstream increase in the bed material sediment transport rate, while the other is aggrading, resulting in an upstream to downstream decrease in the bed material sediment transport rate. The resulting dataset provides strong quantitative support for the notion that bed material transport intensity can be directly inferred from the width of self-formed alluvial channels. For locations along the two subject rivers—which exist in a region with similar climate, floodplain bank strength, lithology, and bed material grainsize distribution, thereby controlling many of the potentially confounding factors—channel width, which is exceptionally easy to quantify, provides a first-order indication of the bedload transport rate that is constrained to within about a factor of two. This is compelling considering typical order-of-magnitude errors common to results from relatively costly sediment transport function-based approaches to defining bedload transport. Thus, this study demonstrates proof-of-concept for an emerging approach to quantify bed material transport: measure the channel width. It should spur further data collection efforts with the aim of establishing the degree to which the observed relation is universal and—to the extent that it is not—local relations that may be used in applied …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Nick Legg Symposium Session: 2020 – 02 Considering sediment dynamics in river restoration design Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, fish passage, fish-salmon, floodplain, hydraulics, lessons learned, riparian, sediment transport, and stream ABSTRACTRestoration of incised alluvial streams is a common yet still challenging problem faced throughout the Pacific Northwest, where the negative effects of stream incision range from disconnected floodplains, armored streambeds, lowered water tables, and degraded riparian communities. A fundamental question in these efforts is whether passive restoration is a viable approach to meeting management objectives on required timescales (e.g. salmonid recovery prior to extinction or extirpation). In other words, can we reasonably wait for streams to build their beds back up to a point of reestablished connectivity and floodplain function? The timescales of potential recovery are directly informed by the metric D* [years], which we define as the volume deficit (D) of sediment lost through historical stream incision, divided by the annual rate of bedload sediment supply (S) to a reach. Through examination of regional patterns in D*, we find that bedload supply rates are often quite low relative to the sediment volume lost via historic stream incision. This suggests that potential timescales of recovery are on the order of multiple decades to centuries. This presentation will highlight application of this simple metric to inform restoration strategies, especially those that recognize gravel and bedload as a scarce …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: David West Symposium Session: 2020 – 01 Protecting critical flows Topics covered: canada, climate change, fish passage, floodplain, hydraulics, modeling, and stream ABSTRACTStream temperatures have been rising in many streams of the Pacific Northwest due to land use and flow regime alterations and climate change. Fish species such as salmonids have narrow thermal tolerances that, when exceeded, can cause severe health impacts, prevent spawning, or cause mortality. Stream thermal regimes are governed by a variety of heat fluxes that are influenced by riparian vegetation characteristics, flow regime, channel morphology, and climate. Some of these fluxes can be modified by watershed managers through shade enhancement and flow regime modification. Determining the cost-benefit of modifying these processes requires high accuracy predictions of the expected outcomes. Additionally, trade-offs can exist between providing ideal flow rate and maintaining ideal temperature in lake-headed systems. Stream heat budget models have been applied around the world to assess thermal management questions for decades; however, the available data and heat flux characterization methods have been continuously evolving, resulting in the ability to accurately predict the effects of management interventions at lower cost. The purpose of this talk will be to describe the modelling process required to assess thermal management approaches using a case study from the Okanagan region of British Columbia. Ecofish Research Ltd. and the BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resources Operations and Rural Development (MFLNRORD) were awarded a grant by the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund (HCTF) to develop a model for a small regulated stream with multiple online lakes that supports resident Rainbow Trout and critical spawning habitat for Kokanee. The model was used to assess the potential thermal regime improvements that could be achieved with enhanced riparian vegetation, and to determine the maximum flow rate before temperatures exceed Kokanee spawning thresholds. The model was also used to predict the effects of climate change due to changes in air temperature and solar radiation. The stream temperature model that was configured is an upgraded version of the heat budget model that has been developed over the past decade by Ecofish and various researchers at the University of British Columbia. The model applies an unsteady Lagrangian flow routing algorithm. Surface heat fluxes include direct and diffuse solar (shortwave) radiation, longwave radiation to and from the stream, sensible heat flux, and latent heat exchange (evaporation and condensation). The advective heat fluxes include inflows, hyporheic exchange, and streambed heat conduction. Each of the fluxes was measured in the field or calculated with public data sources. The effects of climate change included maximum water temperature increases that approached 5oC for RCP4.5 and exceeded 8oC for RCP8.5 climate change scenarios. An ideal flow release during the Kokanee spawning period was identified that was slightly lower than the current standard release. Enhancing vegetation was also shown to provide strong benefits with a potential 4oC temperature reduction if all banks were planted with similar density to that of the top 50% of measured locations. This case study highlights the benefits of stream temperature models in quantifying the potential effects of flow and shade management …

Year: 2020 Presenter/s: Florian Leischner Symposium Session: 2020 – 01 Protecting critical flows Topics covered: adaptive management and monitoring, fish passage, fish-cutthroat, fish-salmon, fish-steelhead, hydraulics, instream structure (culvert/bridge/dam), lessons learned, and stream ABSTRACTacoma Power completed construction of the Cushman Hydroelectric Project on the Olympic Peninsula in 1930. The Project includes two dams, two powerhouses, and associated facilities on the North Fork of the Skokomish River, which drains into Hood Canal. The Project first impounds water in Lake Cushman, a 4010-acre reservoir downstream of Staircase Falls, and then conveys it by way of the Cushman No 1. dam to the smaller (150-acre) Lake Kokanee, impounded by Cushman Dam #2. From Lake Kokanee, Tacoma Power either diverts water through a tunnel to a second powerhouse on Hood Canal, or releases it to the lower reaches of the North Fork Skokomish River. Historically, Tacoma Power diverted nearly all of the flow from Lake Kokanee to the powerhouse on Hood Canal, disconnecting the lower North Fork from the basin hydrology. Base flow was less than 100 cfs year-round, with minimal planned variability and large flows (greater than 1,000 cfs) largely limited to one spill event per year (on average). This was in sharp contrast to the average annual inflow of 519 cfs entering the system from the upper North Fork, with peak flows of up to 27,000 cfs. Tacoma Power maintained this hydrology for over 70 years. In combination with disconnected wood and sediment input, this flow alteration reduced the quantity of in-stream habitat in the lower North Fork through both reduced inundation and habitat simplification. Tacoma Power received its new federal operating license for the Cushman Project in 2010. Much of the controversy during the relicensing proceeding concerned the amount of flow diverted from the river. Since relicensing, Tacoma Power has increased its base flow to 120 to 300 cfs, and has incorporated additional temporary releases of up to 1,050 cfs in response to winter storm events to create and maintain in-stream habitat below the Cushman No. 2 dam. One of the desired outcomes of flow augmentation is to support passive restoration of in-stream habitat in this reach for the benefit of fish populations, including the three stocks listed under the ESA: Puget Sound Chinook, Bull Trout, and Winter Steelhead. Since 2012, Tacoma Power has been conducting intensive annual stream and salmon monitoring in the lower North Fork to evaluate the effectiveness of flow augmentation on habitat quantity and quality. It has been measuring the hydromorphological effects as well as the response in habitat and fish to the increase in discharges. This paper will present some preliminary results, specifically channel and habitat …