Ecological Restoration
Ecological Restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of damaged, degraded, or destroyed ecosystems (Holl, 2020).
Any ecological system can undergo restoration efforts. Riverscape restoration can be broadly defined as the process of assisting the recovery of damaged, degraded, or destroyed riverscapes through recovery of natural hydrologic, geomorphic, and ecological processes.
Identifying Ecological Potential
The health of rivers has been in decline due to human activities for hundreds of years here in the US and likely thousands of years globally. In the United States, 33% of rivers are impaired or polluted in some way. In Europe, that number is around 80–90%.
The motivation for pursuing ecological restoration is primarily driven by a desire to remediate human impacts on rivers (Laub and Palmer 2009).
By diagnosing the cause of impairment, appropriate treatments can be applied.
Treatment
Treatments are applied in alignment with long-term ecological goals, aiming to facilitate the natural processes that will rehabilitate riverscapes.
Low-tech treatments can include revegetation, in-stream structures (beaver-dam-analogues, post-assisted log-structures, sod speedbumps, etc.), and thoughtful land management.
Monitoring
Monitoring efforts help determine if the system is responding as expected to treatments.
Beavers
The unnamed partner in most of our restoration projects is beaver. This keystone species is of critical importance in Colorado’s headwater rivers and streams.