Principles of Watershed Restoration
Adapted from What the River Reveals: Understanding and Restoring Healthy Watersheds by Valerie Rapp)
- Work on a watershed basis. Rivers are characterized by their connectivity, linking upstream and downstream regions. To understand what is going on at the mouth of a river, the story begins at the headwaters. Similarly, when restoring one part of a watershed it is critical to understand the larger sub-basin and watershed—the land uses, hydrology, and geomorphology that create a continuum of conditions along the river’s path.
- Reconnect people to rivers and watersheds. “Our challenge is to move beyond a static, hydrologic definition towards a dynamic understanding of the wholeness of watersheds and how they form the foundation of all human activities” (Brock Dolman, Basins of Relation). Restoring a sense of place and interdependence with one’s watershed can create a social atmosphere that fosters healthy watersheds.
- Expect disturbance. Rivers are also characterized by their dynamism, especially in Mediterranean climates like Northern California, which experience extreme seasonal variation in precipitation. River ecosystems are adapted to change. The concept of equilibrium and models that aim to create steady-state systems are unfit for Mediterranean watersheds. More applicable are concepts or models that accommodate episodic hydrological events.
The Russian river at Hacienda Bridge
- Restore watershed functions and processes. Watersheds left to their own devices display a variety of functions: wetlands and floodplains absorb floods and purify water, riparian forests allow water infiltration and provide necessary habitat for many riverine species, and water flows transport sediment from the headwaters to depositional zones. Restoring these larger, self-sustaining ecosystem processes should guide the design of restoration projects.
- Acknowledge the role of people, not just rivers or salmon. People make choices about rivers—whether to build dams, protect riparian forests, or establish hatcheries. Watersheds can represent the interaction between human society and natural communities. Restoring ecosystems requires changing the relationship from one of resource depletion to one of long-term sustainability.
- Work with a long-term perspective. It took centuries for river systems to develop. A decade is a mere blink of the eye when working on this geologic time-scale. Therefore, change may come slowly and apparent improvement or decline even slower.
Vineyard in foreground, riparian habitat in background.
- Develop feedback loops. It is critical to monitor, learn, and change tactics based on these lessons—what is typically referred to as “adaptive management”. Restoration strategies are constantly evolving and it is important to have feedback loops built in to learn from successes and failures. Typically, monitoring has received little funding compared to implementation. But without monitoring, there is no way to tell if the work implemented actually achieved the intended results.
- Accommodate diverse objectives and strategies for restoration. The list above represents one perspective on the principles of restoration—depending on whom you ask, you will get very different answers. Restoration is most commonly done with some concept of restoring a functioning ecosystem in mind, however restoration can also be motivated by ethical beliefs, economic concerns, and/or cultural connections to the river or the species that inhabitant it. These diverse motivations create varying objectives and priorities for restoration. It is crucial to understand this breadth in the politics and practice of restoration to make socially viable, informed decisions about what we want to restore, why, and with what end benefit in sight.
