Stream Restoration in the Pacific Northwest: Analysis of Interviews with Project Managers

Rumps, Jeanne M., Stephen L. Katz, Katie Barnas, Mark D. Morehead, Robin Jenkinson, Stephen R. Clayton, and Peter Goodwin. 2007. "Stream Restoration in the Pacific Northwest: Analysis of Interviews with Project Managers". Restoration Ecology. 15 (3): 506-515.

This article is as a “whistle blower” for the suspicion that many restoration projects are described as successful, despite an absence of defined success criteria in the project implementation. The article gives an introduction to the topic of monitoring – or lack-thereof - of restoration projects, and implicitly warns that the sample group is representative of other projects nationally. The punch line is that although 70% of respondents reported completely successful projects, only 12% based their success on habitat or ecological measurements. Most perceptions of success were based on subjective impressions – visual monitoring. Project Managers on stream projects in the Pacific Northwest were surveyed by telephone about their projects. Respondent profile was therefore questionable, regarding respondents’ availability or desire to talk on the phone. Survey answers were subjective in nature, and are from between 1996 to 2002 (I am unsure whether these findings would now be deemed as dated for this industry). For me, even with the much-welcomed graphics, the article was unnecessarily long. I am unsure the extent that this type of article is stating the obvious, is revealing a well-kept secret, or is sensationalizing a topic that is actively being worked and improved on.

The Perpetual Forest

Kirkman, L. K., R. J. Mitchell, M. J. Kaeser, S. D. Pecot, and K. L. Coffey. 2007. The perpetual forest: using undesirable species to bridge restoration. Journal of Applied Ecology 44:604-614.

This paper is full of good ol' common sense. When converting stands of (exotic) slash pine back to (native) longleaf pine in GA, it may be beneficial to leave slash pines in the overstory until the longleaf pines become established.
Current practice is to remove all slash pine right off the bat. The sudden influx of light releases woody plants in the understory, which then choke out longleaf pine seedlings and desirable grasses and forbs. The resulting mess requires intensive herbicide use and careful management. Retaining some slash pines may not jive with conventional wisdom, but it results in more favorable conditions and is easier and more economical.

This approach certainly wouldn't work for every ecosystem, but it's a step in the right direction for forest restoration in general. Because most forests are multilayered, the vast majority of tree species benefit from some form of overstory retention. The main problem I can see with this method is that mature trees continue to reproduce until removed, resulting in this case in more undesirable trees. It would be interesting to hear from people in other disciplines to see if they've heard of similar restoration methods being used in their own fields.

Posted on behalf of Katherine Naegele. Photo: Florida NRCS, USDA

Fule, PZ. 2008. Does it make sense to restore wildland fire in changing climate? Restoration Ecology 16(4): 526-531.

This paper is an opinion piece looking at the value of using fire as a restoration tool in the context of climate change. The focus of the paper is pine forests of western North America that experienced frequent, low intensity fire prior to the onset of fire suppression. These forests changed drastically from the beginning of fire suppression and have been the focus of large scale restoration using prescribed fire, wildfire and mechanical thinning. Typically, these restoration projects have used historical reference data from the mid-1700s to set restoration targets. The author questions the utility of this in the context of climate change.

Overall, the author concludes that restoring fire is still relevant. Some of the more interesting arguments he makes are:
· Historical reference conditions should be viewed not as a snapshot in time, but as representative of the evolutionary history of the species involved.
· Reference conditions from paleo studies are especially useful because they capture ecological change over a time period long enough to capture significant climate change.
· Restoring processes such as fire increases resilience.
· Reference conditions from southern/low elevation areas of species’ ranges should be used for projects at northern/high elevation locations.

What’s missing:
· I don’t think he adequately addressing the role disturbance may have in facilitating rapid ecological change in the context of climate change.
· One of the most interesting things about this article is the focus on process rather than structure/composition, but it isn’t explicitly addressed.

Post and photo credit: Alison Forrestel

Standards for Ecologically Successful River Restoration

Author(s): M. A. Palmer; E. S. Bernhardt; J. D. Allan; P. S. Lake; G. Alexander; S. Brooks; J. Carr; S. Clayton; C. N. Dahm; J. Follstad Shah; D. L. Galat; S. G. Loss; P. Goodwin; D. D. Hart; B. Hassett; R. Jenkinson; G. M. Kondolf; R. Lave; J. L. Meyer; T. K. O'Donnell; L. Pagano; E. Sudduth
Source: Journal of Applied Ecology, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Apr., 2005), pp. 208-217
Publisher(s): British Ecological Society

This paper brings attention to the need for standards for evaluating ecological success in river restoration, and then suggests a methodology for doing so; the authors have proposed a set of assessment guidelines with five criteria that would guide the design and implementation of an evaluative process.

The evaluative criteria proposed are broad guidelines, and the actual work involved in building a specific model for any given project would be considerable. The power of these ideas, however, lies not only in designing the evaluation, but in making the evaluation part of a project's design from the initial conception to post-construction review and assessment. It would force teams to conceive and define ecological objectives more clearly within a given set of project constraints, and it would allow designers and managers to make strong ecological cases for the merits of their projects when seeking funding and approval.

This paper was written in 2004 and published in 2005. Because it is making a proposal to the scientific community for a new evaluative process in the unique framework of river restoration, I think it is an important paper to read. It would also be useful to find and read the critical responses to these authors' proposals.

Molly Mehaffy

Standards for ecologically successful river restoration

Palmer, M. A., E. S. Bernhardt, J. D. Allan, et al. 2005. Journal of Applied Ecology 42:208-217.

With growing worldwide consensus on the social and ecological importance of rivers and the multiple services they provide, more and more river and stream restoration projects are currently attracting incredible financial and agency support. However, there is little agreement on what the success of a restoration project actually means. The authors argue that although there are many different ways to judge a restoration project as successful using social factors such as stakeholder satisfaction or advances in the science and practice of river restoration, in order to distinguish a project as a restoration success the project must also provide ecological successes. The authors put forward five criteria that they believe must be met in order for a river restoration project to be measured as ecologically successful. These “standards for ecologically successful river restoration” include: a project design based on a specified reference of a more dynamic, healthy river, a measurable improvement in the ecological condition of the site, a more self-sustaining system that is resilient to external perturbations where by only minimal follow-up maintenance is needed, a construction phase where no lasting harm is imposed on the ecosystem, and, finally, a pre and post assessment completed and made available to the public. The authors support their criteria by suggesting standards in which to evaluate the five criteria and give indicators of their success.

Although the authors focus on criteria to judge the ecological success of river restoration projects they recognize that for river restoration projects to be the most effective they must achieve a combination of stakeholder success and contribute to the scientific knowledge and management practices in addition to ecological success. In order to advance our understanding of how best to restore streams and rivers, make meaningful judgments on the success of river restoration projects, and influence the expectations and goals of stakeholders we will need broad input from the international scientific community on the standards of success and the acceptance of these standards by those that implement river restoration projects. The authors assert that this would ideally involve the creation of national and international programs to evaluate ecological success in restoration. This paper gives a good overview of the issues practitioners, implementing agencies and scientist face when attempting to look at the success of river restoration projects while providing criteria for addressing these issues.

(image credit: by Chris Benton, Cordonices Creek restoration, October 2004)

Ecological history and latent conservation potential: large and giant tortoises as a model for taxon substitutions

Hansen, D.M.; Donlan, C.J., Griffiths, C.J. & Campbell, K.J.
Ecography April 2010 Volume 33 Issue 2 pg 272-284

Using the label ‘forward-thinking restoration’ Hansen et al. argue that IUCN guidelines for species introductions should broaden to allow the introduction of extant (but non-native) megafauna to restore ecosystem function previously provided by now-extinct species. As an example, they argue for reintroduction of large tortoises to several island communities. Thirty-six species of large and giant tortoises have gone extinct since the Pleistocene, likely because of human activity. Because tortoises are key herbivores and seed dispersers, Hansen et al. suggest that introducing extant species would be an effective yet low-risk way to restore historic ecosystem processes.

The paper provides a compelling example of a generally extreme concept of “Pleistocene re-wilding.” By suggesting that we reconstruct some very historic processes, the paper forces consideration of both what and when do we restore to. The authors highlight that most tortoises extinctions were human-caused, implying that their goal is to reverse the effects of people on ecosystems. As a general goal this is unfeasible (we don’t know all the effects humans have had on ecosystems, and we couldn’t reverse them all anyway). Moreover, the authors emphasize the need to restore key processes. If process is what we value, why the tortoise went extinct is important only insofar as we can make sure it doesn’t happen again. Importantly, the paper also skims over the unintended consequences that could result from introducing key herbivores into systems that have been without them since the Pleistocene.

Design and Implementation of Monitoring Studies to Evaluate the Success of Ecological Restoration on Wildlife

Block, W. M., Franklin, A. B., Ward, J. P., Ganey, J. L. and White, G. C. (2001), Design and Implementation of Monitoring Studies to Evaluate the Success of Ecological Restoration on Wildlife. Restoration Ecology, 9: 293–303. doi: 10.1046/j.1526-100x.2001.009003293.x

Block et al. expose the loose ends and lack of rigor in restoration ecology monitoring designs. As a designer, I found this article very interesting because it reveals the lack of clarity, intention and execution within the majority of restoration designs. Looking primarily at how restoration projects influence wildlife changes, they claim wildlife is grossly understudied, and therefore lay out both a conceptual framework as well as a very holistic methodology in determining an appropriate design for a monitoring system.

While restoration ecology is still a relatively new field, their critique opens ones eyes to the lack of scientific grounding many studies before 2001 had. This paper advises researchers to pay close attention to the context of site and conditions as well as scale when defining a monitoring boundary. It seems obvious, but when you consider the logistics of a project, its funding, and perhaps its timeline, it’s obvious why many design parameters aren’t married with the logistics and biology of specific organisms.

Block et al. convey that adaptive management is an iterative process through which management practices are initiated and their effects monitored at regular intervals. Between increments of time within a study, outcomes are evaluated as either positively or negatively, through which monitoring should be tweaked to make the design as intentional as possible until the processes and components of the larger system are understood and designed well. All in all, this study is very honest about how un-scientific and poorly planned monitoring of restoration projects really are, all the while offering specific and targeted suggestions for ecologists. 

Photo: Bald Eagle, Nuyakuk River (Fiona Cundy)

A method for evaluating outcomes of restoration when no reference sites exist

Brewer, J.S. and T. Menzel. 2009. A method for evaluating outcomes of restoration when no reference sites exist. Restoration Ecology 17: 4-11

>In this paper, Brewer and Menzel propose an alternative approach, habitat data matrices, to determining the reference condition for a restoration site when no extant reference site exists. They showed its applicability by analyzing a data set from an open oak woodland restoration project in Mississippi. After sampling various plots within their targeted site, they combined the presence-absence data and a species list from similar habitat types to calculate a metric for each species, which would indicate how likely they would occur within a specific habitat. They evaluated restored plots by regressing the change in a species relative abundance and its habitat indicator score. If there was an increase in abundance of species with high scores for their target habitat, they inferred that the restoration was successful.
>The authors definitely present a novel approach to assessing the success of a restoration project; however, it tends to overemphasize the rare species within a habitat, which are usually the hardest to restore. While they presented this technique as a tool when no extant reference condition exists, their case study suggests that managers actually need a lot of data from either historical records or similar extant systems that have different temporal characteristics to be successful. This approach can be very risky because it can potentially be implemented without any knowledge of how the species within the community naturally assembled and could lead to the dominance of weedy or invasive species; however it provides a clear metric to evaluate success (e.g., the increase in abundance of targeted species).

Management of novel ecosystems: are novel approaches required?

Seastedt, T. R., R. J. Hobbs, and K. N. Suding. 2008. Management of novel ecosystems: are novel approaches required? Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6:547-553.

This paper suggests that proactive management strategies for novel ecosystems should not focus on returning ecosystems to historic states or on eliminating invasive species. Instead, systems should be managed to maximize “desirable species” or to achieve a “desirable state”. The authors implicitly acknowledge the difficulty of using the subjective term “desirable” as the foundation for broad systems management guidelines. However, the paper does not go far enough to address the potential policy pitfalls that this management strategy entails. What is desirable? To whom? Over what time scale?

Existing management strategies, despite their significant flaws, appear to leave management activities far less vulnerable to political manipulation. Stakeholder processes to establish values-based management runs the risk of undue corporate influence and high human discount rates that expose managers to the exact external influence the authors seek to avoid from “the public and policymakers, who are quick to condemn when activities designed to produce long-term results do not produce short-term benefits.” In the face of scientific uncertainty on how systems will respond to interventions in the face of climate change and resource degradation, there is a real danger that already muted scientific voices will be drowned out by the chorus of political dysfunction all together.

Mark Zimring

Ecological restoration in the light of ecological history.

Jackson, S. T., & Hobbs, R. J. (2009). Ecological restoration in the light of ecological history. Science, 325(5940), 567-569.

This article turns on its head the centrality of the historical reference state to restoration goals. The authors engage the reader with the question of whether historical states will be appropriate given global change, as well as the question of what is 'undisturbed,' given indigenous management techniques. They point out that, far from providing a single reference state, the paleoecological record suggests that there may be many states that a particular ecosystem has shifted through in the last 20,000 years. The authors do also emphasize that paleoecology is still important and historical reference states are still useful; they simply suggest that they should not be taken as gospel. Overall, the thinking is fresh and stimulating, and this is a nice addition to the TREE novel ecosystems paper for generating thinking 'outside the box' on how to manage ecosystems into the future. Questions still remain as to how exactly to use historical/paleoecological information to inform decisions regarding 'natural' ecosystems which will be hard to maintain against changing climates or how to cope with managing novel ecosystems, but for a Science paper they manage to pack in a surprising amount of information and ideas.

Ecological restoration for future sustainability in a changing environment

Choi, Young D.; Temperton, Vicky M.; Allen, Edith B., et al. 2008.
Ecoscience. 15(1): 53-64.

This paper presents an overview of the challenges that restoration ecology faces in light of climate change, and proposes 5 major changes to allow the field to adapt to the changing future.

The Good:

It offers a critical review of the practice of restoration, particularly that of its retrospective and idealistic goals and suggests that restoration needs to become "future-focused." I found this suggestion welcome and refreshing because current restoration efforts often fail to address the future climatic conditions likely to occur on site. The authors propose succinct, (and I thought valid) recommendations to alleviate the main criticisms of the field, from the failure to accommodate societal pressures to focusing primarily on the restoration of ecosystem structure. They cite a vast number of studies and papers to broadly defend their proposals, and highlight relevant examples of successful projects.

The Not-so-Good:

Because the paper was so broad, it did not explore any of the recommendations in depth. I would have appreciated further discussion about the transition from historically-informed restoration to proactive, climate change-informed restoration. The paper lacked examples of projects that successfully "restored" an ecosystem to be resilient in the face of climate change. My final critique is that a few of the proposed changes were too elementary to be anything ground-breaking or interesting.

From the myth of a lost paradise to targeted river restoration: forget natural references and focus on human benefits

 Dufour, S. and H. Piégay. 2009. River Research and Applications 25:568-581.


This paper is a “thought” piece from a European perspective that resulted from a series of talks held at the International Conference on River Restoration in Venice (June 2008). Although focused specifically on river restoration, it asks a lot of really good questions about why we are doing restoration in the first place – asks more questions than it answers. The authors address concepts of reference-based versus objective-based restoration, and argue that attempting to revert back to a historical or “pristine” condition is self-defeating, and that both static and trajectory-based (i.e., concepts of ecosystem resilience) references are not useful for setting restoration targets in the dynamic and disturbance-dominated fluvial system. They suggest that defining clear objectives for a restoration project requires thinking about that project within a broader spatial and temporal context, and that human benefits should be the driving factor. While this might seem controversial (as the title hopes to suggest), they clearly articulate that human benefits include ecosystem functions, wildlife habitat, etc – not just the obvious ecosystem services one might think of as directly beneficial to society. They suggest that reference or historical conditions are critical to understanding the potential functioning of a site, but that the ultimate targets/objectives for a restoration should be driven by society wishes. I think that this happens a lot in practice anyway, but is not acknowledged because it can come off as arbitrary or unscientific/unobjective.

A method for Evaluating Outcomes of Restoration When No Reference Sites Exist

Brewer, J. S. and Menzel, T. (2009), A Method for Evaluating Outcomes of Restoration When No Reference Sites Exist. Restoration Ecology, 17: 4–11. doi: 10.1111/j.1526-100X.2008.00456.x

The authors develop a method to create hypothetical reference assemblages (for plants or animals) using regional species lists with habitat and location information. Their case study was the open oak woodland in Northern Mississippi. The approach uses community similarity-based indicator scores for every species in the community to construct plant or animal assemblages for reference sites and allow practitioners a method of evaluating success of the restoration project.

The pluses. This method would be especially useful for hypothesizing what the structural components of a restored rare habitat look like where reference sites do not exist. The method also may be more effective than using species richness or evenness to evaluate success because the community similarity-based indicator provides more information about compositional changes relevant to conservation and restoration. For instance, the method can predict the likelihood of a species occurring in a particular habitat, even if regional surveys do not list it as occurring in that habitat.

The minuses. The method only addresses structural components of a reference site, perhaps less important than the process-based aspects of a restoration project (Palmer 2009). The complexity of the formula may also be a deterrent for the average restoration practitioner to adopt this method to evaluate restoration success. In addition, this method relies on the existence of a regional plant list with species, habitat, and location information. In a place like California, with many habitat types in a regional area, a regional list may not be an appropriate starting point. Lastly, the method relies on existing plant species habitat ranges and does not address futuristic species habitat ranges. Understanding what is likely to live in this habitat type in the future (considering climate change) is essential when developing a hypothetical reference site.

Natural Analogues of Degraded Ecosystems Enhance Conservation and Reconstruction in Extreme Environments

Richardson, P.J., J.T. Lundholm and D.W. Larson. 2010. Natural
Analogues of Degraded Ecosystems Enhance Conservation and
Reconstruction in Extreme Environments. Ecological Applications.
20(3): 728-740.

Summary: This paper examines the novel-ecosystems approach through
experimental manipulation of highly degraded limestone quarry systems.
The authors acknowledge that in severely altered or damaged systems,
rehabilitation to a particular historic state may be impossible or
inappropriate. Instead, they argue that creating novel ecosystems
modeled on analogous high-stress local communities (“degraded-state
analogues”) or ecosystems of regional conservation concern is more
appropriate, feasible, and may be able to serve the role of other
traditional high-stress environments that often contain high levels of
rare and/or endemic species.
This paper provides a glimpse into the practicality of creating a
novel, diverse, high-value ecosystems in areas that may not be
amenable to “traditional restoration methods.” It could benefit from
data collection over a longer time-period in order to gain a clearer
picture of species interactions and successional processes.
Nonetheless, I think that the utilization non-traditional reference
systems that contain abiotic conditions (ecological filters) similar
to target sites and the incorporation restoration goals (e.g.
inclusion of species of conservation concern) begins the process of
assessing the feasibility of novel-ecosystem theory. By assessing the
barriers community assembly (dispersal limitation or micro-habitat
limitations), this study is able to incorporate tests of ecological
theory into restoration practice.

Agricultural nonpoint source water pollution policy: The case of California's Central Coast

Agricultural nonpoint source water pollution policy: The case of California's Central Coast

Brian M. Dowd, Daniel Press and Marc Los Huertos

Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment
Volume 128, Issue 3, November 2008, Pages 151-161

This article is important because “pollution from nonpoint sources [NPS] now constitutes the number one source of pollution in waterways, with agriculture being the single largest contributor… Yet this globally important issue has thus far received relatively scant attention in the literature.” (151, 159) The article fills two critical gaps with (1) a comprehensive review of NPS pollution policy literature and (2) a case study in California of barriers to effective NPS pollution regulation. The case study addresses a “relative political success” that nevertheless “relies on a number of key assumptions, the accuracy of which will ultimately dictate its success at achieving desired environmental outcomes.” (152) The investigation of these assumptions is particularly relevant for our discussion in demonstrating how broad and vague political goals (“fishable and swimmable waters” and “zero discharge”) are ultimately reduced to concrete – though still challenging – measures of “improvement in water quality or a clear link between [implemented measures] and water quality without toxicity, agricultural pesticide residues and elevated nutrient concentrations.” (159) Moreover, the article is important in calling for further research on how monitoring of even these measures of success is negotiated between regulators, growers, workers, and other stakeholders – another unfortunate gap in the predominant literature.

Gustavo de L. T. Oliveira

Image: View of runoff, also called nonpoint source pollution, from a farm field in Iowa during a rain storm.

Photo by Lynn Betts, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service

The Politics of Restoration Success: How is it Being Measured?

Light and Higgs (1993). The Politics of Ecological Restoration: Sciences Vol 1, p.25

The science and practice of ecological restoration is an inherently political process. From the choice of site and processes restored to the procurement of financial backing and compliance with regulatory concerns, the practice of restoration is increasingly dictated by the needs of the private sector. The two articles we read for this week seek to clarify the scientific criteria through which restoration is gauged successful or not. But as ecological restoration is increasingly commodified and as restoration goals become subject to the whims of finance and venture capital, we must reopen the questions of how “restoration success” articulates within socio-political contexts. The article by Light and Higgs, while dated, brings to the front different metrics through which we may measure restoration success. They argue that ecological restoration goals must include democratic and egalitarian principles, and highlight their argument with cases of good technical restoration but overall failed ecological restoration. As restoration scientists, do we have to consider and measure more than ecological characteristics or processes? Do we have to include social and political criteria for measuring success? Do we have to take into account how politics and economics shape restoration goals and practices?

Image Credit: Adam Romero (2007). The picture of the Hippopotomas was taken at the restored Seekoei-vlei Nature Reserve in Free State, South Africa. This is a contemporary version of ecological restoration characterized by technical success and political failure.

Rethinking Conservation Practice in Light of Climate Change

Peter W. Dunwiddie, Sonia A. Hall, et al.; September 2009; Ecological Restoration 27:3

The whole concept of using reference information to guide restoration, or to inform our ideas about what ‘successful restoration’ means, was put into question by last week’s Palmer article. The piece I found fascinating was with regard to restoration in the face of climate change, and a search for a meaningful reference about these topics led me to this fascinating article. The authors argue that, given climate change, one’s restoration goals should focus not only on past reference, but instead on future resilience of ecosystems or species. This will necessarily mean taking approaches that might help push species past natural density levels, push ecosystems into new geographies, or utilize novel ecosystems (with non-historically native species). While considerable caution should be taken, all of these options and more should be considered on the table, in the name of system resilience. Because of its inherent awareness of current and historical systems on a site, as well as the use of future climate conditions to guide action, this approach is both forward and backward looking. The authors cite several examples of where each approach has been or will be used, and outline many of the intended consequences as well as the risks associated with each. Case studies and considerable expertise make this article a must-read, though the obvious shortfall is still – and will likely be for a long time – a lack of existing scientific evidence.

A source from Palmer biblio: O. Hoegh-Guldberg, et al. 'Assisted Colonization and Rapid Climate Change'

Image: California Dept. of Fish and Game