A group of leading river scientists published a paper in the journal Science today, presenting first-of-its-kind research on the state of river restoration in the United States. Following on the heels of a related article published in the Journal of Applied Ecology that describes the five fundamental standards for ecologically sustainable river restoration, the papers document the maturing effort to reverse rising pollution levels and declining ecological health of rivers in the United States and around the world.
Photo: The Rio Grande was named one of America's Most Endangered Rivers in 2003. Photo courtesy National Park Service.
“It’s important to establish measurable goals at the outset of a project against which success can be evaluated,” said Jennifer Follstad Shah, University of New Mexico Ph.D. candidate. “Monitoring of project results needs to be tied to the goals of the project. For example, a restoration group may plant riparian vegetation for a variety of reasons such as erosion control or improved habitat for fish. The best monitoring in these cases would focus on water quality or fish populations, rather than solely on the percentage of vegetation that survives.”
Project records were obtained by a dedicated team of graduate student researchers from around the country led by University of Maryland Professor Margaret Palmer and post-doctoral researcher, Emily Bernhardt. The students combed agency databases and file cabinets and made hundreds of phone calls to resource managers and restoration practitioners.
“According to our research, river restoration is growing exponentially in this country,” said Palmer. “There is enormous demand for this kind of work to improve water quality, restore wildlife habitats, and create natural spDavid Brookshire that people can enjoy.”
The five criteria Follstad-Shah and the researchers developed for river restoration in the Journal of Applied Ecology article include: a guiding image; improving ecosystems; increasing resilience; doing no lasting harm; and completing an ecological assessment.
In the southwest, which includes Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, the database contains nearly 600 project records. Along with UNM’s Cliff Dahm and Steve Gloss from the University of Arizona, Shah’s role in the project involves the collection of data for restoration efforts in the southwestern states.
Shah, who studies in the IGERT Freshwater Sciences Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program, utilizes a variety of sources to acquire the data including the Internet, heads of organizations funding restoration projects, databases, summaries of project reports from agencies as well as books and peer reviewed literature. Shah has more than 38 southwest data sources from among city, county and federal agencies.
“We’re focusing on positive standards for monitoring and reporting results,” Shah said. “It might seem intuitive, but you can gauge success in many ways. We’re looking to create a standardized definition for ecological success.
“Many groups have good motivations for river restoration, but their plans didn’t work. We want to find out what methods did work and create standards to measure success of restoration projects.”
Arizona and New Mexico led the way in river restoration projects with almost 200 each. The number of projects over the course of a 10-year period (1990-2000) in the southwest has also grown exponentially. Common types of restoration in the southwestern U.S. involve riparian management, water quality management and improvement of in-stream habitat for fish.
Projects in the southwest have been driven by a variety of issues including conservation of native species, eradication of non-native species and erosion control. The median costs of the project is typically small at $69,000 or less. Follstad-Shah says, based on the information available, an estimated $500-700 million has been spent on river restoration projects in the southwest, excluding Colorado River projects.
“River restoration is evolving from an art into a science. A critical first step in this evolution has been to document what is being done in the name of river restoration.” said Duke University’s Emily Bernhardt, the lead author of the Science paper that created the nation’s first comprehensive database of river and stream restoration projects.
The term river restoration applies to activities such as restoring wetlands to filter pollution, reforesting riverbanks to curb erosion, recreating the natural river channel to reduce downstream flooding, and removing dams to allow fish to migrate freely up and downstream. According to the authors of the paper, at least $14 – 15 billion has been invested in river restoration since 1990 – an average of $1 billion per year. That’s a lot of individual efforts – the average cost per project is just $45,000. California, the Chesapeake Bay watershed and the Pacific Northwest are hotspots of restoration work.
“It’s no mystery why river restoration is booming,” said Andrew Fahlund, vice president for Protection and Restoration at American Rivers. “Rivers in good condition more readily meet the needs of the surrounding community than polluted and degraded rivers.”
According to the authors of the Science article, more consistent monitoring of projects after they are completed and sharing this data with other practitioners is the next step in the evolution of the river restoration field. Only 10 percent of the 37,000 projects in the database include any mention of monitoring effectiveness although some states are investing more in evaluation than others. Estimates of monitoring for the Southwest paint a rosier picture, where 29 percent of restoration projects have been monitored.
*** Note: A Web site for reporters is available at: http://www.nrrss.umd.edu/press.htm. Additional information may also be found at the following Web sites:
http://www.nrrss.umd.edu/NRRSS_INDEX.htm
http://www.americanrivers.org/nrrss
http://nrrss.nbii.gov/
Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821