Process Based Riverscape Restoration

On April 13th, 2023 the Lower Nehalem Watershed Council hosted a presentation w/ Chris Jordan, Research Fisheries Biologist for NOAA from the Mathematical Biology and Systems Monitoring Program. This presentation defines process-based restoration and why it’s important. The overwhelming majority of riverscapes across the continental US are dramatically impaired due to current or legacy land and water use. The impairment is mostly structural starvation, resulting in high energy channels that are vertically and laterally separated from their floodplains. The impairment is so pervasive that these riverscape conditions are seen as "normal". But, because this shifted baseline sees channels where riverine wetland corridors once ran and continuous forests where successional patches once thrived, our management models maintain, perpetuate, and even restore to this degraded, reduced function state. However, if we expect to achieve the fire resilient, climate change adapted, drought and flood resistant, and protected species recovering riverscapes our management programs claim, we must first accept, allow, and foster the messy, dynamic nature of nature.Dr. Chris Jordan is a Research Fish Biologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Program Manager for the Mathematical Biology and Systems Monitoring Program. Chris has worked on a wide range of biological topics, all with an emphasis on the development or application of quantitative methods. The last two decades, his work has focused on the design and implementation of large-scale monitoring programs to assess freshwater habitat and population status as well as the watershed-scale effect of management actions for anadromous salmonids. Some current projects include the development of life-cycle simulation models to integrate knowledge on physical and biological processes into a management decision support framework and the development of methods for riverscape restoration focusing on beaver and process-based thinking.