Monitoring Stream and Watershed Restoration

Preface

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781888569636.fmatter

Growing up fishing the waters of the western United States, I witnessed the continual degradation of these waters by development and other land uses. Thus, the need for restoration of streams, rivers, and estuaries was apparent to me at an early age. When I began my career as a fisheries scientist, I became acutely aware of the need not just for restoration of aquatic habitats but also the need to evaluate the effectiveness of restoration actions. Over time, it became clear that guidance on the most effective restoration techniques and on how to monitor restoration actions was sorely needed. I was not alone; scientists have been calling for more information on restoration and monitoring for several years. Moreover, during the last decade, several manuals for restoration and several books on restoration in general have been published. Numerous books on monitoring also have been published, yet none have focused exclusively on evaluating restoration. Many are texts on statistical and experimental design, often not easily digested by scientists, restoration practitioners, and resource managers, or not easily translated to a restoration ecology context.