Inside the &amp;#8220;Black Box&amp;#8221; of River Restoration: Using Catchment History to Identify Disturbance and Response Mechanisms to Set Targets for Process-Based Restoration

Sarah Mika,Darren Ryder,Mark Dahm,Alexandra Spink,Andrew P Brooks,Craig Miller,Benjamin Wolfenden,Angela Arthington,Joanna Hoyle,Brad Pusey,Garreth Kyle,Andrew Boulton,Gary Brierley,Kirstie Fryirs,Robert Creese,Mark Sanders,Daniel Keating,Michelle Leishman,Timothy Howell

doi:10.5751/es-03451-150408

Abstract

Mika, S., J. Hoyle, G. Kyle, T. Howell, B. Wolfenden, D. Ryder, D. Keating, A. Boulton, G. Brierley, A. P. Brooks, K. Fryirs, M. Leishman, M. Sanders, A. Arthington, R. Creese, M. Dahm, C. Miller, B. Pusey, and A. Spink. 2010. Inside the “black box” of river restoration: using catchment history to identify disturbance and response mechanisms to set targets for process-based restoration. Ecology and Society 15(4): 8. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art8/ https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03451-150408

Highlights

Why do so many river restoration projects fail? Much emphasis focuses on the components of ecological restoration: having a “guiding image”, setting the correct priorities (Wohl 2005, Hobbs 2007), identifying appropriate trajectories and reference states (Hughes et al 2005, Kondolf et al 2006), and using suitable on-ground strategies (Nilsson et al 2007, Spink et al 2009)
Despite a rich literature defining the components of restoration project planning, restoration ecology currently lacks an explicit and logical means of moving from the initial project vision through to on-ground strategies
We present a planning process that explicitly uses an interdisciplinary mechanistic model of disturbance drivers and system responses to build from the initial project vision to the implementation of on-ground works

Summary

Introduction

Why do so many river restoration projects fail? Much emphasis focuses on the components of ecological restoration: having a “guiding image” (sensu Palmer et al 2005), setting the correct priorities (Wohl 2005, Hobbs 2007), identifying appropriate trajectories and reference states (Hughes et al 2005, Kondolf et al 2006), and using suitable on-ground strategies (Nilsson et al 2007, Spink et al 2009). Why do so many river restoration projects fail? Many restoration projects still fail (Wohl et al 2005). Contributing to this failure are an incomplete understanding of riverine processes and an inadequate recognition of the multiple and interacting temporal and spatial scales of ecosystem disturbance and response (Bernhardt et al 2005, Lake et al 2007). Rivers are characterized by the interactions of multiple abiotic and biotic processes (Fisher et al 2007), hydrological disturbances such as floods or drought (Lake 2000), and poorly understood feedback loops (Lansing 2003). Adding to the inherent complexity of river systems are the impacts of multiple disturbances interacting through space and time. Direct and indirect linkages among system components transfer repercussions from disturbances

Objectives

Methods

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Conclusion