Nature's complex flume — Using a diagnostic state-and-transition framework to understand post-restoration channel adjustment of the Clark Fork River, Montana

Abstract

There is an imperfect symmetry between the patterns of channel evolution observed during laboratory flume experiments and those which materialize in rivers exposed to ambient environmental conditions that produce hydrogeomorphic fluxes which are more complex, contingent, and unpredictable. One strategy to improve our understanding of short- to medium-term channel evolution is to study landscapes that have undergone significant disturbance and have had their biogeomorphic templates reset to a known condition — in effect, creating a flume in nature. This study adopts a diagnostic state-and-transition framework to narrate and document baseline hypotheses for the potential evolutionary trajectories Clark Fork River, near Milltown, Montana. Following dam removal and remediation, a 5-km stretch of the Clark Fork River and its adjoining floodplain were reconstructed. Since flow was introduced to the newly constructed channel in December 2010, complex evolutionary trajectories have been observed on the Clark Fork's mainstem, its secondary channels, and floodplain. Focusing particularly on the river's secondary channels, this paper develops a typology of channel states that have been observed and demonstrates that multiple adjustment trajectories have materialized, sometimes within the same channel. A diagnostic state-and-transition framework offers a parsimonious strategy to quantitatively or qualitatively anticipate the influence of water, sediment, and ecological fluxes on channel evolution at the basin, reach, or segment scale. It provides environmental agencies with a robust method to devise spatially explicit scenario-based management plans for rivers in a variety of geomorphic settings.