Process-Based Restoration in the Upper Klamath Basin: Stories, Lessons, and Continued Challenges
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- Опубліковано 1 чер 2024
- This was a presentation at the May 22nd, 2024 Klamath Basin Monitoring Program (KBMP) Meeting in Yreka, CA by Tommy Cianciolo from Trout Unlimited. Presentation Summary: Like elsewhere in the West, riverscape restoration strategies used in the Upper Klamath Basin have evolved over the last decade. Today, restoration practitioners are more focused on implementing process-based restoration techniques that blend a more fluid understanding of fluvial systems, attempt to restore wood accumulation, beaver activity, and dynamism to riverscapes, harness natural energy to achieve project goals, and minimize post-fire impacts. We provide an overview of process-based restoration, mainly of the low-tech variety, implemented in the Upper Klamath Basin over the last five years by Trout Unlimited in partnership with private landowners, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the Catena Foundation, Anabranch Solutions, and Swift Water Design. We also discuss preliminary monitoring results, focusing on riparian vegetation productivity, water quality, floodplain connectivity, fish, and groundwater. Finally, we present lessons learned and offer potential solutions to the continued challenges that this type of riverscape restoration offers in the Upper Klamath Basin. Hopefully, as capacity for this type of work continues to grow and evolve, so too does our collective understanding of restoring process to fluvial systems and our ability to adapt to these evolutions in ideas and practices. Process-based restoration strategies, albeit relatively new in the Upper Klamath Basin, can offer creative and often cost-efficient means to achieve riverscape restoration benefits, assist in successful anadromous salmonid reestablishment of the Upper Klamath Basin, and restore a healthy system for all the basin’s inhabitants.