Monitoring Stream and Watershed Restoration

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 habits but also the need to evaluate the effectiveness of restoration actions. Numerous books on monitoring also have been published, yet none has 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.