How most influential ecological and geomorphologic river concepts shaped modern aquatic ecology and restoration

Details

• Personal Author:
  Ouellet, V. ; Murchie, K.J. ; Kocik, John, F. ; Pess, G.R. ; Beechie, T. ; Saunders, R. ; Cluer, Brian ; Ogburn, M.B.
• Corporate Authors:
  Northeast Fisheries Science Center (U.S.) ; United States. National Marine Fisheries Service. Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office. ; Northwest Fisheries Science Center (U.S.) ; Atlantic Salmon Federation. ; John G. Shedd Aquarium. ; Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.
• NOAA Program & Office:
  NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) ; NEFSC (Northeast Fisheries Science Center) ; NWFSC (Northwest Fisheries Science Center) ; GARF (Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries)
• Description:
  Freshwater ecosystems have been significantly transformed by human impacts on watersheds, resulting in major decreases in the abundance and diversity of fish populations. To address these transformations, increased fish abundance is a common motivator of river restoration projects. Despite the central importance of fish as a provider of numerous ecosystem services (including food, cultural services, and critical ecological roles in river systems, biological processes), influential ecological models of rivers often ignore their role. As a result, restoration too often considers fish as simply a product of other elements of river structure and function. This leads to restoration actions frequently assuming that restoring physical complexity will also result in biological complexity—not necessarily targeting actions directly toward biological processes. Moreover, due to time and budget constraints, restoration is often planned at a spatiotemporal scale that does not yield measurable benefits for the targeted species (e.g., reach scale and over a few seasons). Here, we review the major conceptual models informing our view of freshwater ecosystems and how they shaped our view of habitat restoration, examining if this could be the reason restoration focus the physical habitat aspects, with a rare integration of the biological ones.
• Keywords:
  Aquatic Ecology Evaluation Fluvial Geomorphology Restoration Ecology Rivers Aquatic Ecology Fluvial Geomorphology Restoration Ecology
• Series:
  NOAA technical memorandum NMFS-NE   447
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.25923/vpk9-5w32
• Format:
  pdf
• Document Type:
  Technical Memorandum
• License:
  https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
• Rights Information:
  CC0 Public Domain
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:d0ca29fd25d96e04a7a2f4a7e385e8a98558732c4ed54a70ee97e3f6866392d8bfda46e4fde6f5c20f33a4e90a1ae94605a9ec38686bdda38e2e761c06445f9a
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/73621/noaa_73621_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 608.95 KB ]