Standards for ecologically successful river restoration

Summary Increasingly, river managers are turning from hard engineering solutions to ecologically based restoration activities in order to improve degraded waterways. River restoration projects aim to maintain or increase ecosystem goods and services while protecting downstream and coastal ecosystems. There is growing interest in applying river restoration techniques to solve environmental problems, yet little agreement exists on what constitutes a successful river restoration effort. We propose five criteria for measuring success, with emphasis on an ecological perspective. First, the design of an ecological river restoration project should be based on a specified guiding image of a more dynamic, healthy river…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• UG
  U.S. Geological Survey
• GS
  Graduate School, University of Maryland