Stream & Riparian Restoration
Services Offered:
- Streambank Stabilization
- Fish Habitat Enhancement
- Hillslope treatment
- Road Stabilization and Design
- Riparian Restoration
- Stream Reconstruction
With more than 14 years’ experience in natural stream restoration design and implementation, Watershed Consulting understands that unique geomorphic, hydrologic and riparian factors require a unique set of restoration tools.
Experimentation with these techniques allows us to determine which of the tools will perform best in different types of fluvial systems. For example, in flashy streams with high bed mobility, we’ve found that cobble armor riffle construction works well to stabilize the bed (grade control) as opposed to rock weirs. Rock weirs of various configurations are frequently constructed with overly large gaps between rocks, which allow for bedload passage but limit the bed-stabilizing impact and frequently cause habitats to obviously appear man-made.
In areas such as the Red River and Crooked River in Idaho, the stabilization of bars and floodplains from loose gravel dredge tailings is critical. Our experience in these environments strongly suggests the use of brush bundles. These techniques, developed in Alaska by our Restoration Ecologist Mark Vander Meer, involve the construction of bundles of living brush anchored in loose floodplain gravels. These bundles collect fine sediment on the floodplain, thereby producing a seed bed for native seed propagation as well as reducing infiltration in the gravel substrate.
Watershed Consulting also specializes in several types of habitat improvement using Large Woody Debris and Engineered Log Jams, which can address the severe reduction in Large Woody Debris found throughout many stream systems. In addition, companion planting is critical in these extreme environments. Using combinations of alder/spruce and cottonwood/spruce/red osier dogwood provides initial shading and long-term riparian succession for Large Woody Debris recruitment. The recognition and mapping of Holocene fluvial terraces is critical to understanding stream processes. These terraces have unique inundation frequencies and corresponding unique riparian succession.
To illustrate our wide-ranging experience, the table below outlines some of the restoration goals and treatment tools we’ve developed for recent projects:
Watershed Consulting, Missoula, MT | Water Resources 406.662.0124 | Forest Resources 406.541.2565 |