Creating False Images: Stream Restoration in an Urban Setting

Abstract

Stream restoration has become a multibillion dollar business with mixed results as to its efficacy. This case study utilizes pre‐ and post‐monitoring data from restoration projects on an urban stream to assess how well stream conditions, publicly stated project goals, and project implementation align. Our research confirms previous studies showing little communication among academic researchers and restoration practitioners as well as provides further evidence that restoration efforts tend to focus on small‐scale, specific sites without considering broader land use patterns. This study advances our understanding of restoration by documenting that although improving ecological conditions is a stated goal for restoration projects, the implemented measures are not always focused on those issues that are the most ecologically salient. What these projects have accomplished is to protect the built environment and promote positive public perception. We argue that these disconnects among publicized goals for restoration, the implemented features, and actual stream conditions may create a false image of what an ecologically stable stream looks like and therefore perpetuate a false sense of optimism about the feasibility of restoring urban streams.

Urban stream renovation: incorporating societal objectives to achieve ecological improvements

“…The intent of restoration is to return the stream to some predisturbance condition, but the practitioners of urban stream restoration typically accept that regaining all structural and functional components of the predisturbance condition is unlikely (Booth 2005, Cockerill andAnderson 2014). Many project managers seek to remedy only specific issues (e.g., erosion, flooding) rather than the multiple issues needed for long-term structural and functional change (Palmer et al 2014).…”

“…The temporal and spatial scales of restoration projects often are misaligned with the temporal and spatial scales of the causes of impairment (National Research Council 1999, Wohl et al 2005, Naiman 2013, Cockerill and Anderson 2014. Reach-scale restoration projects are unlikely to affect water quality, the frequency of disturbance, or other functional or structural components of the stream system when human modifications to catchment landscapes are causing impairment Vietz 2016, Walsh et al 2016).…”

“…Ecological and societal perspectives are colocated and may interact in urban landscapes (Cockerill and Anderson 2014). Thus, ecological and societal contexts should be integrated but should account for different perspectives and goals for improving stream environments among stakeholders (e.g., Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993, McDonald et al 2004, Smith et al 2014.…”

Urban Aquatic Ecosystems: the good, the bad and the ugly

“…Success of such schemes has been mixed (Cockerill and Anderson, 2014), as increased habitat heterogeneity does not necessarily promote biodiversity (Palmer et al, 2010), especially when wider pressures such as hydrological alteration and water pollution prevail (Hughes et al, 2014a). This reflects a wider lack of knowledge of process-based river restoration (Palmer et al, 2014), which is exacerbated by a profound lack of post-project monitoring.…”

“…However, these are not always complementary and an analysis of the impacts of increased floodplain connectivity in Vienna, Austria, demonstrated that proposed measures would provide ecological benefits, but with tradeoffs in ecosystem service provision (Sanon et al, 2012). Conversely, Cockerill and Anderson (2014) identified that stream restoration for societal benefits (aesthetics, erosion control, protection of infrastructure) provided little wider environmental benefit.…”