Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Beagle, J. R.
• Kondolf, G. M.
• Adams, R. M.
• Marcus, L.

Titel

Anticipatory Management for Instream Habitat: Application to Carneros Creek, California

Ist Teil von

• River research and applications, 2016-03, Vol.32 (3), p.280-294

Ort / Verlag

Bognor Regis: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Quelle

Wiley Online Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Ecological research increasingly demonstrates that the best fish habitat is associated with complex, dynamically migrating channels. Active erosion and deposition create pools, side channels, and surfaces for recruitment of riparian vegetation, resulting in hydraulic complexity. As such, the most effective and sustainable restoration strategies restore natural processes, and in turn, create biological habitat. Nevertheless, there exists a social–cultural preference for stable channels. Landowners are often unhappy with eroding banks and, more broadly, are uncomfortable with ‘messy’ ecosystems and the erosion, deposition, and channel migration that are essential components of the dynamic channels that provide the greatest floodplain biodiversity. Episodic bank erosion and failure are often treated with emergency response measures, such as riprap and bank hardening. This often results in simplified channels with minimized instream habitat. Here, we propose an alternative management approach for streams with cohesive banks, and where active erosion is concentrated in ‘hot spots’ that are roughly predictable based on geomorphic analysis. We term the approach anticipatory management and present an application of the approach to Carneros Creek, an incised tributary to the Napa River. We contrast the likely habitat values and agricultural land loss of the anticipatory management approach to: (i) a conventional bank stabilization project proposed for the creek, and (ii) a series of uniform setbacks. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.