Urban stream restoration: Guidance for monitoring and assessment protocols

Stream restoration over the past decade has become big business, with annual expenditures in the billions of dollars. Many projects have been completed in urban watersheds because of changing hydrology and sediment budgets have resulted in excessive bank erosion that threatens urban infrastructure. Though many projects have been completed nationally, post-project monitoring and assessments are not routinely conducted. If assessments are conducted, they are rarely reported in publicly accessible documents. Professionals involved in stream restoration have expressed the need for greater monitoring and assessment of projects, particularly in urbanizing watersheds where undisturbed reference streams are not common. The Urban Streams Committee of the Urban Water Resources Research Council and the River Restoration Committee jointly formed a task committee with the goal of producing a guidance document for monitoring and assessment of urban stream restoration projects. This paper summarizes the progress to date of the committee.