Next Meeting March 31 in Denver

The next meeting will be on the campus of the University of Colorado at Denver in room 3523 (see details on the right). Our speaker will be Mark Beardsley. Here is a link to a paper that he will be discussing, we encourage everyone to take a look at it. Additionally, an abstract of his talk can be seen below:

Have mechanical channel treatments improved habitat conditions on meandering meadow streams in South Park, Colorado?

Mark Beardsley and Jessica Doran

EcoMetrics, LLC

January 18, 2010

Purpose
Mechanical treatment of stream channels for the benefit of habitat and ecological value is a widespread practice, but surprisingly little is known about whether these efforts are effective. It has been reported that fewer than 10% of ecological stream improvement projects in the US have had any level of monitoring, and that the information that is available is rarely useful in assessing ecological benefit (Bernhardt et al. 2005).

Several stream restoration or enhancement projects in South Park, Colorado have sought to improve habitat conditions on low gradient, meandering meadow streams that have been identified as unstable or habitat-limiting due to a variety of anthropogenic impacts. A wide array of mechanical treatments have been applied on these streams whereby stream channels and banks were physically manipulated for the purpose of improving stability or enhancing habitat. To find out whether these mechanical treatments have been effective, we have been monitoring specific habitat parameters including width/depth condition, bank erosion, woody vegetation, overhead cover, and pool area on treated streams for up to 7 years. In this study,
we present a quantitative analysis of the correlation between mechanical treatment type and habitat response from 246 individual stream sites in South Park.

Beyond simply evaluating the effectiveness of these past treatments, this study is part of an overarching effort to find efficient ways for improving habitat conditions on actively migrating, meandering meadow streams with impaired riparian condition like those common to South Park, Colorado and most of the Western U.S. On impaired riparian meadow channels such as these, stream habitat degradation is often a secondary effect caused by degraded riparian vegetation condition. The mechanical channel treatments evaluated in this study are seen as potential ways for rapidly improving stream habitat without necessarily going through a long process of complete riparian restoration. Our results are intended to form the basis for an inquiry into whether these mechanical approaches are indeed a viable short-cut to short-term
habitat improvement on meadow streams with impaired riparian condition.