Two projects

Though I took a few classes as an undergrad and jammed a few words and terms in my head, but my experience with stream habitat management really revolves around two projects.


1) I attended a small private college and my Environmental Studies program was based largely on problem based learning. As a freshman, I was enrolled in a class where the problem was to create a stream restoration plan for about one mile of Mechumps Creek, a small stream that flows through the small town of Ashland, VA. As you can see from the picture, the stream was heavily eroded due to poor stormwater management and it also has problems with fecal coliform bacteria. The channel is deeply incised, consists mostly of shallow riffle habitat, and thus few deep pools for fish habitat. About a month ago I shocked the stream and found about five different species, redbreasted sunfish, creek chubs, creek chubsuckers, mudminnows, and rosyside dace, so it has pretty low diversity given that just outside of the town diversity nearly triples with the additioanl of numerous chain pickerel, bowfin, and pirate perch.

Throughout the year we surveyed stakeholders, measured aspects of geomorphology, quantified the macroinvertebrate community, and worked closely with an environmental engineering firm to create a stream restoration plan which called for movement of the stream channel and installation of numerous instream structures. Of course, those things arn't cheap, and so I subsequently wrote a US Fish and Wildlife grant for $100,000 which was approved in 2008. It has been 4 years since the beginning of the project, and construction will be starting within the month. There is no real glory in this stream restoration project. Threatened and/or endangered fish do no inhabit it, there is no chance to stock it with sport fish, and it is largely hidden in the woods behind fast food chains. However, it is a good example of how stakeholders can be educated on the topic and then push for it through completion.

2) My undergrad experience also included a lot of summer research, including a trip to Colorado during the summer before my senior year to study the longterm effects of habitat manipulations in Colorado streams. The streams I worked in were remotely located, first0rder, and largely composed of brook trout, but some streams had brown, rainbow, and cutthroat. As part of my advisor's Ph.D. work in the late 1980's, he installed log drops in 6 streams and then monitored the changes in habitat and trout abundance. The idea behind installing log drops was that historically all of the riparian vegeation surrounding the streams was removed during logging, and so there was little woody debris in the streams and woody debris is a major component in salmonnid habitat. The addition of logs would, in theory, create a dam pool upstream, a scour pool downstream, and provide overhead cover.

The short story is that the logs increased both habitat and abundance by over 100%, and it was the first study to conclusively determine the effects of log drops. However, since the 1990's there has been a lot of controversy and conflicting literature as to the efficacy of these features. So, we went back out 20 years after log installation to see if the effects still persisted. I'm working on getting that paper published, but the results show that log drops were still effective at increasing trout abundance and habitat. The other side of that story is that it is clear that the effectiveness is really site specific, so as part of that research I did a in-depth review as to why the streams I studied saw an effect but other streams don't. A lof ot it comes down to fish behavior as well as the physical attributes of the streams.