Process-based Principles for Restoring Dynamic River Ecosystems

Process-based restoration focuses on re-establishing natural rates and magnitudes of geomorphological, hydrological, and biological processes that sustain biodiversity and biological productivity in dynamic river ecosystems. It contrasts with traditional restoration practices, which focus on creating specific habitat characteristics that meet perceived "good" or "minimum" habitat conditions or standards. Process-based restoration relies on the understanding that habitat-forming processes are dynamic and comprise a shifting mosaic of diverse habitats. Local animal populations or communities are adapted to this dynamic habitat mosaic. Fundamental principles underlying process-based restoration are: (1) restoration must address biophysical processes that drive ecosystem change, and (2) the scale of restoration must be relevant to the appropriate landscape and biological process scales. Restoration efforts that re-establish natural rates and magnitudes of system processes promote ecosystem recovery, and help avoid common pitfalls of traditional restoration practices such as creating habitats that are outside the range of a site's natural potential, fixing habitats in space and time, and building habitats that are ultimately overwhelmed by untreated or uncontrollable system drivers. Restoring such processes also allows dynamic riverine ecosystems to express their natural potential, which generates the natural range of habitat conditions to which biological communities are adapted. Non-point processes such as erosion often require restoration at the scale of watersheds to effectively restore river ecosystems, whereas reach-level processes such as the maintenance of connected floodplain habitats can be effective at smaller spatial scales. Flow restoration in regulated rivers should consider the full range of environmentally important flows (e.g., low flow to floods). Biological processes such as the life-history scales of migratory animals (e.g., anadromous salmon) may be larger than the scale of watershed processes, requiring a strategic approach to restoring suites of habitats and processes beyond the river network-scale. We illustrate application of these principles in rivers of western North America.