A FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATING DISCIPLINARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO RIVER RESTORATION

As river restoration has matured into a global-scale intervention in rivers, a broader range of technical disciplines are informing restoration goals, strategies, approaches, and methods. The ecological, geomorphological, hydrological, and engineering sciences each bring a distinct focus and set of perspectives and tools, and are themselves embedded in a larger context of social, economic, legal, and historical drivers. Restoration practices carried out in different countries and cultures reflect this context. Ecological concerns drive much of the current restoration activities in the United States, while re-introducing and re-engineering rivers for more natural functions and processes is a hallmark of European restoration. Some examples of river restoration around dams and reservoirs from the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. reveal the interplay among various disciplines, and point to more and less successful disciplinary mixes. Projects focused on dam removal, retrofitting dams to modulate downstream water temperatures, and adding gravel back to rivers below dams also demonstrate different ways that science itself is used in river restoration, and point to how best incorporate a scientific perspective in future activities