Collecting Valuable Data for Useful Stream Assessment and Restoration Design Projects

Proceedings of the 2003 Georgia Water Resources Conference, held April 23-24, 2003, at the University of Georgia.Stream assessments and restoration projects are becoming increasingly important to meet water quality standards and protect biological health. Developing an assessment methodology that is both effective and efficient is the first crucial step in conducting a stream inventory to identify watershed based problems and develop restoration designs to improve stream system health. ENTRIX has worked on several projects involving stream assessment and restoration design and is continually improving on the type of data collected, how the data is collected, and how project benefits are quantified. This approach includes the following steps: 1) Field investigation to identify and assess watershed conditions 2) Data summary to prioritize and rank stream reaches based on the results of the field assessment 3) Develop a list of potential improvement projects 4) Quantify benefits and rank projects based on costs and benefits. This presentation will focus on recent improvements in the methods used for stream assessment and restoration design projects