A Unique Role for Citizen Science in Stream Restoration

Portland State University’s Student Watershed Research Program (SWRP) and Clackamas County Water Environment Services partner to monitor benthic macroinvertebrate communities with high school students in local watersheds. In 2014, one of our monitoring sites underwent an in-stream restoration project, allowing Citizen Science to provide insight into the biologic response of a stream to restoration construction Goals of this outreach program include raising awareness by students about restoration efforts, evaluating the impact of an in-stream restoration project on biological communities, and determining the caliber of student-collected monitoring data Using student-collected data, we conducted a Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) study, comparing macroinvertebrate communities at the restoration site to those at a local reference site before and after restoration project construction. Students learned to identify macroinvertebrates to family-level, and SWRP scientists verified identifications in the field. Trait-based macroinvertebrate data showed a strong response to initial restoration construction disturbance and a return to pre-restoration conditions within 2 years. The findings of this study suggest that Citizen Science can generate biological monitoring data at restoration sites while also providing a unique opportunity for public participation in local restoration projects. The study also represents one of the few BACI-oriented datasets focused on stream restoration and the only published example of Citizen Science applied to biological monitoring of a stream restoration project. The study was recently published in Restoration Ecology, The Journal of The Society For Ecological Restoration. We present background information on the study site (the Rock Creek Confluence restoration project in Clackamas), and discuss methods and findings