A confluence of events may be occurring as a number of dams in the U.S. reach the end of their design life and many in the coastal resource management community focus on restoring ecosystem processes.
The result may be that communities are faced with tough decisions of whether to remove or repair dams and other stream barriers.
Removing stream barriers has long been understood to be an effective means to increase available habitat to migratory and resident native fishes, and to improve water quality. While removing stream barriers is becoming more and more common, it is estimated that less than 5 percent of these types of projects have been monitored to determine their success, as well as unintended consequences.
This lack of standardized monitoring data spurred resource managers in the Gulf of Maine to develop a regional guide to monitoring environmental parameters for stream barrier removal projects—a guide that may be useful for coastal managers in other parts of the country.
The cover story of this edition of Coastal Services looks at how managers in the Gulf of Maine created the Stream Barrier Removal Monitoring Guide and provides information on the eight critical monitoring parameters they selected.
In addition to monitoring the environmental impacts of these types of restoration projects, there is also a need for socioeconomic monitoring, such as impacts on businesses and residents.
Over the past several years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coastal Services Center has partnered with the Elwha Klallam Tribe in Oregon and the University of Idaho to develop methodology to measure the potential socioeconomic impacts of two dams on the Elwha River before they are removed by the National Park Service in 2009.
This methodology, as well as spatial data, resource management strategies that address watershed resources before, during, and after dam removal, and other information describing the past and current conditions in the Elwha watershed can be found at www.elwhainfo.org.
These are two examples of how coastal managers are working together to sustain and improve coastal and marine habitats and the ecosystem services that they provide.
-- Margaret A. Davidson
