Pacific Salmonids: Spawning Habitat Restoration

How can we restore form and function to rivers, streams, and wetlands that support Pacific Salmon?  This course provides the intellectual tools to tackle assessment monitoring and restoration design of Pacific salmonid habitat.  

Some of the basic topics and questions covered include:

• History of salmonid habitat restoration – How long have salmon issues been issues?  How have we responded?  What’s been working and what hasn’t?
• Ecohydraulics – How does stream flow affect salmonid ecology and habitat forming processes?  What basic ecohydraulic processes do we need to account for?  What tools should we use? How can we use ecohydraulics to understand why a site is functional versus non-functional? 
• Ecohydraulic design – the basic act of designing channel and floodplain features to meet specific target depths and velocities.  How do we take basic habitat information and design functional ecosystems?
• Sediment transport – sediment is a vital aspect of rivers and streams and a key variable known to affect spawning.  How does sediment move in rivers?  How can we measure and model it?   What tools are available?
• Forcing Elements – what role does wood and coarse sediment play in salmon rivers and streams?  How can we integrate Forcing elements into our design and management plans?
• Monitoring – How do we measure project success?
• Modern river restoration techniques – What tools do we have to restore salmonid habitat form and function?
• Fish passage – How do we assess and correct fish passage limiting factors?