| "We encourage people who are doing any kind of barrier removal to look at this first before they try to go through their own process." | |
| Beth Lambert, Massachusetts Riverways Program |
|
Across the country, resource managers are removing aging dams and replacing culverts to restore stream processes and fish passages. Significant resources are often invested in these stream barrier removal projects, but monitoring the projects’ outcomes typically has not been a priority.
This lack of standardized monitoring data spurred resource managers in the Gulf of Maine to develop a regional guide to monitoring parameters for stream barrier removal projects—a guide that may be useful for coastal resource managers throughout the U.S.
"This is a very relevant topic for coastal managers throughout the country, particularly in regard to restoring ecosystem processes and diadromous fish," or fish that migrate between salt and fresh waters, says Kevin Lucey, program specialist with the New Hampshire Coastal Program in the Department of Environmental Services.
In December 2007, the Gulf of Maine Council (GOMC) on the Marine Environment, a U.S.–Canadian partnership of government and nongovernment organizations, published the Stream Barrier Removal Monitoring Guide.
The guide provides the scientific context of stream barrier removal and information on eight critical monitoring parameters that characterize the physical, chemical, and biological impacts of a removal project.
More than 70 natural resource scientists, resource managers, and watershed restoration practitioners contributed to the guide’s development.
"The monitoring parameters we present and scientific context are relevant no matter where you are in the country," says Beth Lambert, river restoration scientist for the Riverways Program in the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game. "We encourage people who are doing any kind of barrier removal to look at this first before they try to go through their own process."
Aging Inventory
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ National Inventory of Dams, there are more than 79,000 dams in the U.S., a large percentage of which are older dams that lack the necessary maintenance to guarantee proper dam operation and structural integrity.
The average age for a dam is 40 years, and states and localities are responsible for the maintenance and safety of 95 percent of the nation’s dams.
"Construction of dams along coastal rivers is as old as this country," says Matt Collins, hydrologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Restoration Center in Massachusetts. "Many dams are derelict and have no owners or useful purpose anymore."
Most of the dams in the Northeast are smaller structures that are less than 20 feet in height. Many of these dams are not included in the national inventory because of their smaller size.
On the U.S. side of the Gulf of Maine, there are 4,867 state-inventoried dams: 2,506 in New Hampshire, 782 in Maine, and 1,579 in Massachusetts. Because inventory methods and reporting standards differ from state to state, the completeness of the inventories varies widely.
Even more prevalent than dams may be other stream barriers, such as culverts and buried streams.
Removing Barriers
Stream barriers are most often removed when they represent a risk to public safety, local and regional economies, and the environment. Environmental impacts include interfering with stream and floodplain processes, habitat, and fish passage, and degrading water quality.
On the U.S. side of the Gulf of Maine, about 20 dams have been removed since 1995, and another 20 dams are now being evaluated for removal.
Of the more than 500 dams that have been removed around the country, it is estimated that less than 5 percent were monitored, notes Lucey.
Measuring Success
Replacing 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, but Lucey explains, "without monitoring you can’t measure success," or any unintended consequences.
Stream barrier removal was not a common management activity even 10 to 15 years ago, but because of the aging inventory of dams around the country, the pace of potential dam removal will likely be quickening.
"Dam owners and resources agencies will need the best available science to make decisions on how we are going to proceed with deciding if a dam should be removed," Lucey says. "Hopefully, these monitoring protocols will provide us with adequate data to help inform those decisions."
Money Matters
Cost is the primary reason monitoring is not typically done, says Collins. "Monitoring is often the last thing to get funding."
"Up until this point," adds Elizabeth Hertz, senior planner with the Maine Coastal Program, "there’s not been a lot of agreement on some of the specific criteria or aspects of a barrier removal project that should be monitored."
Looking for Solutions
With no nationally standardized protocols that could be adapted or applied to the Gulf of Maine, Jon Kachmar, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Long Island Sound Program and former habitat restoration coordinator for the Maine Coastal Program, says the focus of the GOMC turned to developing regional standards that "could meet everybody’s objectives."
A model for the project was a GOMC guide to salt marsh restoration monitoring protocols (www.gulfofmaine.org/habitatmonitoring/) that was completed in 2004. "This was already in place and a quite successful model that has allowed for the collection of data at the regional level," Kachmar says.
"The idea" for the Stream Barrier Removal Monitoring Guide, notes Collins, "was that if we can monitor many sites over time, the individual results should roll up into a general picture of habitat restoration in the region."
The 13-member GOMC River Restoration Monitoring Steering Committee worked together to develop the guide. Lucey, Kachmar, Collins, and Lambert were among the guide’s eight authors and also served as editors.
Breakout Sessions
To develop the monitoring protocols, the steering committee held a two-day workshop in June 2006 to gather input from more than 70 natural resource scientists, resource managers, and watershed restoration practitioners.
"We needed to identify the parameters that offer the biggest bang for the buck, so that if you can only monitor a handful of things, what will tell you the most information about stream response," says Collins.
From the prioritized list of monitoring parameters generated during the workshop, the committee selected eight critical parameters: monumented cross-sections, longitudinal stream profile, stream bed sediment grain size distribution, photo stations, water quality, riparian plant community structure, macroinvertebrates, and fish passage assessment.
Twenty-five reviewers vetted descriptions of each of the monitoring parameters, as well as information on additional monitoring parameters that practitioners may choose to use on a case-by-case basis. The guide was made available on-line at www.gulfofmaine.org/streambarrierremoval/.
The entire process took "1 year, 5 months, and 9 days," says Lambert.
Trial Run
The editorial team and other partners tested the protocols last summer in New Hampshire.
"We did it to ensure that what we produced could actually be replicated in the field," says Kachmar. "What we realized is that it takes a lot of time and effort for whoever is doing the restoration to implement all the protocols."
All the editors emphasized that it is not required to do all the monitoring parameters as a suite.
"We designed the guide to be used by section, so if you were interested in looking at monitoring fish activity you could go and literally download that section on-line," Kachmar explains. "We want people to monitor whatever is appropriate for monitoring. It will all depend on the scale of the project."
Getting Used
While use of the protocols is voluntary, the committee has been using press releases, newsletters, e-mails, conference presentations, and other outreach efforts to get the guide distributed to the various agencies, groups, and organizations in the region that do barrier removals.
They are also demonstrating by example.
"Certainly the coastal program is involved in a number of dam removals currently, and as an author of the document, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I didn’t implement the protocols on our dam removals," says Lucey. General feedback about the guide also indicates others are using the protocols.
"If we can bump the number of people doing monitoring from 5 percent to 15 to 20 percent," he says, "I think we’ll have a lot more basis to make decisions in the future."
The greatest benefit of the guide, says Maine’s Elizabeth Hertz, "is that this helps move us towards watershed or ecosystem-based management efforts. Documents like this are a crucial part of that process in terms of creating more understanding and awareness of how the pieces fit together."
Kachmar adds, "I think we really hit the mark on what we wanted to develop."
To view the Stream Barrier Removal Monitoring Guide, point your browser to www.gulfofmaine.org/streambarrierremoval/. The National Inventory of Dams is available on the Web at www.tec.army.mil/nid/ for government users and for the public at www.tec.army.mil/nidpublic/. For more information on the Gulf of Maine guide, you may contact Kevin Lucey at (603) 559-0026, or Kevin.Lucey@des.nh.gov, Beth Lambert at (617) 626-1526, or Beth.Lambert@state.ma.us, Matt Collins at (978) 281-9142, or Mathias.Collins@noaa.gov, Jon Kachmar at (207) 773-0047, or jon.kachmar@gmail.com, or Elizabeth Hertz at (207) 287-8935, or elizabeth.hertz@maine.gov.
