When you’ve been doing this as long as we have the way we have, you sort of forget that you are actually practicing science/art! In the beginning, we worked hard to read until our eyes bled. We wanted to know what other scientists had found that worked. We wanted to absorb the data, feel the methods, develop hypothesis…then, we went out on our own and began to attempt to regurgitate it all out into the world.
It was amazing what we found that didn’t work. It sounded so sure on paper. It was cool what did work – some of it just intuition. I think we mostly have more water and mud in our veins than blood and now we think and breathe streams. We can walk up, smell the mud, catch some bugs, have Josh look at the fish, and know which ones need us the most.
Most people have no idea what we do. What we do is, in Jacque talk, very simple. We study streams. We see what’s wrong and we prescribe a sort of medicine for them so that they function better and make the world a better place. I like to tell people that, not so many years ago, it was normal for some company to have a guy drive a backhoe in a wiggly line and then let the water meander. That was stream restoration in the past.
We found all those wiggly ditches. Companies spend millions of dollars fixing them now because they don’t work right. That’s what we do – fix wiggly ditches and make them act like proper streams (or as near as we can) and we don’t build streams with backhoes much anymore. We like to do things a little differently.
So, here’s my attempt to explain some of the ways we do things.
We start by studying real pristine streams of all kinds. We study them to death. We live them, breathe them, smell them, taste them and generally go to sleep with them until we are them! We take what we learn and literally build streams that will look just like them. We fix sick streams to act more like the proper ones.
Don’t beat me up all you nay sayers….we don’t put back microbes and every grain of frigging soil….this is reality! We aren’t god…
We put things in the streams that should be there so the living things can be there too. We help simulate many years of flow that would have carved a new stream. We try to mimic as much of what nature gives to make a new stream! We can’t do it all, but every day we try to give more and more.
We watch the baby streams and the streams we’ve fixed. We make sure that they are behaving and not acting up. We fix them more if need be. We count things like bugs and plants and trees. We take out nasty things that could ruin the place. We love them, nurture them, care for them, are proud of them, and hope that one day – you will too.
That’s what we do. And it’s really cool – and we love it!
You don’t use backhoes, but what do you use?
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Water!! Just like nature!
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Very impressive
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Thank you Claudia!
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Sometimes we study a system and then build it on the ground EXACTLY as it was in nature…and we do on occasion use machines – other times we let water carve a valley we create with great care!
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Don’t kid yourself — from the microbes to the top-feeding predators in the stream ecosystem, you ARE god! 🙂
Speaking for them, we mere humans thank you.
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You flatter us Rick!! Thanks….I am blushing.
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Near-natural streams will become natural over time… what you do gives them a good start. Headstart for baby streams. Thank you.
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Thanks! We love it and are proud of the work we do. We get a lot of slack sometimes, but we would rather restore with love and care and good science than backhoes!
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Great post and love the title as we as field scientist are constantly picking up hitch hikers. NE Pennsylvania had terrible flooding last August. The streams are a mess because of it. It is difficult to explain to people that dredging a stream will not resolve the problems they have but only create new ones and destroy the natural system that is there. The best analogy I have made at public meatings and in conversation is that dredging is like plumbing for the sewage in your home. If you run a D-9 from the mouth of a stream upstream to clear a straight, non meandering channel, the sediment re-deposits behind you causing new misalignments, sediment bars and flood hazards. If you start up stream, the low points created in your dredge sediment will fill and block causing new miss alignments. (blocking the pipes) Using nature, hydraulics and obstacles to use the force of water to encourage the stream to be itself but encourage the water to do things we want it to is a better way. Hard to sell when a 500 year flood event has occurred.
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Hydraulic carving is, in and of itself, an art!! Making streams is both a science and an art….more art most days! Add a dash of luck and some true intuition….now that’s what I am talking abouut!
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Wow, I love your dedication to what must be a very difficult job! Keep up the great work.
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Difficult shmifficult….we love it and won’t stop until someone makes us!! Thanks for being here!
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One of the problems I’ve encountered during my career is that people try to put high seral stage plants/animals into low seral stage emvironments (using the old ecology terminology). It just doesn’t work and a lot of money is wasted on remediation and people wonder why their efforts failed. Planting a tree (high seral stage plant) into C-horizon soil (low seral stage environment) is a receipe for failure. Also, we don’t have technology problems, we have adoption problems. If all the known natural resource management technology were to be adopted, we wouldn’t have the ecological problems that exist today.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
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Most agreed! Imagine if we could all have a consortium on WHAT IS RIGHT and then GO DO IT!!
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Sounds really interesting and RELEVANT! Currently doing my undergrad in environmental sciences and have NO idea what to do after — this post gives some interesting perspective/insight into your field, thanks!
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Maybe you should hang out in a stream with us nerds and get the full effects!! I highly recommend it! We welcome interns….
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Really?? That would be awesome! I just signed on for a summer job…maybe if I get a few weeks off I’ll be in touch 🙂
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I have done cross sectional evaluations of undisturbed streams of not only particle sizes of bed load but also of vegetative cover. Then seeded accordingly and installed cuttings, rooted cuttings to expedite the process where there was a need to expedite. THe reference sections of streams also can be a source of cuttings if done carefully and sparsely to avoid impact to the existing riparian structure. Woody plants here in NE US include Salix spp. and Cornus spp. that will start a quick natural woody shrub growth to help anchor soils. It is really great to watch it grow afterwards.
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amazing work!! I am envious….I have been stuck in the office and will be for weeks….only wish I were counting gravel! Maybe you could do a guest blog about your work!
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You folks put some inspiring soul into your work…as director of a grassroots river team in SE Vermont, I’ve been sorely tempted to get some tee shirts printed up after Hurricane Irene relandscaped our state: “Fluvial Geomorphology Happens.”
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Love the idea!!
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I was just explaining to someone that some species of wildlife require or at least use eroded stream banks for nesting locaions. Bank swallows and belted kingfishers are users of eroded stream banks to excavate their ground nests into the banks. “FG happens” is a real statement and it is devastating at times for us and a temporary benefit for some wildlife species. It takes many years to restore even with man helping.
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I studied Fluvial Geomorphology as part of my Geography degree but never worked in the field. Maybe I am not too old to pick it up again and work on the streams and rivers of northern England. Our rivers are causing suffering to many house owners at the moment after a very wet summer with some extreme weather events. A normal month’s worth of rain fell in 2 days a couple of weeks ago, took out a culvert which undermined a block of flats that now have to be demolished. The residence of neighbouring properties are told that they can not return to their homes until the culvert is repaired.
Thanks for an inspiring blog this week. Sally
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get out there Sally!!
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Just wanted to say THANKS SO MUCH to you guys for “fixing wiggly streams” and doing what you do! I wish there were more people interested in fixing what we’ve done to the environment instead of just polluting or using it up. Big props to your dedication and commitment to it! 🙂
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awwww – thanks! We love what we do!
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