How an Adaptive Management Plan is Adding Resilience and Connectivity to St. Vrain Creek

In the realm of environmental restoration, the concept of adaptive management has emerged as a crucial tool for ensuring the long-term success of projects. This approach, rooted in data analysis from monitoring a project site over time, allows for continuous improvement and informed decision-making to ultimately enhance the resilience of restored natural systems.

In this piece, we delve deeper into how an adaptive management plan furthers the understanding and benefits of multi-objective projects. We’ll also take a closer look at a stream in Boulder County, where the approach is helping to balance fish habitat benefits with water rights management and providing valuable insights to advance the practice for future projects across the industry.

Read on, or skip ahead:

• What is Adaptive Management?
• The Adaptive Management Process
• Fish Passage, Water Rights, and Adaptive Management Along St. Vrain Creek
• Learning Lessons from Adaptive Management

What is Adaptive Management?

Adaptive management is a systematic process that involves applying knowledge gained from ongoing monitoring. That knowledge is used to improve project specific decision-making with informed management actions that maintain project goals under uncertain conditions. The approach relies on data gained from monitoring over time to help inform ongoing project operations as well as advance scientific understanding through “learning by doing.”

The Adaptive Management Process

The process for an adaptive management plan acknowledges the dynamic nature of river systems, enabling project adjustments to meet goals and ensure long-term success. By establishing a framework for iterative decision-making, this approach adds control to situations with high uncertainty.

With an emphasis on fostering collaboration among stakeholders, an adaptive management process aligns clearly-defined project elements with desired outcomes. Collectively, these elements allow for the flexibility of agile actions and fixes (if needed) to ensure the project continues to meet the design goals. Successfully designing a plan features some key steps.

Establishing Project Goals

During the design phase, defining project goals with a diverse set of stakeholders at the table is paramount. These goals typically encompass multiple priorities and are meant to set clear direction for the expected outcome of the project.

Stating Monitoring Objectives

With project goals in mind, a project team can then establish monitoring objectives aimed at accurately measuring how those goals are being met. These objectives serve as the basis for evaluating project performance over time and informing adaptive management actions.

Linking Monitoring Parameters

Once monitoring objectives are set, the question becomes, what specifically is going to be monitored? Monitoring parameters are measurable (either qualitative or quantitative) aspects of the project that can be aligned to monitoring objectives they aim to address. By defining these parameters, stakeholders can track progress, identify deviations from expected outcomes, and define triggers for adaptive management interventions.

Establishing Methodology

There are often several different ways to monitor a parameter. Establishing specific methods for a project outlines the techniques and tools used to address each monitoring parameter.

The selection of a method may be influenced by available budget, equipment available, as well as the importance of each individual parameter. By adhering to specific criteria, the methodology ensures the reliability, consistency, and repeatability of data collection, which could allow for not only project-specific year-to-year comparisons, but apples-to-apples comparisons between other adaptive management projects in the region.

Setting Thresholds

Thresholds are predetermined values for each parameter that, when surpassed, trigger adaptive management actions that aim to course-correct a project back to desired conditions. Setting thresholds can often be difficult, but with close coordination with stakeholders, project teams can determine values that at a minimum, maintain an ongoing conversation about potential project improvements.

Taking Adaptive Management Action

When triggered, adaptive management actions aim to address identified issues and improve project outcomes. Stakeholders collaborate to assess results, evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, and apply lessons learned to future decision-making processes. Adaptive management actions may vary in severity, ranging from minor adjustments to significant project revisions. By preparing for potential outcomes, stakeholders minimize uncertainty and maintain project resilience.

If all steps are taken properly, adaptive management actions should allow for agile improvements that return expected results. Altogether, this process ensures projects achieve and maintain goals while taking a proactive approach that avoids costly and time-consuming reactive adjustments.

Fish Passage, Water Rights, and Adaptive Management Along St. Vrain Creek for Boulder County Parks & Open Space

In 2013, Boulder County experienced historic and catastrophic flooding that damaged property and infrastructure and reshaped the land and riverscape of the St. Vrain Creek corridor. Rebuilding from the flood presented an opportunity to repair infrastructure and restore the stream and ditch connections in ways that improved resilience to future floods and reconnected habitat for native transition zone fishes.  

This case study along St. Vrain Creek illustrates the application of adaptive management for two stream restoration and fish passage projects located three miles apart.

For both projects, Boulder County Parks and Open Space replaced flood-damaged channel-spanning diversion dams with fish-passable structures that maintained the delivery of decreed water rights at the proper time, with the overall goals of enhancing stream connectivity and resilience in the St. Vrain corridor.

Goals and Objectives

The adaptive management plan focuses on confirming project functionality based on project goals. These goals span water delivery, protecting infrastructure, improving fish passage and habitat, and the restoration of stream and floodplain connectivity.

Parameters

Monitoring parameters were identified based on plan objectives and included some general categories. Those include vertical and lateral channel stability, infrastructure functionality, fish presence and habitat, and vegetation. These and other parameters were chosen to serve as indicators of project performance and guide adaptive management interventions.

Methods

The methodologies selected to assess monitoring parameters included field observations and photographs, drone technology, stream measurements, and telemetry studies. Where available, use of existing standardized protocols ensure data accuracy and facilitate interdisciplinary assessments.

Adaptive Management Actions

As discussed, management actions are triggered when/if certain thresholds (identified within the plan) are met. These actions are coordinated with the stakeholder group for consideration of the benefit/impact that could come from implementing the management action. Adjustments over time that do not compromise project goals may not warrant intervention.

Possible management actions range in levels of urgency from simply verifying a parameter in question, to increased frequency of monitoring, to small-scale or large-scale modifications of project components. For St. Vrain Creek, these parameters cover a wide-range of project elements, including some highly-visible examples.

Large Wood Parameter

Large wood is an essential feature to enhance fish habitat and stabilize banks. As an established goal for Boulder County Parks and Open Space, large wood was included as part of the stream restoration design under the objective of enhancing fish habitat for regional species.

As part of St. Vrain’s adaptive management plan, the functionality of the large wood is monitored through established photo points and field observations. This methodology allows the team to measure the way large wood moves through the site and potentially impacts fish habitat over time. If certain thresholds on the reduction of in-channel large wood or instability of installed structures are observed, action is taken to augment or re-key those structures into the bed and bank.

Vertical Channel Stability Parameter

With the goals of maintaining water delivery and reliability and improving aquatic ecology, parameters were established in the adaptive management plan to ensure the vertical stability of the channel. The presence of an active head cut (caused by erosion) can quickly alter the channel slope and result in a channel steeper than the threshold for native fish and impact the ability to divert the appropriate amount of water.

Field observations, photo points, and longitudinal profile surveys were established to monitor for evidence of scour or head cut development, as well as any changes in slope throughout the project area. Additionally, field observations are recorded within the engineered boulder vanes to identify any boulders that may have shifted in a manner that inhibits low flow pathways for fish passage. Based on findings, localized regrading, stabilization of boulders, and/or the placement of bed material to restore low flow passability can be implemented.

Learning Lessons through Adaptive Management

Still early in the monitoring process (two years of data), insights from the adaptive management plan in collaboration with Boulder County Parks & Open Space will be used to highlight the success of diversion/fish passage designs, potential for improvements in design, and the importance of adaptive management. By monitoring these innovative approaches and applying lessons learned, Boulder County is helping pave the way for sustainable stream restoration practices region wide.

Adaptive management offers a robust framework for navigating the complexities of stream restoration projects. By embracing iterative decision-making, stakeholders can achieve a balance between environmental conservation and water rights management, ensuring the long-term resilience and connectivity of natural systems. The case of Boulder County serves as a testament to the transformative potential of adaptive management for not just one community, but for the greater industry while inspiring future innovations and best practices.