Challenges and Successes of Conducting Aquatic Restoration Activities

Brown Bag Lunch Online Presentation with Scott McBain: Get an overview of the challenges of doing large scale river and wetland restoration projects that result in meaningful improvements in target species populations, habitat function, and ecological processes. This will include program-scale issues (mixture of ecological science and political science), and on-the-ground implementation issues. Discuss challenges and successes based on experience with several large-scale restoration programs (Platte River, Trinity River, San Joaquin River, etc.).

Scott McBain is a fluvial geomorphologist and the president and CEO of McBain Associates. Mr. McBain has over 29 years of research and management experience, focusing on improving river ecosystems downstream of dams. His experience has primarily been on restoring gravel-bed rivers, assessing effects of high flows on channel morphology and river bottomlands, river corridor restoration planning, and channel restoration designs, specifically attempting to mitigate or reverse the impact of dams, and other land uses on downstream river ecosystems.

Formed in 1995, McBain Associates is a professional consulting corporation applying fluvial geomorphic and ecological research to river preservation, management, and restoration. Its primary interests are maintaining, or attaining, river ecosystem health in regulated rivers, and developing management strategies that improve those ecosystems.