Featured Projects
This page provides brief descriptions of some of my favorite recent projects and links to project reports or presentations.
Walton - Yampa Confluence Restoration
Thompson Creek, Carbondale, CO
I had the great good fortune of teaming up with the fine folks at Lotic Hydrological on this one, which they led. I think this is an excellent representation of my concept of what process-based restoration encompasses. Our treatments were based on impact assessment, in light of the inferred natural habitat functioning. The landscape context showed the site to be at the toe of an alluvial fan. Therefore we made our target habitat a bifurcated channel system, commonly found on fans. Fallen trees have been removed from the river, causing channel incision, so trees would be reintroduced to catch sediment and raise the channel bed to better connect the floodplain.
Brush Creek, Snowmass Village, CO
Another process-based restoration design with Lotic Hydrologic. This time the processes targeted were sediment supply and transport. The objective was to induce erosion in some areas, encouraging lateral channel migration to widen the inset riparian and wetland habitat. The bolstered sediment input would be caught by in channel beaver dam analogs - with the goal of enticing beavers to maintain the dams. The retained sediment would then build up the bed elevation better connecting the channel and riparian wetlands - which then encourages more beavers which help the system heal even more! That’s how my concept of process-based restoration works.
Upper Poudre Assessment
I really learned the watershed during this project, an assessment of every named stream in the upper watershed, covering over 750 miles stream. This assessment provides a comprehensive snapshot of watershed health and a benchmark for future studies.
This is an amazing project to be involved with. A known problem area, conceptual restoration designs of the channel had been previously developed. In 2019, I performed a survey of wetland restoration opportunities on City of Steamboat property. I found that if the right approach to channel restoration was taken, a substantial expanse of riparian floodplain could be added to yield about 150 acres of restored stream, riparian and wetland habitat at the gateway to iconic Steamboat Springs. In 2022, I teamed up with Stillwater Sciences to develop a conceptual design, and we are currently finalizing the 60% design. Our aim is to begin implementing the restoration in 2025.
Cucumber Gulch Habitat Study
This was one of my all time favorite studies. It took place over two years, Wetland habitats were mapped and described in 2019, In 2020 upland forest habitats received the same treatment. Because fire is a foundational explanatory variable in forest ecology, I rebuilt the fire history of Breckenridge and Cucumber Gulch from the mid1800s to today using historical ground-based photographs laid over Google Earth imagery and wetland mapping completed in this study.
State of the Poudre River: A River Health Assessment
Making use of the original River Health Assessment Framework, the purpose of this first State of the Poudre River (SOPR) is to provide a description of the current health of the Cache la Poudre River (Poudre) from approximately Gateway Natural Area to I-25.
2018 Cucumber Gulch Monitoring Report
We delineated the Cucumber Gulch Preserve wetland boundaries in 2011 and 2018 to identify areas of loss and gain. I thought this was cool because it showed the way that wetlands, even fens, contract and expand as seasons vary in moisture. Our investigation of wetland condition is structured by the Functional Assessment of Colorado Wetlands (FACWet) framework.
2013 Flood Recovery Monitoring
After the devastating floods of 2013, well over $60 million dollars were spent repairing the streams of the CO Front Range. CWCB, who oversaw recovery efforts for the State, wanted to understand the ecological outcomes of the array of projects which were foremost designed to protect life and property. Monitoring occurred 2017 - 2020 and remains as a benchmark by which long-term development can be gauged.
Rocky Mountain Fen Research Project
A one-of-a-kind reconstruction of a peat mined fen wetland, from the ground, up.
Environmental Learning Center, Fort Collins, CO
This was a really cool project, and not your typical restoration, at all! The impetus for this multi-million dollar restoration project was water right protection and diversion improvement. A foul and poorly functioning pushup dam was the existing diversion structure. Stillwater Sciences led the project and designed an environmentally-friendly, hardened riffle-crest diversion, which was coupled with 3 acres of floodplain lowering and the arrest of multiple head cuts. Abundant wood structures were built in the channel and on the floodplain. Ensuring adequate roughness on the newly graded floodplain was of paramount importance n the project design, as was rapid revegetation. To meet those needs simultaneously, I designed a process=based approach using “brush trenches”, which include live and dead wood of various sizes and species (see above, beginning of first growing season). With the exception of some seeding, revegetation relied solely on the dual purpose brush trenches. The natural analog of this approach is a large flood-caused disturbance which regrades the soil surface, alternately rending and burying tree branches and willows.
