Restoration as a practice is built on the principle of change, with a primary goal of maximizing ecological processes to facilitate self-sustaining dynamic systems. Natural disturbances such as fire, drought, and flood play an important role in riparian ecosystems with many dominant species evolving aspects of their life history to complement such disturbances. However, natural disturbances have been modified by human actions with increased fire frequency/intensity, modified hydrology (e.g., dams and flood conveyance), and climate change. In addition to natural disturbances many stressors brought on by direct human actions further complicate restoration and subsequent management of riparian ecosystems. In southern California invasive plant and wildlife species are one of the primary stressors plaguing riparian areas. We will utilize two large scale restoration projects currently in the planning phases to discuss a variety of current issues facing riparian restoration including the Polyphagous Shot Hole Borer (PSHB) beetle (Euwallacea sp.), water management (drought, dams, and conservation efforts), invasive plant species, and sensitive wildlife species. The first project is the Otay River Restoration Project, located in San Diego California, where mitigation is proposed for the mainstem river approximately 1 mile below Savage Dam.

For thousands of years, the California landscape (and riparian areas in particular) has been tended and its resources sustainably harvested by its inhabitants. Prior to Euro-American settlement, California Native Americans manipulated the natural resources, particularly plant resources, to meet long-term cultural needs. Our hypothesis is that the floodplain biodiversity and native fish productivity benefited from burning and other traditional management practices utilized by the Plains Miwok and other Native Californians for thousands of years. These practices may have enhanced floodplain rearing habitats, thereby increasing fish growth and reducing fish mortality. We support our argument with ethnographic data, traditional knowledge and archaeological fish faunal remains to reconstruct the landscape of the lower Cosumnes River watershed prior to Euro-American settlement and alteration. The historical reconstruction proposed here will illustrate, within the limitations of the data, how past indigenous traditional management practices influenced both vegetation patterns and probably fish species distributions in the Lower Cosumnes River watershed. These practices may have enhanced floodplain rearing habitats, thereby increasing fish growth and reducing fish mortality. Traditional resource management has been demonstrated to do the following:

The Freshwater Trust (TFT), a nonprofit river restoration organization, began working in the Rogue River Basin in Southern Oregon in 2012 by planting more than 5,000 native trees and shrubs on streamside property north of Medford. Since then, TFT’s efforts to reduce water temperature and restore native fish habitat have grown to 18 project sites. These early actions have helped build capacity and spur additional projects with local partners to fix the basin. Flowing from the foothills of Crater Lake to its estuary in Gold Beach, the Rogue is an ecologically diverse home to rare and endemic species. Such conditions make it the ideal watershed for large-scale targeted restoration. In five years, TFT has grown its Rogue restoration program to 15 miles (100 acres) of instream and nearstream projects, with similar growth expected in the future. Major projects include riparian restoration sites for the City of Medford to meet water temperature requirements of the Clean Water Act, and large wood structures for the Bureau of Reclamation to meet requirements of a biological opinion for fish habitat. To rapidly increase the pace, scale, and concentration of restoration efforts, TFT secured a range of large multi-year funding sources.

Riparian zones are critical areas for habitat preservation, yet urbanization, agriculture, and household land use practices are resulting in the degradation of riparian ecosystems and the need for protection and restoration. However, efforts focused solely on restoration without understanding the cause of degradation will ultimately fail. In order to understand the impacts of human land use on stream and riparian health, it is necessary to understand the motivations driving stream management decisionmaking and behavior that lead to riparian degradation. Doctoral research conducted in the Blue Ridge EcoRegion of Southern Appalachia between June 2011 to September 2012 will be presented. A mixed method approach of qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis were used to determine landowner preferences for riparian zones, dominant motivations driving riparian management techniques and decision-making, and optimal approaches for maximizing riparian protection. Primary drivers of land use decision-making included tradition/habit, aesthetics, social pressure, and preference. This often translates to stream management resulting in landowners "cleaning" their streams of large woody debris and keeping their stream banks cleared of riparian vegetation, thereby degrading the integrity of the stream condition and water quality.