Lessons Learned in Restoring Natural Ecosystems - Introduction



There’s been a significant effort by professionals in the fields of water resources/environmental engineering and aquatic biology to restore small and large degraded ecosystems whether they are located in coastal wetlands, freshwater wetlands, estuaries, rivers or streams. These systems are sometimes associated with an environmental permit for new project, but can also be associated with an existing feature that may be threatened by a natural system. For 10 years, I had the pleasure of working as our company’s lead person for projects at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Many of those projects involved the protection of man-made cultural, historic and recreational features from erosion and flooding from nearby streams and rivers. The photo above shows Yellow Creek (flowing towards the foreground) just upstream of its confluence with the Cuyahoga River where the creek crosses under the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad. There’s a large bend (meander) in the stream at this location. The proximity of the creek to the railroad has threatened the stability of the railroad embankment on the right side of the photo. As part of this restoration, quarried rock riprap was placed along the railroad embankment to about the level of a 2-yr flood, and then extended away from the railroad as a low rock berm that separates the bank of the stream from the floodplain behind it where wetland trees, shrubs and grasses were planted. Natural vegetation was also placed on the railroad embankment above the top of the rock riprap. As a result, the natural effects of the stream meandering are arrested for the sake of preserving the cultural, historic and recreational resource. I led the planning, design, and construction oversight of a dozen projects similar to this one in the 23 mile Cuyahoga River corridor that comprises this National Park.

These projects provided me with valuable lessons in ecosystem restoration. The lessons helped these projects to be successful in meeting their intended objectives, and are universal in nature. I’ll elaborate more in subsequent blogs on these following lessons:

• Balancing cultural/historic/recreational values with ecological values.
• Understanding how rivers work.
• The importance of engineering in ecosystem restoration.
• The benefits of using of natural and native materials.
• The limitations of human efforts in the good work of restoration.