Resources

Starting in 2023, American Rivers was funded by the Wildlife Conservation Board through the Sierra Meadows Partnership to use the Meadow Condition Scorecard in the Caldor Fire burn area and its vicinity to guide investment and accelerate restoration to aid in post-fire recovery. We assessed every accessible meadow in the burn area or within 0.25 miles of the burn perimeter (94 sites were originally identified; 43 sites assessed in the field). Using these data, the Healthy Eldorado Landscape Partnership (HELP) Meadows Workgroup identified nine high priority meadows for restoration.

This report summarizes hydrogeomorphic and aquatic survey monitoring data collected at Childs Meadow during the summer season (approximately June-October) in 2023. 

This report summarizes hydrogeomorphic and aquatic survey monitoring data collected at Van Norden Meadow during the summer season (approximately June-October) in 2022 and 2023.

This report summarizes a groundwater and surface water modeling framework developed for Van Norden meadow to evaluate the potential effects of various restoration options.

The Restoration of Priority Meadows in the Walker Watershed Project was highly successful and provided benefits to Yosemite toad and the Walker River watershed. 

Beaver-related restoration is a process-based strategy that seeks to address wide-ranging ecological objectives by reestablishing dam building in degraded stream systems. Although the beaver-related restoration has broad appeal, especially in water-limited systems, its effectiveness is not yet well documented. In this article, we present a process-expectation framework that links beaver-related restoration tactics to commonly expected outcomes by identifying the set of process pathways that must occur to achieve those expected outcomes. We explore the contingency implicit within this framework using social and biophysical data from project and research sites. This analysis reveals that outcomes are often predicated on complex process pathways over which humans have limited control.