Resources

Between 2014 and 2017, American Rivers was funded by NFWF to use the scorecard in the Carson River basin to guide investment and accelerate the pace of restoration. We assessed every accessible meadow in the watershed that is larger than 15 acres, 28 meadows in all. We identified six priority meadows and established a Carson meadows work group to pursue restoration of these six sites.

In mountains of the western United States, channel incision has drawn down the water table across thousands of square kilometers of meadow floodplain. Here climate change is resulting in earlier melt and reduced snowpack and water resource managers are responding by investing in meadow restoration to increase springtime storage and summer flows. The record‐setting California drought (2012–2015) provided an opportunity to evaluate this strategy under the warmer and drier conditions expected to impact mountain water supplies. In 2012, 0.1 km2 of meadow floodplain was reconnected by filling an incised channel through Indian Valley in the central Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Despite sustained drought conditions after restoration, summer baseflow from the meadow increased 5–12 times. Before restoration, the total summer outflow from the meadow was 5% more than the total summer inflow.

Restoration of degraded wet meadows found on upland valley floors has been proposed to achieve a range of ecological benefits, including augmenting late‐season streamflow. There are, however, few field and modelling studies documenting hydrologic changes following restoration that can be used to validate this expectation, and published changes in groundwater levels and streamflow following restoration are inconclusive. Here, we assess the streamflow benefit that can be obtained by wet‐meadow restoration using a physically based quantitative analysis. This framework employs a 1‐dimensional linearized Boussinesq equation with a superimposed solution for changes in storage due to groundwater upwelling and evapotranspiration, calculated explicitly using the White method. The model and assumptions gave rise to predictions in good agreement with field data from the Middle Fork John Day watershed in Oregon, USA.

Between 2013 and 2016, American Rivers was funded by CABY to use the scorecard in the American Basin to guide investment and accelerate the pace of restoration. We assessed every accessible meadow in the watershed that is larger than 15 acres, 40 in all. We identified 13 priority meadows for restoration in collaboration with stakeholders in the American basin.

The wetlands of the Sierra Nevada were formed and are maintained by a feedback between soil, plant, and hydrologic processes. Primary production of plants builds soil organic matter and plant roots bind soil, preventing erosion during flooding. In turn, soil organic matter retains water and nutrients that support plant growth, while the hydrologic regime regulates soil organic matter decomposition, plant community makeup, and plant production. The relative stability of these interacting processes has built thick meadow soils over the past several thousand years. However, modern human impacts such as livestock grazing and water extraction have decoupled the interacting processes. Removal of plants by grazers exposes soil to water erosion and reduces production, the source of soil organic matter. Erosion gully formation and direct water extraction lower the wetland water table, speeding soil organic matter decomposition, altering plant community composition, and reducing production.

A modified and simplified outline of steps required to sample aquatic benthic macroinvertebrates, based on SWAMP protocols

Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the Collection of Field Data for Bioassessments of California Wadeable Streams: Benthic Macroinvertebrates, Algae, and Physical Habitat

All-hands, all-lands approach to increasing the pace, scale, and efficacy of meadow restoration and protection throughout the Greater Sierra Nevada. Articulates three overarching strategy approaches, 1) Restore and/or protect meadows to achieve desired conditions; 2) Enhance regulatory and institutional funding capacity and coordination; 3) Increase and diversify institutional and partnership capacity for meadow restoration and/or protection in the greater Sierra.

A new strategy summary report has been released highlighting approaches to restoring and/or protecting 30,000 meadow acres on all lands in the Sierra Nevada.

We investigated the historical use and long-term efficacy of hand-built check dams to repair eroded meadows of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (SEKI) to inform the design for restoring a large erosion gully in Cahoon Meadow, SEKI. Archive documents show that, for 34 years from 1948 to 1981, a summer-seasonal team of SEKI employees, the Soil and Moisture Conservation Crew (S&MCC), built and maintained check dams in 20 back country meadows and 1 front country meadow, and their erosion control efforts were requested, but never implemented, at an additional 33 meadows. S&MCC activities were focused on mitigating the impacts of grazing that occurred from ~1870 to 1985. The two meadows with the longest grazing history, Williams and Sugarloaf, were consistently rated as high priorities for erosion-control and received the most S&MCC check dam work.