A collaborative vision for healthy stream habitats and first foods
The complexity of stream ecosystems is mirrored by the complexity of the human communities who steward them. Consequently, any attempt to restore degraded aquatic habitats benefits from willingness to work together across a patchwork of landownerships.
Research hydrologist Adam Price understands the need to work together. He is part of a large interdisciplinary and collaborative research effort that is helping to restore the Meadow Creek watershed in northeastern Oregon.
Price’s interest in studying water came early in life. Raised in a small mountain town in Colorado, he rafted rivers in the summer and skied in the winter. He also credits a middle school teacher who took his class on a field trip that included surveying aquatic insects.
Partners and researchers on a field tour of the Meadow Creek restoration project in the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range.
“From that point on I was enamored with the science of rivers and streams, through crazy bouts of spring runoff and summer low-flows, as well as the connections—ecological, physical, and social—that a river facilitates,” he said.
Price’s interest in connections continues to inform his work and is a major asset to the Meadow Creek restoration project, which the Pacific Northwest Research Station initiated in 2012. The project has grown through decades of collaboration with management partners in the Blue Mountains Ecoregion of Oregon and Washington.
The Pacific Northwest Research Station is encouraging this project and similar projects that follow the principles of “coproduction.” This approach fosters deeply rewarding partnerships between researchers and users of research, with the goal of enhancing the accessibility of the work.
Meadow Creek, within the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range, provides important summer habitat for juvenile steelhead and Chinook salmon. Historical management practices, including logging and grazing, have greatly simplified the stream channel, decreasing refugia and making it less hospitable to salmonids. Alongside the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), the Bureau of Reclamation, Grande Ronde Model Watershed, Bonneville Power Administration, the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest and other partners, Price is fully immersed in the effort to restore Meadow Creek in a manner that integrates restoration, monitoring, and research into the design plan.
“Coproduction largely dictates what I am working on. The central goal of the project is restoration of Meadow Creek watershed and the sustainability of First Foods,” said Price. “One big need is to understand the impacts of past management actions and how we can better manage and restore our watersheds to adapt to climate change.”
The CTUIR describes the importance of First Foods in their Upland Vision—a document that aims “to ensure healthy, resilient and dynamic upland ecosystems capable of providing First Foods that sustain the continuity of the Tribe’s culture.” First Foods include water, fish (steelhead and Chinook salmon), big game (deer, elk, and sheep), roots, and berries.
As Price stated, the project prioritizes the information needs of the Tribe: “There’s a need to know how watershed-scale restoration can ensure the resiliency of First Foods. What do we do about the impacts of legacy practices? How can we integrate our scientific knowledge about restoration practices with Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge to formulate a master plan focused on restoring riparian and upland habitats?”
Although restoration is the main goal, the project also gives scientists like Price a chance to delve into some leading questions in the field of hydrology. “We want to slow down the water as it flows downstream. This not only decreases the magnitude of peak flows, but also has the potential to boost late-summer low-flows and buffer stream temperatures,” he explained. “One of the biggest science questions is: what hydrologic processes are most important to alter to get the results we are looking for and restore refugia?”
The various partners have been coming together through field trips, meetings, site visits, and frequent informal dialogue.
“Right now, the group decisionmaking is around creating a plan for instrumentation and monitoring—it’s early stages in the study. This is the time to work out how to maximize cost savings and data harmonization between groups. We’re laying the groundwork to be successful,” said Price. “It’s also important to define expectations and to be able to go along with the expectations of our partners. There is an iterative aspect to defining and redefining these expectations.”
Price’s enthusiasm for forging connections will be a key element to the success of this project, which is unique in its potential to meet some of the Pacific Northwest Research Station’s key goals: bridging the divide between research and management; coproduction of research with key partners; engagement with Tribes, including the opportunity to blend traditional ecological knowledge into the restoration approach; and the ability to leverage the existing grassroots foundation formed by long-term partner relationships.