Jens Ammon
Stream Ecology and Restoration
Sageland Collaborative Internship 2022
Over the summer of 2022, I worked as a Stream Ecologist for Sageland Collaborative as part of a Stream and Riparian Restoration team. Our ecological goal was to use a Low-Tech Process Based Restoration (LTPBR) approach to improve stream health and restore vital riparian habitat in rivers throughout Utah. Sageland Collaborative leads restoration projects start to finish, and our team plays a critical role in the funding, permitting, design, planning, implementation, and monitoring of these stream restoration projects.
Who is Sageland Collaborative?
Sageland Collaborative (website here) is a community science non-profit working to provide science-based strategies for wildlife and land conservation. As the name suggests, a significant goal in their work is to establish connections and partnerships needed to deliver the effective and efficient conservation help our lands need. Sageland Collaborative works with state organizations, community groups, private land owners, and citizen scientists to design, construct, and monitor scientific studies covering a wide range of Utah's ecology.
Adaptive Management
What is Adaptive Management?
Adaptive management is a way to make strategic management decisions for a project with high levels of uncertainty. Rather than having a rigid plan for how a project will develop, an adaptive management framework allows the project to adjust to new problems that may arise and focus resources on the most effective strategies. Given the dynamic nature of riverscapes, an equally flexible management approach is needed for project success.
The flowchart to the right shows the general evaluation process for LTPBR structures. Figure adapted from the Wheaton ET-AL lab at Utah State university under a Creative Commons 4.0 license.
Adaptive Management at Sageland Collaborative
During my time at Sageland Collaborative, I developed an adaptive management protocol specific to the restoration approach of our projects. While existing protocol can efficiently assess the overall health of a riverscape (see "Monitoring" section), there must also be a standardized method to assess project progress and guide project decision making. Restoration following a LTPBR approach is implemented in incremental phases, making it critical to observe and alter non-desirable trajectories. My monitoring plan and field worksheets linked below use a set of indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of the project and inform us when to make those project adjustment decisions.
At the end of the protocol are two field datasheets intended to be printed and taken into the field as an annual assessment for each project. The Datasheet (below, left) collects information about the functionality and status of each individual structure. The Scoresheet (below, right) then compiles that information into an overall assessment of the project reach. The scores from this assessment tell project leaders when to progress, maintain, or abandon the restoration project.
Riverscape Monitoring
Rapid Stream-Riparian Assessment
Sageland Collaborative follows the Rapid Stream-Riparian Assessment (RSRA) protocol to assess the health of and ecosystem functions of their project sites. This assessment is conducted annually, starting one year before restoration takes place and following five years after restoration is completed. If RSRA scores improve over this time frame, it is likely that our restoration interventions have succeeded in improving wildlife habitat. My above adaptive management protocol is meant to be used in conjunction with these RSRA assessments to ensure we will see habitat improvement over the life of the project.
The RSRA assessment uses a set of 24 different ecosystem indicators and features to compile scores for the river's water quality, hydrogeomorphology, aquatic habitat, riparian vegetation, and terrestrial wildlife habitat. These scores are then averaged into one score for the overall health of the river. While averaging scores loses finer detail of the system, this approach is very useful to quickly compare trends of how restoration is changing the river.
Aquatic macroinvertebrates are one of the 24 RSRA indicators:
Communication
As the name implies, a central mission of Sageland Collaborative is to facilitate the collaboration between conservation groups and engage with our community. Over the course of the summer, I was able to teach and work with multiple community science groups and conservation agencies. The following list is a brief rundown of how I translated our science to the larger community.
Rapid Stream-Riparian Assessment Workshops
In addition to conducting these assessments for our own project sites, we lead workshops to teach other conservation and land management agencies how to apply the RSRA protocol to their own sites. Our workshops were attended by restoration practitioners, forest and land managers, landowners, and students. Of the available riparian health monitoring protocols, the RSRA is robust and customizable enough to be applicable to ecosystems throughout the West.
Community Science Engagement
Throughout the summer, I would help with public events that Sageland Collaborative would host or be a part of. Our role at these events would be to teach the community about our conservation projects and help anyone interested participate. Citizen science and volunteers are crucial to our projects, and events like these are a perfect opportunity to spread the word about what we do.
Water Quality Summer Camp
Sageland Collaborative partnered with Friends of Great Salt Lake to teach summer camp students about how we monitor water quality. As part of this summer camp, I would give students hands on experience measuring turbidity, pH, dissolved oxygen, temperature, and macroinvertebrate presence in a local stream.
Volunteer Events
Our volunteers that help us implement our restoration projects come from a variety of backgrounds and professions. From the stream restoration perspective, we rely on individual volunteers or groups to help us build beaver dam analogues and log structures far beyond what just our team at Sageland Collaborative could accomplish. As such, my teammates and I would lead volunteer day events to teach community scientists how to restore riverscapes.
Project Reports
For every project, I would write a report on the stream conditions and restoration outcomes of our work. These reports were then given to the landowners, local community, and project coordinators involved with the stream and restoration project. These reports are professional communications between Sageland Collaborative and the public, and I had to follow a cohesive design and style in line with Sageland Collaborative's branding.
Beyond the Stream
In addition to my work with the Stream and Riparian Restoration project, I was also involved with Sageland Collaborative's Amphibian Habitat Assessment project and Migratory Shorebird Survey project. Everyone at Sageland Collaborative is part of one team, and cooperative work between projects is vital to understanding Utah's ecosystem as a whole.
Migratory Shorebird Survey
Being located in an otherwise arid region of the continent, the Great Salt Lake and its surrounding wetlands are critical to the migration of over 338 bird species. Often, it is the shallow water ecosystem of the wetland areas surrounding the late that are most important to the birds rather than the lake itself. These wetlands contain the biodiversity to provide for the wide range of foraging and nesting needs of the birds as they pass trough Utah on their migration routes.
Sageland Collaborative is part of the Intermountain West Shorebird Survey, a survey performed in conjunction with states across the West to assess the distribution of shorebirds during Spring and Fall migrations. These pictures (right) are from my shorebird abundance survey in the wetlands along the Antelope Island causeway.
Amphibian Habitat Survey
The Amphibian and Aquatic Habitat Assessment project monitors the boreal toad and its associated habitats. This toad lives in the marshes and edge waters along high elevation streams and lakes throughout Utah. Due to human development, pollution, and a spreading chytrid fungus, however, populations of these toads are significantly less than historic levels.
Sageland Collaborative, along with the Utah Hogle Zoo and volunteers, is monitoring the remaining populations and potential habitats of these toads in hopes of seeing an increase in the future. While I never found a boreal toad during by stream surveys, I did find leopard frogs (see left pictures).