Intensively monitored watershed (IMW) studies, the intent of which is to quantify habitat restoration effects on salmonid populations, have been underway in the Pacific Northwest, USA, for more than two decades. Lack of population-level response to habitat improvements by target species in some IMWs may be related to incomplete knowledge of factors regulating fish abundance, excessively prolonged restoration application periods, underappreciation of natural environmental and population variability, failure to carry out restoration at a sufficiently large scale within a watershed, lack of sufficient time to document a posttreatment response, or an actual failure of the restoration activities in those locations to achieve population recovery objectives. However, knowledge gained from IMWs has yielded important insight into (1) the long-term responses of salmon and steelhead Oncorhynchus mykiss to different types of restoration and (2) the importance of placing freshwater habitat improvements in the context of changes in anadromous salmonid survival and growth during other life history stages. Scientists, funding organizations, and policymakers should appreciate the potential value of IMWs as long-term barometers of the status of salmon populations and their habitats in watersheds where restoration activities are occurring. This requires a commitment to prolonged monitoring and an acknowledgment that environmental recovery after habitat restoration may take decades.

Abstract–– The Harney Basin is Oregon's largest internally draining basin and contains a unique native fish assemblage. The first and only comprehensive study of the origin and distribution of Harney Basin fishes occurred in 1971. Here, we update this study and identify potential threats to the basin's native fishes a half century later. Our assessment documents that all species of native fishes are still present, and with some exceptions distributed as originally reported. The distinctive fish assemblages in each of the 3 major subbasins within the Harney Basin (Silvies River, Silver Creek, and Donner und Blitzen River) support the hypothesis that terminal lakes in the Harney Basin (Malheur, Mud, and Harney Lakes) act as dispersal barriers, at least for native species. More than half of the fish species in the basin at present are introduced, primarily inhabiting low-elevation sites. We suggest that native non-salmonid species cohabiting these sites face the most immediate threats from climate change, water demands, and impacts from introduced fishes. Overall, our results show that native fish are still relatively widespread across the Harney Basin, but also face increasing threats despite the basin having experienced less development than many other areas in the Pacific Northwest. Improved understanding of the unique fishes of the Harney Basin, along with more detailed assessments of likely future trajectories of environmental risks are proactive measures that could improve conservation outcomes.

An exceptionally powerful storm struck southwestern Washington in December 2007 causing large debris flows in two adjacent streams. The two affected streams had been studied prior to the storm, providing a rare opportunity to examine ecosystem recovery. We monitored the streams and their riparian zones for six years after the disturbances to determine whether recovery rates of biota, physical habitat, and water temperature differed, and if so, what factors affected resilience. Along both streams, the debris flows removed wide swaths of soil, rock, and coniferous riparian forests, widening the active channel and increasing solar exposure and summer water temperatures. Initially depauperate of vegetation, after four years red alder trees dominated the riparian plant communities. The warmer water, greater solar radiation, and unstable substrates likely contributed to variable benthic insect and tailed frog tadpole densities over time, although benthic insect communities became more similar after three years. The debris flows also decreased channel slopes and removed channel step barriers such that cutthroat trout were able to rapidly occupy habitats far upstream, but sculpins were slower to recolonize and both fish species exhibited some differences in recovery between the two streams. Crayfish were severely impacted by the debris flows; this may be due to attributes of their life history and the timing of the flows. Overall, we found that recolonizing aquatic species exhibited varying levels of resilience and recovery after the disturbances being related to the influence of physical habitat conditions, species dispersal ability, and the presence of nearby source populations.

The U.S. Forest Service and other federal land managers are responsible for maintaining the productivity of aquatic-riparian ecosystems, the associated native biota, and the ecosystem services they provide. These public lands are important sources of water, recreation opportunities, and habitat for a suite of animals and plants, including many that are protected under the Endangered Species Act. To meet these challenges and responsibilities, recent science suggests modifying practices to provide a broader array of habitat, biological conditions, and ecosystem functions than are associated with traditional management approaches. We suggest that by linking approaches based on natural disturbance and portfolio concepts, managers can achieve a robust strategy and desired outcomes more reliably and cost effectively. Locally complex habitat conditions created by natural disturbances provide the template for biological diversity to play out if provided enough time. Accordingly, natural disturbance regimes play an important role in creating and sustaining habitat and biological complexities on the landscape, suggesting that, to the extent possible, management actions should emulate natural disturbance processes at appropriate spatial and temporal scales. In concert with this approach, the portfolio effect (i.e., diversity that mitigates risk) provides justification for promoting connected heterogeneous habitats that reduce the risk of synchronous large-scale population and ecosystem collapse. In this article, we describe how disturbance and portfolio concepts fit into a broader strategy of conserving ecosystem integrity and dynamism and provide examples of how these concepts can be used to address a wide range of management concerns. Ultimately, the outcome for populations, habitats, and landscapes depends on how well environmental change is understood, the degree to which change is appropriately addressed by natural resource managers, and solutions that allow populations and ecosystems to persist in the presence of and be resilient to a growing scope of human influences.

Valley segments, stream reaches, and channel units are three hierarchically nested subdivisions of the drainage network within watersheds (Frissell et al., 1986; Table 2.1; Fig. 2.1). These three subdivisions compose the habitat for large, mobile aquatic organisms such as fishes. Within the hierarchy of spatial scales (Table 2.1), valley segments, stream reaches, and channel units represent the largest physical subdivisions that can be directly altered by human activities. As such, it is useful to understand how they respond to anthropogenic disturbance, but to do so requires classification systems and quantitative assessment procedures that facilitate accurate, repeatable descriptions and convey information about biophysical processes that create, maintain, and destroy channel structure.

The Columbia Basin once supported a diversity of native fishes and large runs of anadromous salmonids that sustained substantial fisheries and cultural values. Extensive land conversion, watershed disruptions, and subsequent fishery declines have led to one of the most ambitious restoration programs in the world. Progress has been made, but restoration is expensive (exceeding US$300M/year), and it remains unclear whether habitat actions, in particular, can be successful. A comprehensive approach is needed to guide cost-effective habitat restoration. Four elements that must be addressed simultaneously are (1) a scientific foundation from landscape ecology and the concept of resilience, (2) broad public support, (3) governance for collaboration and integration, and (4) a capacity for learning and adaptation. Realizing these in the Columbia Basin will require actions to rebalance restoration goals to include diversity, strengthen linkages between science and management, increase public engagement, work across traditional ecological and social boundaries, and learn from experience.

Context More than a century of forest and fire management of Inland Pacific landscapes has transformed their successional and disturbance dynamics. Regional connectivity of many terrestrial and aquatic habitats is fragmented, flows of some ecological and physical processes have been altered in space and time, and the frequency, size and intensity of many disturbances that configure these habitats have been altered. Current efforts to address these impacts yield a small footprint in comparison to wildfires and insect outbreaks. Moreover, many current projects emphasize thinning and fuels reduction within individual forest stands, while overlooking large-scale habitat connectivity and disturbance flow issues.Methods We provide a framework for landscape restoration, offering seven principles. We discuss their implication for management, and illustrate their application with examples.Results Historical forests were spatially heterogeneous at multiple scales. Heterogeneity was the result of variability and interactions among native ecological patterns and processes, including successional and disturbance processes regulated by climatic and topographic drivers. Native flora and fauna were adapted to these conditions, which conferred a measure of resilience to variability in climate and recurrent contagious disturbances.Conclusions To restore key characteristics of this resilience to current landscapes, planning and management are needed at ecoregion, local landscape, successional patch, and tree neighborhood scales. Restoration that works effectively across ownerships and allocations will require active thinking about landscapes as socio-ecological systems that provide services to people within the finite capacities of ecosystems. We focus attention on landscape-level prescriptions as foundational to restoration planning and execution.

Japanese knotweed and congeners are invasive to North America and Europe and spread aggressively along rivers establishing dense monotypic stands,. thereby reducing native riparian plant diversity, structure, and function. Noxious weed control programs attempt to eradicate the knotweed with repeated herbicide applications under the assumption that the system will recover to a native assemblage which will inhibit future invasions. However, eradication efficacy studies typically only measure the amount of knotweed reduced, not the reestablished species diversity or plant origins. For a community scale efficacy study, we measured vascular plant species diversity and cover in riparian areas along five rivers in Washington State, 3 to 6 years after Bohemian knotweed was initially treated with herbicide. Plant species composition was compared between riparian sites treated to remove knotweed and reference sites where knotweed was absent. Sites where knotweed had been removed had significantly more exotic species and vegetative cover than reference sites; however, native species richness and cover were greater in reference sites and areas with more overstory vegetation. The native plants observed were primarily shade tolerant and perennial, as opposed to many of the exotics, which were shade-intolerant annuals. In general, reestablishment of native and exotic vegetation was not related to pretreatment knotweed stem count, size of the invaded area, or timing of herbicide application. However, residual native tree cover was negatively correlated with initial knotweed stem count. Monitoring the success of restoration objectives (e.g., native plant reestablishment or increased species diversity) and characterizing associated habitat features following knotweed eradication will help in the development of site-specific protocols for successful plant community scale restoration.

Riparian buffers provide improved protection for water quality and biota, and narrow, fixed-width buffers of native vegetation along streams have been used to mitigate the effects of forest harvest at least since the 1960s. The practice of leaving unmanaged strips of vegetation along water courses in agricultural lands had been used before the 1960s in southern Europe and in eastern North America, but the scientific basis for leaving riparian buffers on forested lands came from observations in the coastal temperate rainforests of western North America. Those observations often were applied to other forested landscapes without further considerations. Fixed-width buffers are administratively simple to implement and assess, and have come to be the norm for streamside protection from forestry. Most guidelines for streamside protection allow some local modification for site and watershed-scale considerations, but frequently, the option to deviate from fixed-width buffers is not exercised because of uncertainty about outcomes. Few experiments have been done to test the efficacy of buffers of a particular width or of site-or landscape-specific modifications.

Historically, wildfire was an important agent of change in landscapes across the western United States. Fires of varying magnitudes and extents contributed to a mosaic of dynamic landscape conditions. For the past century, fire management that focuses on fire suppression has effectively altered the composition of many vegetation communities across the landscape. Fire management and other landuse practices associated with natural resource use, agriculture, and residential development have changed the complexity of terrestrial landscapes. Aquatic systems have not been exempt from these changes: alterations in disturbance processes on the landscape have changed inputs into the stream environment, and practices such as stream cleaning have reduced the capacity of streams to build complex habitats. Road and dam construction have reduced connectivity among quality stream habitats for aquatic dependent species. Despite all these changes and challenges, populations of imperiled salmonids continue to survive. While the abundance and distribution of native aquatic species is much reduced, they persist in areas where suitable habitat exists and is accessible. It is part of the mission of many federal and state land management agencies to work toward a sustainable balance between ecological needs and other uses of the land. In this project, we have expanded and improved tools and techniques that make it easier for managers to consider the ecological and geomorphic effects of fire on aquatic systems. We have developed new applications that model the effect of fire on wood inputs, fine sediment, and stream temperature for the Wenatchee River watershed. We have developed models of Bull Trout and spring Chinook Salmon at landscape scales that allow us to begin to predict the potential effect of fire on the habitats necessary for the long-term persistence of these species. By considering in greater detail the connections between landscape processes and in-stream condition, we offer a landscape-scale perspective that has the potential to inform management regarding approaches to fire management that enhances aquatic habitat. Background and Purpose The effect of fire on ecological and geomorphic processes is a critical issue in the management of western forests. Land management at a riverscape scale spans watershed divides and includes ecologically meaningful boundaries such as watersheds, as well as human-imposed management frameworks such as land ownership. How to adapt management of forests and fire to enhance and re-establish ecological function in aquatic systems is not well understood (Gresswell 1999). Fire management has important shortand long-term implications for landscape structure and in-stream habitat conditions. A century of management focused on fire suppression has changed the frequency, intensity, and spatial extent of wildfires. Changing the disturbance processes that fostered habitat complexity throughout western riverscapes has also changed in-stream habitat. Including aquatic issues of habitat quality, stream network connectivity, and fish population resilience in fire management plans offers land managers the opportunity to broaden the goals of fire-suppression and fuels treatment activities (Bisson et al. 2003; Dunham et al. 2003). There is much to learn about the specific effects of fire on in-stream conditions and the resultant effects on fish population persistence. The long-term persistence of native aquatic species requires complex and connected habitats that may only be attainable by changing aspects of the current fire-management paradigm. When considering effects of fire and fire management on fish and aquatic ecosystems, it is necessary to consider both the physical environment (habitats, water quality) and the biology, including adaptive strategies, of the fish. Key factors that determine the response of a particular stream fish population to fire and other disturbances include: 1) the magnitude and duration of the disturbance event; 2) the potential response of the watershed of interest to fire; 3) the size of suitable habitat patches for the fish species of

Well-functioning food webs are fundamental for sustaining rivers as ecosystems and maintaining associated aquatic and terrestrial communities. The current emphasis on restoring habitat structure-without explicitly considering food webs-has been less successful than hoped in terms of enhancing the status of targeted species and often overlooks important constraints on ecologically effective restoration. We identify three priority food web-related issues that potentially impede successful river restoration: uncertainty about habitat carrying capacity, proliferation of chemicals and contaminants, and emergence of hybrid food webs containing a mixture of native and invasive species. Additionally, there is the need to place these food web considerations in a broad temporal and spatial framework by understanding the consequences of altered nutrient, organic matter (energy), water, and thermal sources and flows, reconnecting critical habitats and their food webs, and restoring for changing environments. As an illustration, we discuss how the Columbia River Basin, site of one of the largest aquatic/riparian restoration programs in the United States, would benefit from implementing a food web perspective. A food web perspective for the Columbia River would complement ongoing approaches and enhance the ability to meet the vision and legal obligations of the US Endangered Species Act, the Northwest Power Act (Fish and Wildlife Program), and federal treaties with Northwest Indian Tribes while meeting fundamental needs for improved river management.

Interactions between landuse and ecosystem change are complex, especially in riparian zones. To date, few models are available to project the influence of alternative landuse practices, natural disturbance and plant succession on the likely future conditions of riparian zones and aquatic habitats across large spatial extents. A state and transition approach was used to model the effects of various management and restoration practices on conditions of riparian forests, channel morphology, and salmonid habitat. We present results of model analyses for the Wilson River in the Oregon Coast Range. We focus on critical habitat for spawning and rearing salmon and how habitat quality might be influenced by alternative land-use practices over the next 50 years, especially contrasting the outcomes of passive vs. active habitat restoration strategies. Results of our simulations suggest that active restoration of large wood in streams may accelerate habitat improvement relative to recovery projections under a passive restoration strategy. Active restoration seems to be a more viable approach for species such as coho salmon in the Wilson River watershed, which has limited potential spatial distribution in the drainage network, and where a significant proportion of the available habitat is in poor condition. In contrast, using active restoration techniques to improve habitat for a widely distributed species such as steelhead seems less feasible. Steelhead habitat is abundant throughout the basin and at least some of it is currently in good or excellent condition. Thus, large portions of the Wilson River would need to be restored to substantially increase the proportion of the stream network that is in good or excellent condition for steelhead.

The year 2006 marked two milestones in the Columbia River Basin and the Pacific Northwest region's efforts to rebuild its once great salmon and steelhead runs-- the 25 th anniversary of the creation of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and the l0 th anniversary of an

Aquatic ecosystems include the most imperiled taxa in the United States, and invasive species are the second leading contributor to this imperilment. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service is legally mandated to sustainably manage aquatic habitats and native species on National Forest System (NFS) lands. Invasive species add complexity and uncertainty to natural resource management, and, thus, invasive species research is needed to guide effective, science-based management of aquatic systems. Although Forest Service Research and Development (R&D) scientists have much expertise to apply, aquatic invasive species research has not been an agency focus. We identify areas in which the Forest Service is well positioned to contribute research that other organizations are not addressing.

O Ol ly ym mp pi ic c E Ex xp pe er ri im me en nt ta al l S St ta at te e F Fo or re es st t S Sy yn nt th he es si is s o of f R Ri ip pa ar ri ia an n R Re es se ea ar rc ch h a an nd d M Mo on ni it to or ri in ng g P Pe et te er r A A.. B Bi is ss so on n a an nd d S St te ev ve en n M M.. W Wo on nd dz ze el ll l U US SD DA A F Fo or re es st t S Se er rv vi ic ce e P Pa ac ci if fi ic c N No or rt th hw we es st t R Re es se ea ar rc ch h S St ta at ti io on n O Ol ly ym mp pi ia a F Fo or re es st tr ry y S Sc ci ie en nc ce es s l la ab bo or ra at to or ry y 3 36 62 25 5 9 93 3 r rd d A Av ve en nu ue e S SW W O Ol ly ym mp pi ia a, , W WA A 9 98 85 51 12 2-9 91 19 93 3 D De ec ce em mb be er r 1 The Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has implemented a Habitat Conservation Plan for the Olympic Experimental State Forest (OESF) that specifies riparian protection measures that go beyond the majority of land management plans currently in place in Pacific Northwest forests. Although the riparian buffers on the OESF are wider and more complex than buffers prescribed in the Forest and Fish Agreement for Washington State, DNR wishes to utilize the experimental capacity of the OESF to investigate alternative management options that could result in a forested landscape that more closely resembles the range of conditions produced by a natural disturbance regime, while at the same time continuing to fulfill trust obligations for timber harvest and protecting sensitive stocks of salmon and trout. The opportunity for collaboration between the DNR and the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the USDA …

In spite of numerous habitat restoration programs in fresh waters with an aggregate annual funding of millions of dollars, many populations of Pacific salmon remain significantly imperiled. Habitat restoration strategies that address limited environmental attributes and partial salmon life-history requirements or approaches that attempt to force aquatic habitat to conform to idealized but ecologically unsustainable conditions may partly explain this lack of response. Natural watershed processes generate highly variable environmental conditions and population responses, i.e., multiple life histories, that are often not considered in restoration. Examples from several locations underscore the importance of natural variability to the resilience of Pacific salmon. The implication is that habitat restoration efforts will be more likely to foster salmon resilience if they consider processes that generate and maintain natural variability in fresh water. We identify three specific criteria for management based on natural variability: the capacity of aquatic habitat to recover from disturbance, a range of habitats distributed across stream networks through time sufficient to fulfill the requirements of diverse salmon life histories, and ecological connectivity. In light of these considerations, we discuss current threats to habitat resilience and describe how regulatory and restoration approaches can be modified to better incorporate natural variability.