Ayres , along with the Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed ( CPRW ), Big Thompson Watershed Coalition ( BTWC ), and City of Greeley , with support from the U . S . Forest Service , Colorado Water Conservation Board , the Colorado Department of Public Health , and impacted municipalities , now are implementing LTPBR techniques in remote headwater streams .
The U . S . Environmental Protection Agency reported that between 50,000 to 100,000 miles of streams in the western United States are degraded , mostly from human interaction such as agriculture and urbanization , but increasingly from wildfires as well . Because humans have been putting out wildfires for the last century , they tend to burn hotter and in larger areas than they naturally would have , making the impact to river systems greater . This degradation often disconnects streams from their floodplains , cutting the stream off from important ecological processes needed for its well-being and processes for dissipating energy during storms , said Colin Barry , a geomorphologist at Ayres who is helping lead post-fire mitigation efforts . In recent years , restoration projects that encourage stream complexity and floodplain connectivity have become increasingly common , in response to fire or to achieve other goals such as fish habitat improvement .
LTPBR is an approach that considers that riparian systems are inherently dynamic , promoting and restoring natural processes so rivers can self-heal , Barry explained . As is the case with most things , healing takes time , and the results of LTPBR projects aren ’ t instant . Instead , this work involves installing natural structures that are then updated and augmented in the years after installation to support natural processes such as sediment transport and deposition .
Traditional stream restoration projects , while potentially effective , can be costly and require a great deal of regulatory permitting , which adds much time to the effort , Heiden said . Restoration projects that return complexity to stream systems need to be cheaper , faster to build , and scalable . And this is exactly the solution LTPBR provides by using simple , handbuilt , low-cost , natural structures . LTPBR often mimics beavers by adding large woody material , native willow planting , and even sometimes native rocks . It performs best on systems in flat areas where flow can easily be spread out .
Brenan Bloyd , stream restoration project manager for BTWC , said traditional stream restoration techniques , while they have their time and place , can be costly and over-engineered .
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