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ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION TO RESTORE WATER QUALITY; AN UNREALIZED OPPORTUNITY FOR PRACTITIONERS AND RESEARCHERS
Citation:
Jorgensen*, E E. AND S. Yarbrough. ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION TO RESTORE WATER QUALITY; AN UNREALIZED OPPORTUNITY FOR PRACTITIONERS AND RESEARCHERS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/R-03/144, 2004.
Impact/Purpose:
information
Description:
Restoration of ecosystems is increasingly proposed as a strategy for improving water quality. Although this approach makes intuitive sense, practitioners have received little guidance from researchers on the effectiveness of and concerns associated with particular techniques. This reflects a fundamental disconnect between researchers and practitioners, with research targeting narrowly focused, discipline specific topics (e.g., researchers interested in restoration of plant communities do not investigate water quality, water quality researchers do not investigate plant communities, and specialists from both disciplines seldom interact).
Restoration Ecology is unique in part because professionals were slow to recognize it as a stand-alone discipline. Restoration's pioneers were more interested in 'doing versus measuring.' Now, as governments debate the merits of implementing restoration programs, there is a need to justify and design such actions using data. The U.S. EPA in particular is interested in restoration's potential as a means to affect water quality. This raises several interesting issues, some of which are predominantly academic and others that have wide-ranging implications. The ad hoc development of restoration as a discipline makes it particularly susceptible to historic and regional influence. We sought to identify patterns in the restoration literature that effect communication and therefore restoration science, particularly with regard to the goal of using restoration as a tool to improve water quality.
This review includes a representative set of 294 articles concerning riparian management and restoration. In order for a paper, book, or other contribution to be selected as representative, it had to discuss data in the context of riparian ecosystems, and it also had to discuss at least one or more of three subject categories: 1) environmental management practice, 2) water quality, and/or 3) riparian restoration. Thus, our review is limited to riparian management research that discusses water quality and/or restoration.
Our review of the riparian restoration literature identified patterns that can lead to preconceptions and interfere with communication. The riparian management literature is unusually disparate both in the sense that as a subject matter it is covered in many journals and projects are geographically dispersed. Thus, people approach the concept of riparian restoration from an unusual variety of perspectives and with a wide array of experiences. This condition has the high probability of promoting and fostering miscommunication.
Among the new perspectives being brought to riparian management is a need to use restoration to improve water quality. This is a narrow view of restoration. Attempting to focus restoration this narrowly will require ongoing communication and definition not only regarding 'restoration', but also for 'riparian' and 'water quality.' The issue can be succinctly captured in one question: do we conduct restoration to improve ecosystems and expect water quality to improve, or do we conduct restoration to improve water quality and expect ecosystems to improve?