On April 13th, 2023 the Lower Nehalem Watershed Council will be hosting their regular board meeting and a presentation w/ Chris Jordan, Research Fisheries Biologist for NOAA from the Mathematical Biology and Systems Monitoring Program.
The LNWC’s Board Meeting will start at 5 pm. The board meeting will include regular council business including reports on fiscal status, organizational health projects, and a discussion of ongoing and upcoming LNWC projects. The public is welcome to join us and learn more about how the Watershed Council operates and what we do.
Chris Jordan’s presentation will begin at 7 pm. As the title of the talk states, this presentation will define process-based restoration and why it’s important. The overwhelming majority of riverscapes across the continental US are dramatically impaired due to current or legacy land and water use. The impairment is mostly structural starvation, resulting in high energy channels that are vertically and laterally separated from their floodplains. The impairment is so pervasive that these riverscape conditions are seen as “normal”. But, because this shifted baseline sees channels where riverine wetland corridors once ran and continuous forests where successional patches once thrived, our management models maintain, perpetuate, and even restore to this degraded, reduced function state. However, if we expect to achieve the fire resilient, climate change adapted, drought and flood resistant, and protected species recovering riverscapes our management programs claim, we must first accept, allow, and foster the messy, dynamic nature of nature.
Dr. Chris Jordan is a Research Fish Biologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Program Manager for the Mathematical Biology and Systems Monitoring Program. Chris has worked on a wide range of biological topics, all with an emphasis on the development or application of quantitative methods. The last two decades, his work has focused on the design and implementation of large-scale monitoring programs to assess freshwater habitat and population status as well as the watershed-scale effect of management actions for anadromous salmonids. Some current projects include the development of life-cycle simulation models to integrate knowledge on physical and biological processes into a management decision support framework and the development of methods for riverscape restoration focusing on beaver and process-based thinking.
Both the Board Meeting and this presentation will be hosted on Zoom and are free to the public. The zoom link is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81137827388 or on the Faceboook event at www.facebook.com/lnwc1. You can also contact the watershed council at info@nehalemwatershed.org. A recording of this presentation will also be posted on the LNWC’s YouTube channel with our other recorded presentations. Just search for “Lower Nehalem Watershed Council” on YouTube.
Event Information: This event is FREE and open to the public. Find more information on our speaker series and the links for access on our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/lnwc1).
Time & Agenda:
5:00 PM LNWC Board Meeting
7:00 PM Process Based Riverscape Restoration: What is it and why do I need it? w/ Chris Jordan
8:30 PM Adjourn