Beamer, E., Beechie, T. and Clochak, J., 1998. A Strategy for Implementation, Effectiveness, and Validation Monitoring of Habitat Restoration Projects, with Two Examples from the Skagit River Basin, Washington. Skagit System Cooperative, La Conner, WA. pp. 133.

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This report describes an approach to monitoring the outcome of restoration actions
conducted under the Aquatic Conservation Strategy of Northwest Forest Plan, and gives
two examples of its application. As outlined in the Aquatic Conservation Strategy, this
approach includes implementation, effectiveness, and validation monitoring, each of
which is driven by hypotheses about the expected outcome of a project. Implementation
monitoring checks to see if the project was completed as designed, effectiveness
monitoring checks to see that the project had the desired effect on a landscape process,
and validation monitoring checks to see that the project ultimately had the desired effect
on a stream habitat condition or fish production. Analyses of past and current conditions
in a watershed help us to understand how habitat-forming processes have changed and
how each restoration project should help restore them. This guides the development of
hypotheses about the expected outcome of each project. Based on these hypotheses, we
identify monitoring tasks and methods that are suitable for testing the hypotheses. For
each project we identify parameters that are sensitive measures of the changes expected,
locations in the watershed where changes are most likely to be detected, and specific
tasks and timelines required to complete the monitoring effort.
The first application of this approach is to the monitoring of projects designed to reduce
sediment production from forest roads. For a watershed where road sediment reduction
projects are planned, we must first ask whether roads or other land uses have significantly
altered sediment supply in a watershed, and whether any such changes have affected
habitat conditions. The answers to these questions define whether projects are considered
protection projects (i.e., intended to prevent future degradation where conditions are
currently “good”) or restoration projects (i.e., designed to restore degraded conditions
where they are currently “bad”). For each case, implementation monitoring simply
determines whether each project is carried out as designed. Effectiveness monitoring
evaluates whether the project prevents future increases in sediment production or reduces
sediment production as intended. This is accomplished through construction of a partial
sediment budget, which quantifies sediment inputs through time and by associated land
use. Validation monitoring focuses on changes to channel widths and residual pool depths
as a way of measuring the effect of changing sediment supply on channel morphology
and fish habitat. Measurements from aerial photographs and in the field are required for
the validation monitoring.
Applied to the Illabot Creek drainage, this approach to monitoring sediment reduction
from forest roads found that road related mass wasting has significantly influenced
sediment supply during the last several years, but also that the total supply is not
presently high for Illabot Creek. In other words, mass wasting has significantly increased

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