04 C Design Recovery Potential

Hello.

It's Joe Wheaton, and, we're going

to start in on this design module.

Just getting off on the right foot.

And that is,

taking out of the planning phase,

what we learned,

and leading the design with recovery potential

from that.

So we're here

in module four talking about design.

In the restoration process,

we spent module three

working through the planning.

Okay, and it's easy

To just kind of jump in and, like,
you know.

You know, we're eager. Let's just

Let's get a design.

Let's, let's make some structures.

I'm just going to try and convince you of
this,

never to start a design without that.

Critical context from the planning phase.

Well, what context explicitly

are we talking about?

Well, we're talking about

getting the conditions

and the recovery potential.

And remember that in the design phase,

our alternatives, our design opportunities

is really defined by the gap

between condition and recovery potential.

And, you know, we've got to make

this judgment call on how many treatments will.

It take to get to that recovery.
Potential.

And then if you and once you get there,

what's it going to take for it

to become self-sustaining?

Okay.

Oh, that's interesting.

not what I wanted.

Okay.

So coming right in,
you know, reminding yourself.

Riverscapes principles,
reminding ourselves that streams.

Need space.

We're not going to start our design
without the valley bottom mapped.

Okay.

It's always important to remind yourself

that definition of a valley bottom
and a riverscape valley bottom.

Is the area,

of the landscape
that could plausibly flood,

By the rivers and streams in the natural,

contemporary flow regime?

The riverscape is just those valley.

Bottoms,
throughout the entire drainage network.

Okay.

So this is, this is our.

Our sort of mantra.

So let's go back to what you guys did
yesterday.

In module three, you mapped the active
channels, you mapped the fans.

You did that to kind of back into what.

The valley bottom was, right?

The rest of the space.

And so you. Mapped these, valley.

Bottom margins, mapped those fans

so, you knew what
protruded out into the valley,

and you mapped the channel.

So you get the confining margin.

Look at the position, on the valley floor.

So the green area.

Is roughly what you derived. Okay.

That's your valley bottom area
that could plausibly.

Flood
in the contemporary natural flow regime.

Your design opportunity.

As we said.

Is defined by this gap
between condition recovery potential.

And so.

What we talked about is.

both Weber and I,

talked about this is to get,

At least one expression of condition, one
indicator of condition.

We're going to split the valley bottom
that we have here in yellow into,

these different, components,
but they're actually tier

one geomorphic units
in the fluvial taxonomy.

So basically active.

Floodplain, active channel,
inactive floodplain.

Okay, so.

we could do this for this whole thing.

But, at this scale, it's.

It's kind of hard to see, so

We're going to zoom in.

We can zoom in here,

and we're going to.

Take you to tops.

Tops range.

Okay.

So just a reminder, we said

condition can be expressed by mapping
the inactive portion of floodplains.

And we have this example here okay.

And so, I've faked, hypothetical property.

Boundaries.

You know, it's kind of looking at,
some fence lines and some other stuff.

So there you go.

There's pops ranch.

Okay, here's pops house.

There's this barn.

It's got a nice corral down here,
some outbuildings, etc..

Okay.

And so what I've done is I've gone and.

Just, you know, because.

I've zoomed
in, I can do a little nicer job.

First thing I did was I mapped.

The valley bottom.

I stopped it right here,
right at the property.

Line. Okay.

And it goes all along, and notice

here how I don't have the valley bottom.

Fall Creek mapped,
but the valley bottom, just.

The valley bottom of Coburn Creek,

And so this part that comes out,
I think some of you know what this.

Is, it's really low. Angle.

So it might be. A little deceiving.

But this is the fan.

It's the fan of Coburn Creek okay.

Now it doesn't matter
that this isn't really active fan right.

Necessarily like active in the sense
that this building could.

Still.

Be kind of flooding a little bit.

But this is what we're dealing with. Okay.

So this polygon

is 146 acres

and, if you want to go zoom
around the map, you can,

This is 82 acres.

Okay.

So this this link.

Is going to take you to this map
and these games that.

I played.

So 82 acres, Of Coburn Creek,
Valley bottom.

That's kind of what we're dealing with.

That's going to be, our basis for.

Normalization of everything
that we report.

Zoomed in here,
you can see that there is an area that's.

Grazed.

There's also a bunch of little relic
channels and stuff in here.

Not a relic, but like high status.

Channels, I should say.

There's actually some beaver
dams, on the floodplain here.

Oddly, over here
against the toe of this slope, too.

And there's evidence of run out.

If you zoom in, you will notice. That.

There is a canal.

And that canal comes along here.

And I don't know if these are.

Just. Trailing by. Cows or if this is.

Just kind of getting this.

Water over. To here.

And they just.

Irrigate, flood irrigate this meadow.

But, that's.

Some of the infrastructure.

There's also a fence that comes along.

You can basically make out the fence line
all along there.

All right.

So, conditions,

I mapped out the inactive.

Part of. The floodplain.

Just based off of objective.

Evidence of what.

It looked like. Was

what was flooding. Now,

use some vegetation indicators that use,
what looked like.

Evidence of flooding on this floodplain.

You can see a little bit
when you zoom in on this.

Is this perfect?

But I think it's reasonably defensible.

What did I come up with?

Well, I came up with when I mapped
traced out the active channel in blue.

That's about four acres.

So it's about 5% of the valley bottom.

I marked the inactive portion.

That's 41.

So, 41 plus four is 45.

Subtract from 82.

I get my 37 acres.

So the.

Proportion of the valley,
that's. Active is 50.

Percent and fits.

It's kind of dead
smack in the middle here.

Right. And sort of a moderate condition.

So remember we looked at this, right?

So, you know, we're we're somewhere in,

you know, something, along these lines,

If we were to use the.

More.

Expanded, which I think is useful here.

Stream
evolution model, it's probably in this.

Laterally active.

Condition. Right.

Archie Murphy conditions.

It's laterally active.

I say that, because the other.

Candidate might be.

Quasi equilibrium or stage.

One sinuous single thread.

If we go back.

You know, there is this sinuous single.

thread, but if you start zooming in,
you know, this.

does have the feel of a channel
that's and pushed up against.

That valley bottom,

our valley margin and valley
bottom margin, and it just

feels like it's
kicking everywhere it can.

There's a lot of active

bank erosion, lateral widening,

little
hints in a few of these bends, tendencies

to build mid-channel bars and islands.

but just not.

Multi-Threaded, yet.

Right.

It's,
so I think it's it's laterally active

is the right call.

So remember,

we said the answer, you know, is recovery
potential to

this question of, how much is in play

for restoration?

We're going to map. That with pink okay,

So recall, we have this valley

bottom land use.

And notice how what we mapped
is not a million miles off.

What I was just.

Showing you for

The inactive versus active right.

These are reasonably close.

Not bad considering we're doing it off of.

A pretty coarse resolution.

Well, we asked pops.

About recovery potential.

Okay, so remember, recovery potential

is, the valley bottom,

minus what

the landowner
or the land manager is willing to accept.

This is an interesting

exercise with good old pops.

By the way,
there is no such thing as pops.

I just made this guy up.

Anyway,

well,

coming into this,

the yellow area with 50%

that

qualifies as.

Active, 50% qualifies as inactive.

Okay, so the active is the active.

Floodplain and active channel.

Notice where pops put the pink line.

Okay. Tracks right here.

Pretty good. Pretty good.

Then there's this.

These real straight lines. Why?

Well, that's where his fences are.

Notice the fence goes right
across this active, meander bend

that's, laterally eroded

into the fence, It's gone.

There's another spot. Here
where the road or a little trail.

Has gone.

So in this.

Space right here.

Pops isn't really admitting that

it's active,
doesn't really see it as that.

And that kind of makes sense.

He doesn't have his cows
out here in the winter.

And his cows,

use this

in, you know, the spring and this

summer pasture.

He's actually pushing them up
to higher ground in the summer.

So it's really kind of the

spring and the fall, and then
the cows are taking somewhere else.

I'm making that up, too.

But this is a

interesting sort.

Of gap, because, you know what

It's what he's saying is that you.
Could have 35%.

of this for the river to,
you know, do better with.

So the uplift if we use this indicator,

or we we were to use

proportion active as an indicator

of overall health, is actually

actually no uplift, right?

So what do we do in a situation like that?

Well, one conclusion is
it's the reason you're funding.

It's the reason you're interested in this.

You really do.

Care about increasing the amount of valley
bottom that.

Could be active.

Maybe this isn't the right project.

I mean.

What he's come up with is logical.

It's following the fence line.

We can dig in a little deeper here.

So how do you feel, pops, about

channel change and floodplain reconnection?

Well, he's able to give the stream

some space to adjust
and push into the valley bottom,

but not all of it. Okay.

Yeah, there's beaver there.

He's got no problem with them.
They're kind of interesting.

So he's willing to allow that. Yeah.

And he's fine to. Deal.

With adaptive management. So. Okay.

I mean maybe.

Maybe there's still some room
to talk about this.

Maybe, a better.

Indicator might be,

instead of one relating to riverscape
principle one, streams need space.

Maybe for this project with Pops,

a better indicator
might be the proportion of

the valley bottom,

or the inundation extent at low flow.

Right.

So if we were to look at this, this reach,

you know, this is actually a high flow.

That we're looking at, sort of a bankful
flow.

And if. We were to look at it.

You. Could.

Have some more structural forcing in here

that would lead to, more connectivity. So.

You know, this idea of.

You know, pretty much that whole thing's
free flowing right now.

Could we get some structure in there.

that increases
some of the inundation extent

at low flows?

Yeah.

That's that
that could be something worth exploring.

So what could pops, reach of Coburn.

Coburn be?

Well.

Even if it's.

Just in this recovery potential
that he's willing to concede,

we might be able to get some more
inundation area, and we might be able.

To shift it to, this stage 8, sort of a

weekly and asked opposing system.

by the way, we call that wandering.

Maybe.

We could get a. Little bit
of a wandering system in those few.

Places where there's space

and, he's willing to allow it.

This sort of it's tendency.

Anyway,

and again,
recovery potential can change over time.

Well, pops has a hypothetical daughter.

And, pops
isn't going to be around forever.

And he likes his daughter a lot.

this daughter,

You know, just loves the river.
She grew up here.

loves the ranch,

And, yes, I'm making all this up.

And, she saw the the map.

And she kind of got upset with pops.

And so, What she said is,

oh, come on. Really?

I mean, we're just putting the cows out,

and, you know, whether or not it's us

irrigating the pasture or,
Whether or not it's,

you know, the river spreading.

Out and doing this stuff,
the cows can get in there.

They can use.

That for the little bit that we use. It
in the spring, in the summer,

but we do have this irrigation canal

right along here.

Okay.

And what she suggested is, yeah.

Let's, let's just go right off
the irrigation canal.

This is. Gravity fed.

So it wouldn't be a very easy thing
to move.

It'd be expensive, etc..

They want to keep that operational.

And so, this is her recurring potential.

The same as pops up here.

But then she's conceding,

not just, I mean, pops is line
was way back down here, right?

So she's. She's conceding not.

Just that gap between that

and the inactive floodplain boundary,

but saying, hey,
you could go all the way up to the canal.

And then, you know, once you get past
the barn, hey

and there's these few little beaver
dams here

and all the way down
onto the fan of this thing.

I mean, this could.
Really just spread out.

So by contrast, you know,

she's got 63 acres of recovery potential,

76% of the valley bottom,

that, you know, that could

could come back

So. The uplift potential is 22 acres
or 53%.

So. That's pretty that's pretty. Exciting.

And so.

You know, pops, pops may,

you know, Carol is the future,

so he let's see,

he lets her run the show.

So what could Carol's reach of Coburn be?

Well, up at the top there?

Right in here.

Maybe stage eight.

Still right.

However, towards the bottom, right,

where we could spread out,

get across this whole thing,

really spread out into this fan,
you know, maybe.

Stage zero effectively.

Eventually.

So, this is just

reinforcement,
of what we did in planning.

Right? This is so fundamental.

Because this sets.

The boundary conditions for your design.

This sets,

you know, how I'm going to approach this.

What's the target I'm shooting for?

Not necessarily that you're going
to get there in your first design,

but It's,

it's it's a really, really helpful way
to queue you up,

successfully.

So in conclusion, never start a design

without that critical context from planning.

The design opportunity i

s defined by that gap

between condition recovery potential,

and that's going to walk you through,

the design process,
focusing at the complex.

Scale.

And inheriting

these sorts of, objectives,

design objectives.

Out of what this planning process,
reveals.

Thank you very much.