POST-RESTORATION STREAM EVALUATIONS IN NEW JERSEY

Stream restoration is becoming increasingly common in New Jersey, where anthropogenic activity has altered and impacted streams and rivers. These impacted streams and rivers may exhibit decreased water quality, increased bank instability, and present flooding issues. To combat these problems, stream restorations and alterations have been conducted state-wide to restore the natural state of streams. While numerous streams are being restored every year, and approximately a billion dollars per year are spent nation-wide on stream restoration, there is exceedingly little post-restoration surveying conducted to evaluate how beneficial or stable these projects are over long term periods of time. This project entails locating and surveying various stream restoration sites around New Jersey for the purpose of post-restoration evaluation. The chosen sites vary in project completion age from 1 to 6 years and have shown varied levels of degradation since restoration was completed. The Rutgers University Water Resources Program’s modified Stream Visual Assessment Protocol (SVAP) tool has been used to assign a numeric value to the health and conditions of streams and rivers. A Topcon total station has also been utilized to survey the post-restoration area and provide thalweg, stream bank measurements, and channel morphology. The surveying data points were used to create digital elevation models of the streams in Arc-GIS, and the stream geomorphology has been used in conjunction to the SVAP tool in evaluating overall stream health. Initial conclusions suggest that restored streams frequently suffer from degradation, aggradation, widening, and even large scale changes in planform over time which have impacted streams’ health following the restoration project.