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How can adaptive management and monitoring be incorporated into wet meadow re-watering projects?
Clear objectives and success criteria for the project should be defined during the project planning process, and before project implementation. Baseline biological and physical conditions of the project area should be documented before any work is done in order to compare post-project and long-term site conditions to pre-project conditions. Channel and floodplain design drawings should be prepared prior to implementation. Immediately following implementation, “as built” conditions should be documented in order to accurately reflect the project implementation.
Follow-up information that should be gathered include periodic or event-driven (following major storms or other disturbances) monitoring, use of supplementary historical data, and secondary analysis to determine project success over different time scales. Criteria that could be tracked and periodically compared to baseline conditions to monitor project effectiveness and success and feed into an adaptive management process include: increased presence of wet meadow plant species (to be determined by vegetation surveys), rise of water table to pre-disturbance conditions (to be determined through water table monitoring with piezometers), maintenance of channel and floodplain morphology (to be determined through repeated cross-sections and channel surveying).
Monitoring of the project area will ensure that any project maintenance needs are noted and corrected in a timely manner. Maintenance requirements could potentially include reseeding the wet meadow area, and installing grade controls in the channel to minimize downcutting.
Wet Meadow Re-watering
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