Watersheds throughout CA and western states have experienced severe impacts to important processes that maintain ecological and geomorphic resiliency in response to disturbance. Some of the disturbances include wildfire, drought, flooding, and disease outbreaks. These impacts to ecological integrity are the result of harsh and complex landuse histories. In the last 2.5 centuries, many people and society at large has dissociated from our ancestral connection to the management of landscapes.  Relative to our species history on this planet, this disconnect has occurred within an incredibly short  timeframe (speaking geologically).

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In California and other western states, threats to our abilities to withstand disturbance include incision & channelization, toxic storm runoff,  desertification, groundwater depletion, and disruption of ecological succession.​ In one extreme- some areas of the Tulare Lake basin have subsided up to 30 feet in elevation because the soil pore space has lost its water. These all represent an ever growing and existential crisis, however... there are solutions... solutions which wont necessarily require incredibly technological inventions or boatloads of money.

 

These solutions require us to directly address threats via rehabilitation of ecological and geomorphic processes: sediment capture, floodplain connection & habitat complexity, infiltration, organic matter mineralization,  perennialization, water retention and allowance of ecological succession. All of these natural processes occur in systems that have some level of ecological integrity.

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Our goal as restoration practitioners is to encourage these systems to do the work for us to rehabilitate resiliency (i.e. jump start feedback loops that will continue to build upon themselves and provide ecosystem service returns with minimal human input and management).