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Chapter 5: Designing Low-Tech Restoration Projects

Chapter 5 Cover

The fifth chapter covers the low-tech process-based restoration design process. This process is generic to designing any type of low-tech process-based restoration treatment (not just PALS & BDAs). Specifically, it covers:

  • Key Principles for Designing Low-Tech Restoration Projects
  • Getting Started – Design and Required Information
  • A Low-Tech Design Plan
  • Design of a Complex
  • Considerations for Common Complex Objectives
  • The Importance of Time and Flow Conditions

Chapter 5 also has an appendix on:

  • Appendix A: The Topographic Paradox

⬇️ Download Chapter 5 (PDF)

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Implications for Practice

Key Takeaways:

  • A complex is a group of structures designed to work together to mimic and promote specific processes to meet project objectives. Complexes are the building blocks of a low-tech restoration design.
  • The low-tech restoration design process for complexes:
    • is rapid, low-cost, flexible, transparent, field-based, and generates clear and testable design hypotheses;
    • hypothesizes the hydraulic zone of influence (laterally constrained by the valley bottom), helping set expectations for treatment impact relative to project goals and reach objectives for recovery potential;
    • identifies low-flow, typical-flood, and extreme-flood hypotheses (process-based responses) to articulate the connection between processes initially mimicked, later promoted, and eventually sustained naturally by the system.
  • Design of low-tech restoration projects focuses on the complex-scale rather than individual structures to better address riverscape structural starvation.
  • Complexes typically include between 2–15 structures, and their objectives may differ or align depending on project goals and reach recovery.
  • Learning, innovation, and refinement of design improve when clear, testable hypotheses are defined at the complex-scale.

Shahverdian, S.M., Bennett, S.N., Bouwes, N., Camp, R., Portugal, E., and Wheaton, J.M. 2019.
Chapter 5 – Designing Low-Tech Restoration Projects.
In: J.M. Wheaton, S.N. Bennett, N. Bouwes, J.D. Maestas, and S.M. Shahverdian (Editors), Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration of Riverscapes: Design Manual.
Utah State University Wheaton Restoration Consortium, Logan, Utah. 28 pp.
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.11621.45286

Minimum Viable Design Package

Design Package

👉 Low-Tech PBR Recipes

👉 Low-Tech Design Examples