Meadowdale: Informing Puget Sound coastal stream restoration
alt=Meadowdale Beach Park before and after culvert removal and estuary restoration|border|left|400x350px|Meadowdale Beach Park estuary restoration project before and after culvert removal. Photo credit to Snohomish County Parks and Recreation. The Meadowdale Estuary Restoration Project is the first coastal stream mouth restoration project along the railroad-impacted shoreline of Puget Sound. The restoration project replaced an undersized culvert through the railroad embankment with a 128-foot long bridge and excavated a 1.3-acre estuary upstream of the railroad embankment. This regionally significant restoration project represents a unique opportunity for future stream mouth restoration along the railroad and on sediment starved shorelines throughout the Salish Sea.
The overarching ecological goal of this project was to restore the estuary of Lundās Gulch Creek, including natural sediment and hydrologic processes in order to provide high-functioning, sustainable rearing habitat for non-natal juvenile Chinook (listed as threatened by the Endangered Species Act), as well as Coho (O. kisutch) and chum salmon (O. keta), coastal cutthroat trout (O.clarkii clarkii), and other fish species, within the park setting. The complexity of estuarine ecosystem processes coupled with substantial capital investments and great uncertainties concerning restoration effectiveness highlight the need for restoration effectiveness monitoring. Despite the recognized importance of understanding restoration effectiveness, monitoring is not frequently a priority component of restoration project budgets or may not be included at all. The emphasis on āmoving dirtā with an āif we build it, they will comeā approach has contributed to continued uncertainties around estuary restoration effectiveness. Where monitoring is funded, such efforts are frequently insufficient in spatial extent, temporal duration, sampling frequency, and/or monitoring scope to detect restoration responses that can be used in a meaningful way to inform restoration science, design, and management.
This ESRP/Learning Program funded project will investigate the ecological and geomorphic outcomes of the Meadowdale Park estuary restoration project in Edmonds, WA to inform the siting and design of future coastal stream mouths.
Relationships
- broader: salmon;hydrodynamics;embayment
- involves organization: tribal
- related to: esrplearning program
- related to: tulalip tribes of washington
Source: Meadowdale: Informing Puget Sound coastal stream restoration on Salish Sea Wiki