This course has been discontinued
The United States has more than 3.5 million miles of rivers and streams that, along with closely associated floodplain and upland areas, comprise corridors of great economic, social, cultural, and environmental value. These corridors are complex ecosystems that include the land, plants, animals, and network of streams within them. They perform a number of ecological functions such as modulating streamflow, storing water, removing harmful materials from water, and providing habitat for aquatic and terrestrial plants and animals. Stream corridors also have vegetation and soil characteristics distinctly different from surrounding uplands and support higher levels of species diversity, species densities, and rates of biological productivity than most other landscape elements.
Many miles of rivers and streams have been seriously impacted by human activity. Restoring these steams to a more natural condition is a rapidly expanding field involving a multi-disciplinary approach. This 2-hour online course is the first in a series of courses that defines the issues and provides technical guidance in a wide variety of principles involved in steam restoration. This course covers an introduction to stream restoration and an overview of stream corridors, including physical structure and time at multiple scales, a lateral view across the stream corridor and a longitudinal view across the stream corridor. It is not necessary to complete all of these courses or complete them in order, but the order of the courses provides a logical progression through the subject matter.
At the conclusion of the course, you will have a better understanding of:
- What is meant by stream restoration and why it is so important
- The structural components of a stream corridor
- Why stream corridors are of special significance, and why they should be the focus of restoration efforts
- The relationship between stream corridors and other landscape units at broader and more local scales
- What scales should be considered for a stream corridor restoration
- How a stream corridor is structured from side to side
- How these elements contribute to stream corridor functions
- What role these elements play in the life of the stream
- What we need to know about the lateral elements of a stream corridor to adequately characterize a stream corridor for restoration
- How the lateral elements of a stream corridor are used to define flow patterns of a stream
- The longitudinal structural elements of a stream corridor
- How these elements are used to characterize a stream corridor
- Some of the basic ecological concepts that can be applied to streams to understand their function and characteristics on a longitudinal scale
- What we need to know about the longitudinal elements that are important to stream corridor restoration
There will be a multiple choice quiz at the end of this course to gauge you understanding of the material.