Santa Maria River levee ecological restoration program

摘要

The construction of an 11-kilometer levee along the Santa Maria River is to provide enhanced flood protection.The levee construction required the disturbance of 52 hectares of wildland habitat.To compensate for unavoidable impacts to sensitive ecosystems,the environmental management team at RECON designed and implemented a four-year comprehensive ecological revegetation program for the re-establishment of native riparian and upland habitats.The focus of the project was to develop a geomorphologically based mitigation approach that would restore functions and values of contiguous areas of the river system,thereby increasing the habitat value of the associated upland and riparian corridor from conditions prior to impacts.The construction of the levee,excavation of the substrate to a depth of 15 meters,and extraction of fill material (i.e.,sand) caused a substantial disturbance to the land and associated habitat,requiring rehabilitation via an adaptive revegetation program to regenerate the native ecosystem and to restore a functional river system.