Special Sessions
Session 1 – Advances in Floodplain Science and Implications for Riverscape Resilience
Session Coordinators: Ryan Morrison & Katherine Lininger, Colorado State University; and Anna Marshall, UTK
Floodplains—unique landscapes that link terrestrial and aquatic environments—provide several important functions that benefit both humans and natural systems, including habitat provisioning, biogeochemical processing, flood attenuation, and regulation of water and sediment fluxes. Yet, human activities, including land-use change, levees, damming, and flow regulation, have negatively impacted floodplain functioning. This session will highlight recent advances to incorporate knowledge of fluvial processes into modern floodplain science, management, and resilience planning. Specifically, this session invites abstracts on a broad range of floodplain studies, including biogeomorphic, ecohydrologic, fluvial geomorphic, and socio-hydrologic aspects of floodplain science. Abstracts could address, but are not limited to, 1) modeling to evaluate changes in floodplain processes; 2) field-based studies elucidating floodplain form and process; 3) use of decision-support tools to assess trade-offs between natural floodplain services and social benefits; and 4) spatial scale-dependent techniques to investigate floodplain restoration and resilience.
Session 2 – Groundwater-Surface Water Interactions in Riverine Landscape Across Multiple Scales
Session Coordinators: Tyelyn Brigino, University of South Florida (primary convener); Nicholas Murphy, The Nature Conservancy; and Mark Rains, University of South Florida
River resources support both human communities and aquatic ecosystems. Managing the needs of both can often require tradeoffs and accurate characterization of the structure and function of rivers at various scales is necessary. Rivers can be characterized in four dimensions: longitudinally, laterally, temporally, and vertically. While the longitudinal and lateral change in rivers is comparatively easy to see through time, the vertical component is oftentimes the most difficult to visualize. However, the exchange of water between the channel and subsurface plays a disproportionately important role in controlling stream flow, modulating stream temperatures, and delivering stream nutrient subsidies. The overall timing and magnitude of each of those results in a characteristic identity of rivers that thereafter support in-stream biota and ecosystem services. These exchanges can be heavily impacted by shifts in human activity and future hydroclimatic and geomorphological changes. This session invites abstracts investigating groundwater-surface water interactions across all scales from data-driven or model-derived investigation methods. We also encourage submissions that seek to translate groundwater-surface water interactions to stakeholders to improve stewardship and informed management of both resources.
Session 3 – Restoring and revitalizing large alluvial rivers and their floodplains to support biodiversity and multiple goals
Kristen Dybala, Point Blue Conservation Science
Large alluvial rivers with their floodplains and riparian areas are central to biodiversity conservation and provide essential ecosystem functions and services in a highly-modified agricultural landscape. For example, for decades, large investments have been made in planning and implementing projects that restore and revitalize California’s Central Valley rivers, reconnect rivers to their floodplains, manage flood risk and water demands, and protect biodiversity. The talks in this session will present current science efforts to inform conservation and restoration strategies, including: interdisciplinary efforts to analyze the impacts of hydrospatial scenarios on multiple taxa and metrics, long-term studies that identify the influence of land and water management on wildlife populations, and studies of restoration impact on multiple taxa and ecosystem services to inform restoration strategy. Collectively, the work represented in this session contributes to improved understanding of how to restore, revitalize, and manage large alluvial riverscapes to achieve multiple goals.
Session 4 – Data to Decision: Who governs ecological monitoring of the river commons?
Alex Fremier, Daniel Auerbach & Amada Stahl, Washington State University
Ecological monitoring of common pool resources is a key step in adaptive management of river ecosystems. The data, the analysis and the knowledge generated from a monitoring program or event directly inform management decisions at a particular level and scale. Monitoring programs and decision making (termed monitoring networks) have a complex layering of centralized and decentralized components. For example, data collections might be highly decentralized with many groups collecting data throughout a river network, but analysis and decision-making authority are often strongly centralized under formal governmental jurisdictions. Riverine monitoring networks are changing with funding directives and changing climate regimes. Many monitoring networks are changing with an increased reliance on a wider range of institutions for monitoring, such as Tribal Nations, citizen groups, and non-profit organizations. So, who controls the decision making that affects ecological monitoring, from study design and data types to decision making authority, data sovereignty, transparency or accessibility? Monitoring networks for river systems across the globe are highly variable in their organization. In this session, we aim to develop a shared understanding of the changing capabilities and challenges in ecological monitoring of river systems. We encourage abstracts representing a range of social-ecological settings, from aquatic to riparian, headwaters to estuarine, or wildlands to urban areas. Additionally, we encourage abstracts from the life, physical and social sciences addressing challenges in ecological monitoring. The session will focus on understanding different monitoring network structures, their general performance, current issues or limitations, and thus begin to develop a comprehensive understanding of the evolving governance of river system monitoring.
Session 5 – Revitalizing Community and Landscape by connecting rivers, people, and science through field experiences
Andy Rost, University of Nevada
Rivers integrate community and landscape across space and time, but disconnections can disrupt these critical relationships resulting in ecosystem and community degradation. Revitalizing the relationships between people and rivers is enhanced through immersive experiences that bring people on, in, and along rivers. This special session explores how field experiences can restore this connection, foster stewardship, grow interdisciplinary understanding, and inspire a new generation of river advocates. This session will bring together educators, researchers, and community leaders to discuss innovative approaches to rebuilding relationships between people and place by showcasing educational field courses, immersive science experiences, and community engagement that highlight river field experiences. The session will include a series of presentations, interactive discussions, and case studies designed to enhance attendees’ own programs and contribute to the revitalization of the relationship between rivers and people. We invite diverse perspectives to share innovative strategies and success stories, to inspire a deeper and transformative connection between people and rivers worldwide.
Session 6 – Rivers as Classrooms: blending experiential education into river restoration science and project monitoring
Aaron Zettler-Mann, Monique Streit, Alecia Weisman, South Yuba River Citizens League; Jeff Lauder & Helen Fitanides, Sierra Streams Institute
Connections to the natural world are crucial to creating life-long stewards of natural places and ecosystems, including rivers and freshwater systems. Fostering environmental science education in students helps build that connection while simultaneously developing critical thinking skills, environmental awareness, and a deeper understanding of our place as part of the natural world. In this session, we explore the relationship between restoration and education as a means of reconnecting students with the natural environment and revitalizing the relationships between people and their watersheds. We invite abstracts that address this topic, including examples of how monitoring of riverine ecosystems can engage students in learning age-appropriate environmental science curriculum by taking them out of the classroom into the field.
Session 7 – Advancing Environmental Flow Management: Holistic Approaches for Sustaining Aquatic Ecosystems
Kris Taniguchi-Quan, SCCWRP; Bronwen Stanford, TNC; Sooyeon Yi, Berkeley; Megan Klaar, Leeds; Fiona Dyer, University of Canberra
Freshwater ecosystems rely on adequate streamflow, yet increasing pressures from climate change, prolonged drought, and growing water demands threaten to worsen water stress. Environmental flow programs seek to establish quantitative criteria to manage water in ways that sustain biodiversity and support the services that healthy freshwater ecosystems provide. However, many flow programs are limited in spatial scale and in ecosystem scale, focusing primarily on the habitat needs of a single threatened or endangered species, often overlooking broader ecosystem outcomes. This session will:
Highlight novel research on the functions, values, and methodologies that inform environmental flow management in rivers and estuaries; and
Explore the science that underpins environmental flow programs aiming to deliver outcomes at a range of scales.
We welcome case studies, field-based investigations, and modeling approaches that assess the effects of flow interventions on ecosystem function, species of interest, and indicators of ecosystem health, as well as their broader implications for ecosystem services and societal values. Additionally, we seek contributions that explore the implementation of environmental flows, including policy mechanisms, management strategies, and interdisciplinary approaches that enhance the effectiveness and scalability of flow programs.
Session 8 – Science for a changing Klamath River following the world’s largest dam removal
Jenny Curtis, USGS; Alison O’Dowd, CalPoly Humboldt; Rob Lusard, UC Davis
The Klamath River, a vital ecosystem and cultural resource, is undergoing a transformative phase. In 2023 and 2024, the removal of four dams reconnected the upper and lower Klamath River basins. Dam removals enabled volitional fish passage and provided access to over 370 river kilometers of historical habitat. The Klamath River dam removals and the release of reservoir sediments presented a unique opportunity to study sediment processes, ecosystem response and recovery, and the re-establishment of threatened anadromous fish in the upper basin. This session aims to bring together interdisciplinary scientists to share insights, methodologies, and findings related to the world’s largest dam removal. We invite presentations that explore various aspects of dam removals including ecology, fish passage, hydrology, water quality, sediment flux, geomorphology, and habitat restoration. Presentations will address the effects of dam removal on riverine ecosystems and the importance of integrating traditional ecological knowledge. By focusing on collaborative and integrated science, this session will contribute to a comprehensive understanding of river responses to Klamath River dam removals to inform future dam removals and effective river management and restoration strategies.
Session 9 – Floodplains Forward: Aligning the ecologies and economies of large river valleys
Jacob Katz, CalTrout
This special session will feature examples of broadly diverse social coalitions coming together to rebuild the functioning ecology of large agricultural river valleys at landscape scales.
Similar to many large river valleys globally, the Sacramento River Valley has been extensively drained and leveed, hydrologically divorcing river channels from most floodplains. Today, the former floodplain is extensively managed for agriculture. Before levees and dams were built to protect people from catastrophic floods, this floodplain supported robust fish and wildlife populations. Lack of access to inundated floodplains is recognized as a significant contributing factor in the decline of native fish species. Invited talks in this session will discuss how farmland (primarily rice lands), wetland waterfowl refuges, and floodways designed to bypass flood waters around urban areas are managed concurrently to mimic the historic floodplain in the Sacramento Valley, while continuing to provide critical flood protection. Water managed in the floodplain allows water to spread out and slow down mimicking natural flows and providing multiple benefits year-round, including cultivation for rice and other crops during the spring and summer, habitat for wild birds, reptiles, and other fauna in the autumn, and food for migratory birds and native fish species during the winter non-growing season. We invite talks that address the socio-ecological benefits of managing floodplains through broad stakeholder coalitions to support and improve ecosystem services.
Session 10 – Nature Based Solutions in River Restoration
Sarah Yarnell, Center for Watershed Sciences, UC Davis
Anthropogenic impacts to watersheds, such as roads, logging, mining, diversions, and grazing, as well as climate change-induced alterations to fire and hydrologic regimes have spurred the field of river restoration and related applied sciences. As a result, significant advances have been made in our understanding of riverine processes and recovery at multiple scales. Nature-based solutions for catchment management and mitigation can reduce anthropogenic impacts while sustainably enhancing watershed function. Research examples include reintroduction of large wood, sediment reactivation or augmentation, decommissioning of roads and levees, and beaver mimicry in headwaters and small streams, among others. This session seeks abstracts that contribute to the science and understanding of riverine restoration, highlighting nature-based techniques that aim to restore biotic and abiotic processes.
Session 11 – Healthy Rivers & Landscapes
Louise Conrad, California Department of Water Resources
The relative need for environmental flows and quality habitat to support native biota is the subject of scientific and political debate in many regions where issues of water scarcity and imperiled aquatic species coexist. The Central Valley of California is one such region, and the Agreements to support Healthy Rivers and Landscapes are currently presenting a novel approach to meeting environmental regulations for supporting native fishes through integration of flows, habitat, and collaborative science and governance. This ambitious program, currently under consideration for inclusion in the State Water Resources Control Board’s update to the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan, includes a comprehensive science program that would track and evaluate biological and ecological gains from flow and habitat actions and inform their adaptive management. A major innovation of the program is to coordinate management decisions and science across multiple Central Valley sub-basins, rather than rely on individualized, disparate, system-specific approaches. This session will include the framing and approach for governance and science, with zoomed-in presentations on individual habitat projects for both upper watershed areas and the freshwater Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, tracking Chinook salmon populations, managing flows to maximize benefit, and building a data science program to support a synthetic evaluation approach.
