Watershed Restoration and Enhancement
Our goal is to address the factors that limit watershed function in aquatic, riparian, and associated upland habitats for the purpose of increasing watershed health and resiliency.
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Collaboration
Watershed restoration is a collaborative effort between numerous stakeholders including state and federal agencies, local contractors, universities, and countless private landowners. For example, a salmon habitat restoration project here on the Oregon coast involves multiple state and federal agencies (review, permits, grants), project managers from local conservation organizations, local contractors, and one or more landowners. Limiting Factors Effective restoration is dependent upon understanding the root cause of degradation to one or more of a watersheds functions or natural services. To understand what is affecting water quality, fish and wildlife populations, or changes in a plant or insect community, a scientific approach is needed. For a species like salmon, limiting factors analyses are employed to assess what factors in the freshwater (or estuarian) habitat are the key causes for decline. On the Oregon coast, many subwatershed-level limiting factors analyses have been completed. These analyses combine information gathered by snorkel surveys, culvert assessments, stream morphology measurements and adult spawning salmon counts to determine the most important functions of a watershed or stream reach to address (or restore) in order to protect and restore conditions that allow species, like Coastal Coho salmon, and other threatened salmonid species to thrive. For many salmon species, stream water temperature, and in-stream complexity (woody debris and side channels) are limiting their spawning and rearing productivity and success. Disturbance A key aspect of restoring habitat function and addressing limiting factors is alleviating the disturbance that is leading to degradation or loss of function. Sometimes this means removing or reducing the influences of a certain land use type (example: river bed mining, orchards or livestock right next to a river, nonnative fish stocking in a lake) but can also mean active construction and rehabilitation of a habitat feature (example: recreating a re-meandered channel on a channelized stream, adding natural components like wood to a river bed to naturally create complexity that benefits fish rearing, planting a riparian area with native trees and shrubs to create cooler stream water and more appropriate nutrient inputs that make the basis of a stream food web). Ironically, a functioning ecosystem is often degraded due a lack of natural localized disturbance such as flooding, landslides, or fire. Restoring natural disturbances is a very challenging and often controversial aspect of habitat restoration and often is not achievable or even desirable near human communities. |
Local Resources
Who does this work in my area? Lincoln SWCD is a major collaborator and partner facilitating and implementing restoration on private property in Lincoln County. Contact our Watershed Restoration Program Staff about technical assistance and take a look at incentive programs that are available to landowners who want to implement restoration on their property. The 2nd edition of Lincoln SWCD's Rural Living Handbook is also now available. We have compiled this handbook to address some of the issues rural landowners may encounter. 
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Water Quality Assessment Program
The purpose of this page is to provide information about water quality within the Central Oregon Coast's (Mid Coast Basin) freshwater streams and rivers. This site provides access to raw water quality data that is currently being collected by Lincoln SWCD and other local partners. Lincoln SWCD's Water Quality Monitoring Program currently collects and analyzes water quality throughout 4 watersheds in Lincoln County.
Tracking the condition of water quality throughout Oregon's streams, lakes and rivers is a monumental task. Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is the State agency responsible for tracking, collecting and analyzing this information. To supplement their in-house monitoring, Oregon DEQ also supports community based monitoring known as Voluntary Monitoring to collect and provide additional regional data that would otherwise be unattainable given limited resources. All Voluntary Monitoring programs require written quality control and assurance plans that track the data quality to ensure only high quality data is accepted. Lincoln SWCD's Program is a Voluntary Monitoring Program.
Tracking the condition of water quality throughout Oregon's streams, lakes and rivers is a monumental task. Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is the State agency responsible for tracking, collecting and analyzing this information. To supplement their in-house monitoring, Oregon DEQ also supports community based monitoring known as Voluntary Monitoring to collect and provide additional regional data that would otherwise be unattainable given limited resources. All Voluntary Monitoring programs require written quality control and assurance plans that track the data quality to ensure only high quality data is accepted. Lincoln SWCD's Program is a Voluntary Monitoring Program.
Program Goals:
- Perform water quality sampling and analysis (monitoring) throughout Lincoln County watersheds to provide general, science-based information to inform landowners, the general public and our technicians about the quality of freshwater streams and rivers as they pertain to beneficial uses such as drinking water sources, recreation, aquatic farming (oysters), and aquatic life (fish, insects, etc.).
- Use the information as an educational tool and not as a way to create regulatory problems with specific landowners.
- Provide educational outreach to urban, rural and agricultural landowners about non-point source pollution causes and impacts.
- Provide the raw data that helps determine which water bodies that are not meeting (impaired) State water quality standards and that may be jeopardizing beneficial uses.
