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Benefits to Wildlife
Remeandering, a technical term for returning a stream's natural flow pattern, does more than simply bend and bow a waterway. Bringing back the natural flow to a stream also recreates some of the stream's original abiotic conditions. Light increases, dissolved oxygen increases, suspended silt decreases, pools and eddies form, and temperatures decrease. These changes allow native plants and animals to recolonize the stream and increase their populations. Oftentimes, native plants re-emerge from seeds lying dormant in the riverbed for decades. Good restorations also improve adjacent wetlands and remove riverbank trees, thereby encouraging natural behaviors from other nonaquatic animals. These behavioral changes ripple through the food web and affect the entire stream and wetland ecosystem.
Benefits Downstream
Improving upstream locations provides benefits to downstream rivers and wetlands. Remeandering drastically lowers the silt load flowing through a stream by reducing water speed and riverbank erosion and increasing local sediment deposit. A restored stream also boasts increased levels of vegetation in the stream and along its shores. These plants provide a biological filter for agricultural runoff pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus and reduce these chemicals' levels before the stream flows into a larger body of water. With healthier upstream tributaries, downstream waterways and adjacent wetland ecosystems enjoy many similar ecological recovery events without needing direct human intervention.
Economic Benefits
Although not apparent at first, a healthy, restored waterway benefits the local economy in several ways. Increases in native fish species and their respective populations bring more recreational fishers to the local community. They also open up new commercial opportunities to service these individuals. Improved aesthetics of restored streams drives up local real estate values. This increases the tax base available to government, schools and public safety. Good schools and public safety further drive up property values. Lastly, stream (and adjacent wetland) restoration often satisfies the wetland mitigation requirements for new nearby construction. New construction creates jobs and has a multiplier effect on the local economy.
Community Benefits
Stream restorations also help communities in noneconomic ways. By recreating a gentle slope along a stream's shores -- as opposed to a sudden drop-off -- the restoration reconnects the waterway with its natural floodplain, and returns the entire system to former levels of functionality. This increased functionality lowers the chances of damage to homes and businesses during floods because the stream's floodplain can once again hold floodwater. Additionally, the overall water quality of the local community improves with stream restorations as natural filters return to maintain low levels of pollutants. The community may tap this new resource for a variety of uses.