Stream Restoration through Stormwater Runoff Management and Retrofit: New Objectives, New Approaches

The Little Stringybark Creek restoration project is the first of its kind, focusing on reducing stormwater runoff using LID strategies across an entire sub-watershed. Urban streams around the globe demonstrate common characteristics associated with the increased imperviousness of their watersheds, including a flashy hydrograph, elevated concentrations of pollutants, altered channel morphology, and increased dominance of pollution tolerant species. Urban streams cannot be restored to pre-disturbance stream health conditions without addressing the combined water quality and hydrologic disturbance (increased volume and frequency of polluted stormwater runoff) from impervious areas delivered by drainage infrastructure in developed watersheds. This poses a great challenge for stream restoration, since it is much easier to implement local or reach scale in-stream or riparian projects than to reduce the stormwater impacts of impervious areas in a catchment. One of the key needs for the protection or restoration of streams in urban or urbanizing catchments is, therefore, a better understanding of specific and practical stormwater management objectives at the catchment and site scale aimed at addressing hydrologic characteristics that affect streams.