What does ecosystem restoration look like?
Overcrowding the trees
Woodland
Before
Deer Grove Forest Preserve Wetland Restoration
Clearing out invasive plants through responsible spraying or controlled burns helps improve the overall health of the area. After that? Encourage native grasses and wildflowers and stabilize water bodies as required. That leads to healthy forests, water quality improvements, and a restored landscape that captures carbon.
Growing strong
Woodland
After
From feasibility studies and master planning to design, construction, implementation, and monitoring, ecosystem restoration focuses on the enhancement or recovery of degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems.
Curious to see what an ecosystem restoration project looks like? Scroll down to see before and after recovery images—from the mountain tops to the ocean.
The difference between a degraded site and a restored one can be incredibly striking.
Capturing the transformation
Landslide in uplands community
Predicting landslides
Cowichan Lake North Shore Debris Flow
Landslides—the downslope movement of rock, soil, and debris. One of the most destructive types of landslides is called a debris flow, a quick-travelling, far-reaching landslide that usually starts in high mountains and emerges with destructive force in the lower landscape. Stantec’s DebrisFlow Predictor is a digital tool that predicts how a debris flow will emerge and what it will affect—from natural environments to roads, pipelines, and communities.
DebrisFlow Predictor
Mountains
Point of Interest
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eDNA sampling for invasive mussels and plants in recreational lakes
eDNA at Stantec
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Confirming the presence of organisms—particularly endangered or hard to observe species—in a stream or other water body is a lot easier with eDNA. Using this sampling and testing method, Stantec’s scientists catalogue traces of DNA material left in the environment without having to disturb or capture the organisms.
Environmental DNA (eDNA)
Dam Removals
Point of Interest
The unfortunate downside to dams is that they can affect the local environmental, safety, and socio-cultural ecosystems. They can prevent fish from reaching upstream, trap pollutants or alter downstream flows, and divide communities. When a dam is no longer needed—or its negative impacts outweigh its benefits—it needs to be removed. But just demolishing it doesn’t repair the surrounding areas, it takes a multidiscipline team to understand the ecosystem and what is necessary to restore each location.
Barring the way
Dam Removals
Before
Idlewood Creek Dam Removal and Stream Restoration
5th Avenue Dam Removal & Olentangy River Restoration
Six Mile Dam Removal eDNA Native Freshwater Mussel Assessment
Removing a dam starts with a feasibility assessment and moves into necessary services such as design, construction, replanting, species relocations, and eventually monitoring. The point is to find the best design to reconnect the river to the landscape, improve water quality, reintroduce native species, increase fish passage, and stabilize banks. A dam removal is an opportunity to improve the local ecosystem—for the natural inhabitants as well as the community that will come to enjoy a recovered waterway.
Open for enjoyment
Dam Removals
After
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Urban activities will inevitably affect local water bodies—whether that’s an engineered concrete channel that moves water (but also sediment), urban development that requires channel widening, or bacterial impairment from pollutants. These effects mean that cities must spend money dredging basins and shoring up infrastructure.
Concrete jungle
Urban Waterways
Before
Filsinger Park Stream Naturalization
North Platte River Restoration
Mechumps Creek Corridor Stream Restoration
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Aside from the financial benefits of reducing waterway maintenance, cities that restore their urban waterways to a more natural state can benefit from multi-functional stream corridors. Restoration delivers attractive public greenways as well as riparian ecosystems that address flood risks. The naturalization of these habitats improves fish and bird populations, and the opportunity to master plan recreational spaces can’t be beat.
Resilient stream
Urban Waterways
After
One of the greatest dangers in rural waterways is a change in land use from a natural state to a disturbed landscape—the influence of agriculture, industrial projects, or urban encroachment. When degraded waterways are subjected to extreme change in land use, the entire watershed ecosystem and nearby communities can feel the effects.
Degradation warning
Rural Waterways
Before
Elm Fork Stream Restoration
Katy Prairie Stream Restoration
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By reconnecting these waterways to existing floodplains or taking advantage of adjacent wetlands and riparian corridors, communities can greatly reduce the harmful effects of devastating floods. Services such as bank stabilization reduce erosion and the movement of excessive sediment across the ecosystem, keeping everything managed. These projects also provide a significant opportunity for mitigation credits and carbon sequestration.
Banking success
Rural Waterways
After
Deer Grove East Restoration
Top 3 tips for forest management
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It’s a tall order—forest restoration and management, and it takes a passionate partnership. Community collaboration, long-term project leadership, and committed partners are the key ingredients to successful forest preserve management.
Preserving the forest
Woodland
Point of Interest
Hummingbird clearwing moth
Flipping the script on pollinator decline
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Incorporating pollinator habitats into restoration designs helps offset pollinator population decline, which in turn helps improve food security.
Slowing pollinator decline
Prairie
Point of Interest
Grasslands, and more specifically prairies, are a major supporter of our world’s pollinator population, from bees to butterflies. However, as more of our grasslands are replaced or degraded by competing land uses, pollinators lose a significant portion of their habitat. This will lead to significant food instability as certain crops we plant aren’t propagated by our native pollinator population.
Looming food instability
Prairie
Before
Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie
World Dairy Center Wetland Mitigation and Prairie Restoration
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Prairies are a prime opportunity for restoration and mitigation—offsetting the impact of infrastructure projects in one area by restoring degraded landscapes and habitats in another, nearby area. Adding pollinator habitats to mitigation projects, whether that’s a new wetland going in or even a flower garden co-located with new infrastructure, gives pollinator populations more of the habitat they need to flourish.
A field of color and mitigation
Prairie
After
Bohn Farms Wetland Mitigation Bank
Incorporating climate adaptation into wetland restoration
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Ephemeral ponds are habitats for amphibians and other terrestrial wildlife that are especially vulnerable to climate change. These ponds are very sensitive to precipitation pattern changes and warming temperatures—threats that can cause these ponds to dry up sooner than other water bodies. Understanding this vulnerability is changing how the industry approaches wetland restoration. Now, vegetation management strategies aim to retain shade around these ponds so shallow water conditions can be maintained for longer.
Climate adaptation
Wetland
Point of Interest
Degraded wetlands could’ve gotten to this point through any number of combined factors—agricultural uses, industrial impacts, or urban influence. The challenge? To truly restore a wetland, the design needs to be watertight for regulatory approvals. And wetland restoration is an ideal opportunity to incorporate ecosystem benefits into stormwater, water treatment, or transportation projects.
Forgotten spaces
Wetland
Before
Forsman Wetland Mitigation Bank
NWRWRF Wetland Mitigation
Greenlight on orchids
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Wetland restoration is the rebuilding and rehabilitation of the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics and functions of the degraded system. Restored wetlands are nature’s sponge, soaking up the water and storing it. The local environment benefits through protected groundwater, enhanced drinking water sources, and coastal area buffers to protect against storm surges. Wetlands play a crucial role in water quality, habitat, and fishing economies.
Vibrant places
Wetland
After
Extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy are major threats to coastal infrastructure and ecosystems. Sandy alone caused nearly $70 billion in damages when it struck New Jersey in 2012, including breached coastal landscapes at the Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge. These ecosystems are important habitats for fish and wildlife and critical stopover sites for migratory birds.
Storm surge
Coastal
Before
Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge Restoration
Robinson Preserve Expansion
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Coastal ecosystem restoration, whether undertaken because of a weather event or from regular wear and tear, needs to consider the rising threats of storm surge and other extreme weather stressors—especially as they become more frequent. The coasts are vital ecosystems that can be protected through berm design, floodplain restoration, and dune construction—and these restored ecosystems make coastal communities more resilient against the effects of a changing climate.
Buckle down
Coastal
After
Delft3D dashboard
Restoration and resilience post disaster
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With modeling tools such as Delft3D, Stantec designers use hydrodynamic numerical models to estimate the entire range of coastal and weather systems—from a 1D wave model to a large-scale, highly-detailed flow and wave model covering an entire ocean and hundreds of storm events. These models allow us to understand the needs of an ecosystem under a wide array of circumstances and plan fill, reconstruction, and other services based on the findings.
Hydrodynamic numerical models
Coastal
Point of Interest
Glider instrument for remote sensing
Underwater remote sensing
eDNA - Detecting species at risk
Remote Sensing at Stantec
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Gathering data on underwater ecosystems—including vegetation coverage, physical features, or species identification—used to be a thing of boats and sensors on long wires. These days, we can gather the same information from multiple sites through remote sensing tools and eDNA technology. Cutting down on risks, costs, and timelines.
Data gathering under the sea
Under Water
Point of Interest
Scroll to explore
Woodland
Before & After Images:
Deer Grove Forest Preserve
Forests thrive when things are growing, right? Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case when some of the flora are invasive trees or shrubs preventing sunlight from reaching native species. That imbalance can lead to degraded forest habitats and subsequent negative effects to the larger ecosystem.
Before & After Images:
Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie
Before & After Images:
Forsman Wetland Mitigation Bank
Before & After Images:
Elm Fork Stream Restoration
Before & After Images:
Idlewood Creek
Before & After Images:
Filsinger Park
Before & After Images:
Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge Restoration
Explore more on Stantec's Ecosystem Restoration page.
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After