River ecology and management

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As natural forests and salmonid populations are increasingly harvested to support a growing human population, understanding and managing streams as ecological systems becomes urgent. The legacy of resource exploitation is well documented. For decades, the Pacific coastal ecoregion of North America has acted as a natural laboratory for advancements in stream ecology, revealing how to better integrate ecological processes with human-dominated environments. This book explores the hard-learned ecological and social lessons from this region. By viewing land and rivers as interactive components of ecosystems and watersheds, significant theoretical foundations have emerged in ecological sciences. However, while scientific disciplines have begun to connect land-based processes with streams and rivers, management institutions have struggled to do the same. Consequently, many watersheds in the Pacific coastal ecoregion fail to support natural environmental processes or the valuable resources they produce. It is crucial for scientists, educators, and decision-makers to promote a better understanding of the integration between ecology and consumptive uses to enhance effective management practices.