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Ipswich_River Restoration Tour Ipswich Mills Dam_June 2024_Amanda Siow.jpeg

Ipswich Mills Dam, Amanda Siow 2024

Dam Busters 201

Top 10 Ways to Tell if Your River Reach is Insensitive to Disturbance

See below for resources, links, tips, and a video recording. Webinar originally held June 11, 2025.

Prof. Noah Snyder of Boston College gives a series of field observations and GIS methods that practitioners can use to evaluate how a given river reach is likely to change in response to restoration projects. His examples are specifically geared to the formerly glaciated landscape of the northeastern U.S.

Presented by: Prof. Noah Snyder

Download his presentation slides here

Recording

Highlights:
3:16- Start of presentation
5:35- Introducing two types of rivers
10:45- Context: watershed processes and salmon habitat
21:18- Simple ways to evaluate whether channels are insensitive to disturbance
23:11- #1 Tectonically inactive landscape, low erosion rates
25:28- #2 Recent continental glaciation
27:53- #3 Downstream from mainstem lakes or wetlands
30:44- #4 Dams with little obvious sedimentation upstream
33:29- #5 Convex longitudinal profile
35:05- #6 Low gradient long profile
35:36- #7 No meanders, point bars, cut banks
37:24- #8 Bedrock channel
39:09- #9 No unvegetated bars
40:34- #10 In-channel rooted SAV
41:07- #11 Little cross-channel variation in depth
41:45- #12 Dark/biofilmed, armored gravel/cobble bed
43:54- Q&A

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Additional Resources

American Rivers- National Dam Removal Community of Practice Website

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