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Restoration
Developing and implementing ecosystem restoration projects in Oregon and Washington from Bonneville Dam to the Pacific Ocean
Restoration at a glance
11,000+
ACRES
reconnected to the mainstem Columbia River Estuary and its tidally influenced tributaries
80+
PROJECTS
completed to reconnect, revegetate, and restore floodplains and wetlands
20+
years
of restoration, research, and monitoring guided by adaptive management
Explore CEERP’s Completed Restoration Actions
The BPA Completed Restoration Actions GIS Dashboard includes information about CEERP’s floodplain reconnection sites and other completed restoration actions throughout the estuary.
This dashboard is designed for desktop use. For mobile users, access the dashboard at this link and explore it in landscape mode.
Our Adaptive Management Approach to Restoration
CEERP’s principal conservation effort is the reconnection of historical floodplain wetlands to the mainstem of the Columbia River. Additionally, CEERP supports restoration actions that benefit both ecosystem function and endangered fish populations.
The program uses the following adaptive management approach: restore, monitor, learn, and repeat. Each stage of this cycle relies on continuous management, coordination, and scientific activities that inform a collaborative, iterative approach to restoration.
CEERP’s adaptive management approach:
- Promotes efficient use of resources by prioritizing effective strategies
- Advances scientific understanding of estuarine processes through monitoring and evaluation
- Builds long-term sustainability of restored ecosystems, and
- Ensures project designs are founded on advances in scientific knowledge.
Learn more about CEERP’s approach to adaptive management
CEERP’s Approaches to Restoration
Floodplain Reconnection
CEERP restoration is predicated on floodplain reconnection. Approaches include levee removal, lowering, or breaching, removing or improving culverts and tidegates, and otherwise improving connectivity between the river and the floodplain.
Channel Excavation and Grading
Channel excavation and floodplain grading facilitate both physical and ecological connectivity. This can provide a complex and resilient foundation for natural processes to create and support wetland habitats, while allowing for channel evolution and plant community succession.
Invasive Species Removal
Reed canary grass, purple loosestrife, and yellow flag iris are among the several invasive plant species in the Columbia River Estuary. CEERP restoration projects work to remove invasive species and promote a diversity of native plants, enhancing wetland habitat.
Native Plant Revegetation
Complementary to other restoration measures and to existing native plant communities, our restoration projects revegetate with native seeds, stakes, and young plants.
Large Wood Placement
Large wood placement in estuary restoration, like stream restoration, is thought to enhance habitat complexity and the juvenile salmon food web, supporting biodiversity and the ecosystem. CEERP researchers are actively studying the benefits of this approach in tidally influenced tributaries and the estuary.
Featured Projects
Steigerwald National Wildlife Refuge
In CEERP’s largest project to date, the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership collaborated with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and many other agencies and community organizations to reconnect 965 acres of the Steigerwald National Wildlife Refuge to the Columbia River.
Wallooskee-Youngs
Located at the confluence of the Walluski and Youngs Rivers near Astoria, Oregon, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe reconnected 163 acres of tidal wetlands to the natural and dynamic flow of Youngs Bay.
Burlington Bottoms
Partnering with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, West Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District, Natural Resource Conservation Service, and a private landowner, the Columbia River Estuary Study Taskforce reconnected the John R. Palensky Wildlife Area and a neighboring property to Multnomah Channel. This effort greatly expanded juvenile salmon habitat, providing habitat access to 285 acres of floodplain.
Kerry Island
In 2016, Columbia Land Trust acquired and restored 96 acres of floodplain and reconnected seven tidal channels to Westport Slough, which required the removal of 28,000 cubic yards of levee material. At this site, researchers led a reed canary grass control study to reduce the extent of this invasive species, facilitate establishment of native plant communities, improve food web dynamics, and promote healthy wetland functions.
Restoration Design Challenges
The Restoration Design Challenges study is a CEERP effort addressing the primary challenges that practitioners—including planners, engineers, scientists, and project managers—often face when designing and implementing habitat restoration projects within the Columbia River Estuary. The challenges studied to date include:
Designing topographic mounds including higher-elevation woody plants, to enhance habitat complexity and reduce risks associated with sea level rise.
Optimizing channel outlets for fish access and fidelity to historical conditions formed by local geology and hydrological processes.
Controlling invasive reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) to avoid monocultures and restore native vegetation.
Placing large wood to enhance the juvenile salmon food web and support ecosystem resilience.
These studies provide science-based guidance to refine restoration techniques, inform adaptive management strategies, and improve project outcomes. While we are focused on the Columbia River Estuary, lessons from this research are likely applicable to restoration projects in other systems as well.
Learn more about CEERP’s Restoration Design Challenges:
- Assessment of methods to control invasive reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea) in tidal freshwater wetlands (Sinks et al., 2021)
- Floodplain wetland channel planform, cross-sectional morphology, and sediment characteristics along an estuarine to tidal river gradient (Diefenderfer et al., 2021)
- Ecohydrology of wetland plant communities along an estuarine to tidal river gradient (Borde et al., 2020)
- Designing topographic heterogeneity for tidal wetland restoration (Diefenderfer et al., 2018).
Experimental Projects
CEERP supports several pilot projects designed to investigate the role of beneficial use of dredged material along with large wood to enhance ecosystem restoration. Sites are closely monitored to assess these experimental actions as tools for restoration.
Woodland Islands
The Woodland Islands project is a collaborative effort to restore low-velocity wetland habitats for juvenile salmon using sediment derived from routine navigation channel dredging. The project successfully created a 7-acre island, enhancing habitats for juvenile salmonids, bird species, and other native wildlife. Woodland Islands is also a study site for potential effects of dredged material placement on benthic assemblages.
South Bachelor Island
The South Bachelor Island project included extensive vegetation removal and excavation of 120,000 cubic yards of dredged sand. This resulted in the reconnection of a floodplain wetland to the Columbia River and the reopening of 40 acres of vital juvenile salmon habitat used for outmigration, thus improving the odds of surviving to enter the ocean. Additionally, this project placed 90,000 cubic yards of the dredged material downstream of the restoration site to create shallow water habitat. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has monitored the entrainment of the placed sediment to help inform future dredged material placement efforts.
South Tongue Point
The South Tongue Point project transformed 22 acres of dredged material placed in the 1950s into a tidal wetland through floodplain reconnection and incorporation of large wood. This newly opened habitat provides rearing and feeding grounds for juvenile salmon and steelhead. This is the first study site for large wood placement according to a design that enables quantitative assessment of the effects on salmon prey and data collection continues. There is ongoing native plant restoration to enhance ecosystem resilience.
How We Get the Work Done
Land Agreements
Securing permissions and collaborating with landowners to enable restoration efforts
Reconnection
Restoring natural river connections and enhancing ecosystem functionality
Revegetation
Removing invasive species and replanting native species to rebuild habitat and support biodiversity
Wapato planting as part of native plant revegetation. (Photo by the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership)
Interested in learning more about restoration funded by the Columbia Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Program? Learn more about how CEERP evaluates projects with the Expert Regional Technical Group (ERTG) process or dive into the scientific, engineering, and regulatory details of the Habitat Improvement Program Handbook.
UNDERSTAND | CONSERVE | RESTORE