Be the Beaver

In Oregon, our crew forged this connection through a relatively new type of restoration tool: beaver dam analogues (BDAs). Water that backs up behind BDAs recharges the floodplain and increases the wetted width of the stream flow. Essentially, a BDA creates a porous wall of sticks, logs, and leaves that slows the flow of water in one part of the stream and retains much of this flow behind the “dam,” allowing some of this backed-up water to seep into the floodplain. This beaver-like engineering helps promote channel aggradation, or in other words, prevents channels from incising into themselves and away from the natural floodplain.