Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring and Evaluation

To support the development of good practice within the restoration industry, CBEC frequently undertakes field-based monitoring and simulation modelling of implemented restoration designs as they contribute to the evaluation of restoration projects.  For instance, in 2024 CBEC was commissioned by the Environment Agency to assist in the ongoing evaluation of restoration projects being undertaken as part of the Water Environment Improvement Fund (WEIF). The pilot project studied eight in-progress WEIF projects located around England with the initial foci of developing a robust evaluation framework for the project teams and bolstering baseline data ahead of project implementation, as the basis for providing local project teams with a system for evaluating project success over years to come (CBEC, 2025).  This work was subsequently continued for larger number of projects. CBEC practices several types of monitoring activity, as follows:

Metrics-based monitoring and modelling

Field-based studies have involved developing bespoke design approaches for assessing the baseline and effectiveness of different types of large wood structure for varying purposes (e.g. bank protection, flow deflection, physical channel evolution) and habitat enhancement efforts (e.g., for salmon spawning and reinstatement of geomorphic function). This has allowed us to refine our designs over time based on empirical, field-based data, rather than basic observations.

We frequently combine metrics-based assessments with numerical simulation assessments (e.g. using hydraulic and morphodynamic modelling) to ensure that restoration and NFM schemes are likely to perform as designed and adequately resist the hydraulic forces acting on them during high flow events.  This information increases our understanding of how different types of intervention interact with flow and sediment transport processes to influence the physical evolution of the channel and floodplain, and the implications for habitat diversity and ecology.

Examples of monitoring programmes include the assessment, five years after full channel-floodplain restoration, of the evolution of the Allt Lorgy stream in Scotland (Williams, et al., 2020), and an on-going combining monitoring and modelling to assess the effectiveness of large wood structures installed on the Girnock Burn (CBEC, 2023).

Rapid Assessment Protocols

Beyond metrics-based monitoring, CBEC staff are trained in a variety of ‘rapid assessment protocols’ (RAPs) that are ‘benchmarked’ (i.e., internally self-referencing) to outcomes that vary from low to high or bad to good. Benchmarking implies that the RAP is cross-referenced to a wider population of outcomes that provide a suitable context to the results from an individual site.  Such surveys decrease the reliance on both pre-project (‘before’) monitoring and on the need for separate ‘control’ reaches.  This can be very useful where resources are limited, where monitoring started late (i.e., after project installation), or where it is difficult to determine a suitable control reach.  CBEC staff are accredited for application of the widely-practised MoRPh survey used for assessing riverine habitat diversity (Gurnell, et al., 2020), the more recent development of MoRPh surveys for estuaries.  We have also pioneered the practical application of a recently developed survey for assessing the longitudinal and lateral connectivity status of rivers (van de Bund et al., 2024), and have developed a RAP for assessing the functional dynamics of river channel adjustment processes (Booth and Downs, 2025).  Such surveys can be utilised alongside metric-based monitoring to more rapidly establish evolutionary trends in river restoration projects.