Water Resource Collections and Archives

Overview of River Restoration Studies at UCB

The University of California faculty and students have been actively involved in environmental planning and restoration for nearly four decades. In 1973, at UC Berkeley, Luna Leopold started Hydrology for Planners, a foundation course for environmental planning students pursing restoration studies, and the course has been offered annually since. Over the years, restoration-related courses have been taught by faculty at various UC Campuses, including, Alex Horne, Kara Nelson, Vince Resh, Adina Merelender, Don Erman, Mary Power, Jeff Mount, Matt Kondolf, Katie Suding, Peter Moyle and their students have pursued river- restoration-related research in programs such as Civil Engineering, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, Environmental Sciences, Earth and Planetary Science, Energy and Resource Group, Geography and Integrated Biology.  

At Berkeley, the course Restoration of Rivers and Streams (LA 227), offered since 1992, emphasizes restoration principles, research and post project appraisal.  The course has built up a set of post-project appraisal studies, many available online (Kondolf, et. al. 2011). In the Ecological Factors in Urban Design (LA 201) studio course, students conducted invertories and analysis, and developed plans/designs for river corridors (Kondolf, et. al. in press).

References Cited

Kondolf, G. M., L. A. Mozingo, J. R. McBride, K. Kullman, and S. Anderson. Teaching river restoration:  experinences from interdisciplinary studio instruction. Landscape Journal (in press).

Kondolf, G. M., S. Anderson, R. Storesund, M. Tompkins, and P. Atwood. 2011.  Post-project appraisals of river restoration in advanced university instruction.  Restoration Ecology 19(6):696-700.  doi: 10.1111/j.1526-100X.2011.00803x