Recovery wheels are not available for every project. Wheels currently available are a subset of active projects, selected based on feasibility and timing during the development of this tool. As the recovery wheel becomes an accepted best practice, more projects will have a wheel developed.
Metrics
The Recovery Wheel includes 24 metrics across six interdisciplinary subject areas.
The biological categories:
- Riparian structural diversity (stream corridor condition),
- Aquatic structural diversity (stream condition) and
- Species composition (biodiversity).
The physical stream condition categories:
- Physiochemical (measures of water quality and erosion)
- Physical conditions (flooding and transport).
And external exchanges, a socio-cultural category, includes safety, infrastructure, and community engagement.
Metrics are independently measured with defensible, scientific-based techniques. Scores range from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best possible condition. These broad subjects are further dissected; for example, riparian structural diversity, includes measures of the native woody species planted and naturally occurring in the area immediately adjacent to the stream and across the width of the floodplain. This metric is associated with ecosystem functional traits related to bird habitat, floodplain sediment trapping efficiency, and forest health and succession; that is, more shrub and tree stems (up to a certain point) are correlated with higher ecosystem function.
Each metric is measurable, changes in response to management action, and related to valuable ecosystem functional traits.
We illustrate the holistic assessment using the Fairfax Recovery Wheel (Figure 1), a modification of the Society for Ecological Restoration recovery wheel best practice (Gann GD, McDonald T, Walder B, Aronson J, Nelson CR, Jonson J, Hallett JG, Eisenberg C, Guariguata MR, Liu J, Hua F, Echeverria C, Gonzales, EK, Shaw N, Decleer K, Dixon KW. 2019. International principles and standards for the practice of ecological restoration. Second edition. Restoration Ecology S1-S46).
