More Than Dirt: Soil Health Needs to Be Emphasized in Stream and Floodplain Restorations

Soil health is not explicitly included in current stream and floodplain restorations. This may be one of the many reasons that stream restorations are not achieving their full restoration and ecological benefits. The lack of design and implementation procedures for providing healthy soils and the absence of specific soil metrics for evaluation are some of the reasons for the non-inclusion of soil health in floodplain restorations. Here, we have brought together a team of researchers and practitioners to provide a blueprint for the inclusion of soil health in floodplain restorations, with a specific emphasis on approaches that may be easily accessible for practitioners. We describe the challenges posed by current restoration procedures for physical, chemical, and biological soil conditions. The top ten soil metrics that could be easily measured and could be leveraged by practitioners to assess floodplain soil conditions before and after restorations were identified and selected. The best design and construction practices for improving soil health on floodplains are presented. We also recommend that the current crediting approaches and regulatory mechanisms for stream restorations be updated to incentivize soil health. The inclusion of soil health will help us attain the ecological services and functional uplift goals that are being targeted by environmental agencies and the restoration community.

Automated summary

Soil health is not considered in current stream and floodplain restorations, which may hinder their full restoration and ecological benefits. The lack of procedures and metrics for evaluating soil health is a major reason for its exclusion in floodplain restorations. This study provides a blueprint for including soil health, emphasizing easily accessible approaches for practitioners, and presents the challenges, metrics, and practices for improving floodplain soil health.