Further Research: Restoration in Dynamic Contexts

The dynamic qualities of riparian systems challenge traditional conceptions of restoration. Because the baseline condition of our site is constant change, restoration is a process of amplifying geomorphological diversity rather than attempting to return the river to a specific state. Our design intent is to guide disturbance from flooding and mining interventions to increase the diversity of habitat zones within the extraction zone. The next steps of our research beyond this project will integrate tools of analysis to test the performance of various berm iterations.

[In ecological restoration,] “the rules of the game are familiar, the final positions only approximately predictable.” (Lucia Grosse-Bächle, "Strategies between Intervening and Leaving Room", p. 238)

When designing to increase biodiversity in a disturbed riparian system, it is important to recognize the limits of a deterministic or predictive approach to ecosystem restoration. By beginning with the familiar “rules of the game”, we are able to push a certain ecosystem toward increased geodiversity without the need to determine precise outcomes. As Grosse-Bächle notes, designers would do better to approach restoration as a dialectic relationship between humans and nature. Rehabilitation is understood as a “third nature” co-created by natural processes and calculated, specific human interventions (Grosse-Bächle p. 232)

At the quarry site, which has been unintentionally homogenized by monotonous patterns of extraction, we encounter the possibility of a dialogue, or interaction between the sites altered by different levels of disturbance and intervention. Introducing a geomorphologically diverse set of post-extraction sites can produce a greater range of interactions between emerging habitats and thus increase the overall biodiversity of the quarry site.