November10, 2021 10 AM to 2 PM MST

Webinar will be conducted on Zoom: Zoom Link. No advanced registration is necessary. Just show up at 10 AM MST. For those that cannot make it, the webinar will be recorded and posted to this page.

Webinar
Zoom Link

Webinar Purpose

Overview of Beaver Restoration Assessment Tool, the model outputs, and how to use it for LTPBR planning specifically in Montana/Dakotas.

Format / Agenda

There will be a mix of lecture, interactive desktop exercises, and discussion throughout. Rough Agenda:

• 10:00 to 10:15 - Introductions & Agenda Overview
• 10:15 to 11:00 - Overview of Montana BRAT and its Applications – (including 15 minute Q&A) to serve broadest possible audience
• 11:00 to 12:00 - Making BRAT work for me in my rivercape – demo and illustration of using BRAT outputs in a locality to support the LTPBR conservation planning process and/or adaptive beaver management plan.
• 12:00 to 12:30
• 12:30 to 1:45 How does BRAT actually work? – to serve a more self-selecting audience of folks who want to understand what the model does.
• 1:45 to 2:00 -BRAT field assignment – 15-minute assignment illustrating how to interrogate and apply BRAT on a specific stream reach.

The webinar will be recorded and all webinar resources will be posted on this page as a resource following the live event.

Webinar Sponsor

Thanks to the generous support of the Bureau of Land Management’s Montana/Dakotas Office. Specifically, this webinar was envisioned by Alden Shallcross (Hydrologist – State Lead: Aquatic Habitat Management) to support the overall improvement of riverscape health.

@BLM_MTDKs

Webinar Audience

The target audience for the webinar is BLM staff and partners in conservation throughout Montana and the Dakotas. The webinar will help those interested in maintaining or improving the health of riverscapes with low-tech PBR and the help of beaver.

Webinar Host

Joseph Wheaton^1,2

Professor or Riverscapes, Ecogeomorphologist

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Preparation Prior to Webinar

1. Read/Skim Chapter 3 of design manual. We will be discussing tools that help estimate riverscape health condition and potential (described in Chapter 2 ) and address questions posed during planning (discussed in Chapter 3 and its Appendices) .
2. If you don’t already have a RC Warehouse account, create an account at the Riverscapes Consortium’s Warehouse. See here if you need instructions or assitance creating an account.
3. Once you have created an account, get access to the “BLM Montana and Dakota’s” program by filling out this form. See here for instructions

Optional

We will do this in exercises during workshop, so if you don’t get to this ahead of time, do not panic.

1. Optionally, install RAVE, download the example projects we will use for demos, and unzip locally:
   • BRAT for HUC 10090102
   • BRAT for HUC 10040204
   • BRAT for HUC 10020003

See here if you need instructions on downloading data

1. Optionally, explore MNH’s Montana BRAT map and come up with questions.

Slides, Videos & Exercises

Slides

Webinar Slides (slides include hyperlinks to resources)

1. Roll Call and Agenda

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1. Roll Call and Agenda Alden provided an introduction and overview of why we're here and we went around and met all the participants.

Dam Count Exercise

On Warm Springs Creek in Google Earth, we counted the number of beaver dams from French Gulch confluence upstream to the Gumbo Creek confluence. You can use the Google Earth placemark feature to keep track. See how here:

Map Link

Do exercise in Google Earth

How to video.

Tutorial Video - Using Google Earth to identify beaver dams.

How many beaver dams did you count?

Resources

References

For BRAT the main publication is Macfarlane et al. (2015).

• Macfarlane W.W. , Wheaton J.M., Bouwes N., Jensen M., Gilbert J.T., Hough-Snee N., and Shivick J. 2015. Modeling the capacity of riverscapes to support beaver dams. Geomorphology. DOI: 10.1016/j.geomorph.2015.11.019.

Model

The Beaver Restoration Assessment Tool (BRAT) was developed by the Riverscapes Consortium over the past decade. Generous support has made the tool and its outputs freely available.

The current version of BRAT we will be exploring outputs is a production-grade tool that is run in the cloud on AWS.

The old version of BRAT (refered to as pyBRAT) produces very similar outputs (in shapefiles instead of geopackages), but is a operational-grade tool with ArcPy dependcies that is run manually on one’s machine.

BRAT Capacity Inference System - Paper Form

Although “running” BRAT in the cloud or locally requires a high degree of GIS expertise, any one can “run” the model by answering some simpe questions and using a look up table. One of the exercses we will do is fill out the BRAT CIS form.

Montana BRAT Data

In Montana/Dakotas, BLM has made these outputs available through both the Riverscapes Warehouse and through Montana Natural Heritage’s Montana BRAT project.

Download BRAT Data from Riverscapes Warehouse

Our example Riverscapes Projects we will use for demos:

There are 115 HUC 8s (view this USGS map to find your HUC) in Montana, 55 in North Dakota, and 56 in South Dakota. As part of Montana Natural Heritage’s Montana BRAT project, pyBRAT was run for 172 of these HUC 8s (that intersect some BLM land) . In this workshop we will use these three HUC 8s as examples to get to know BRAT:

• BRAT for HUC 10090102 (Lower Tongue Watershed) as a Eastern Montana Example
• BRAT for HUC 10040204 (Box Elder Watershed) as a Central Montana Example that corresponds to where we taught the 2019 WLFW NRCS Low-Tech Riparian Restoration Workshop (In Roy for fieldwork and Lewistown for classroom)
• BRAT for HUC 10020003 (Ruby Watershed) as a Western Montana Example

LTPBR Manual

For the webinar, we will refer to the Design Manual and the Pocket Guide, which are both available free digitally.

• Wheaton J.M., Bennett S.N., Bouwes, N., Maestas J.D. and Shahverdian S.M. (Editors). 2019. Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration of Riverscapes: Design Manual. Version 1.0. Utah State University Restoration Consortium. Logan, UT. 286 pp. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.19590.63049/2.

Chat Log

This is mainly just links that were shared as we went and a few questions and answers.