Course Materials

Week 1 - Intro + Beaver Biology, Fur-Trapping History, & Dam Building

Intro Lecture Slides
Field trip to Rock Creek - On Saturday, January 13, 2018, four of us went up to Rock Creek to check out some beaver dam complexes and work of an active beaver colony through the winter. Contribute your own photos to this album. We flew the drone and took a few pics from above to get some different perspective.

During the field trip, we stopped off on the mainstem Blacksmith Fork and got a little perspective on valley settings and geomorphic context within which beaver build these dams.

Example of different degrees of confinement leading to different valley settings (from Wheaton et al. (2015).

For, some follow up background and context on valley setting you can refer to:

2015. Fryirs K, Wheaton JM, and Brierley G. An approach for measuring confinement and assessing the influence of valley setting on river forms and processes. Earth Surface Processes & Landforms. DOI: 10.1002/esp.3893
2015. Wheaton JM, Fryirs K, Brierley G, Bangen S, Bouwes N, and O’Brien G. Geomorphic Mapping and Taxonomy of Fluvial Landforms. Geomorphology. 248: 273-295. DOI: 10.1016/j.geomorph.2015.07.010

Beaver dam complex on Rock Creek near its fan and confluence with the Blacksmith Fork River (click on photo for album)

Week 2: Beaver Dam Feedbacks

Beaver Ecosystem Engineering & Feedbacks (slides)

References that were Discussed:

Bush, BM and Wissinger, SA, 2016. Invertebrates in Beaver-Created Wetlands and Ponds. 411-449. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-24978-0_12. - Susan's former advisor published this very informative chapter on ecological feedbacks of beaver-created wetlands and ponds on invertebrates.

Week 3 - Riverscape Capacity to Support Beaver Dams

Lecture Slides

In Class Exercise - BRAT_Bridge_Creek.zip
BRAT Tutorials
BRAT Model

Introduction to beaver ASSISTED restoration

Overview of Restoration with Beaver Slides (this year - Scott Shahveridan's slides)
Overview of Restoration with Beaver Slides (last year)

Running BRAT

This week we will learn how to run BRAT.

Beaver Translocation

Scott spoke with us about Beaver Translocation.

We read and discussed:

Woodruff K and Pollock MM. 2015. Relocating Beaver. In: Pollock MM, Lewallen G, Woodruff K, Jordan CE and Castro JM (Eds), The Beaver Restoration Guidebook: Working with Beaver to Restore Streams, Wetlands, and Floodplains. Version 1.0. United States Fish and Wildlife Service: Portland, OR, pp. 61-81.
McKinstry MC and Anderson SH. 2003. Survival, fates, and success of transplanted beavers, Castor canadensis, in Wyoming. Canadian Field-Naturalist. 116(1): 60-68.

Living with Beaver and Adaptive management

We will prepare our own adaptive beaver management plan for the City of Logan. We will use the following as examples:

Portugal, E., Wheaton, JM., Sorenson, K., Majerova, M., Hunt, B., Bouwes, N. 2015. Hardware Ranch Adaptive Beaver Management Plan. Prepared for Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. Logan, Utah. 26 Pages. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29887.30883
Portugal E., Wheaton, JM., Bouwes, N. 2015. Spring Creek Wetland Area Adaptive Beaver Management Plan. Prepared for Walmart Stores Inc. and the City of Logan. Logan, Utah. 25 Pages. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2075.3361
Wheaton JM. 2013. Scoping Study and Recommendations for an Adaptive Beaver Management Plan. Prepared for Park City Municipal Corporation. Logan, Utah, 30 pp. DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.903648.
Shahverdian SM, Macfarlane WW and Wheaton JM. 2016. MEMO: Westerly Creek Beaver Dam Capacity Assessment: Developing Realistic Expectations for Beaver Dam Activity. Prepared for Muller Engineering Company, Anabranch Solutions, Logan, UT, 24 pp. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.34120.93446

There are lots of good resources for 'living with beaver' and mitigation out there. The Beaver Institute is an excellent resource for such information, and Beaver Solutions is a great example of a company that helps implement such solutions.