RESTORING ENVIRONMENTAL FLOWS THROUGH ADAPTIVE RESERVOIR MANAGEMENT: PLANNING, SCIENCE, AND IMPLEMENTATION THROUGH THE SUSTAINABLE RIVERS PROJECT

River managers worldwide are increasingly addressing flow needs for ecosystem processes and services in their management plans for dams and reservoirs. However, while planning and scientific assessments have advanced substantially, successful re-operation of infrastructure to achieve environmental benefits has been more limited. The Sustainable Rivers Project (SRP) was formalized in 2002, as a national partnership between the United States Army Corps of Engineers and The Nature Conservancy to define and implement environmental flows through adaptive reservoir management. The Project has focused on eight demonstration basins containing 36 Corps dams, but is designed to direct the collective experience from these sites to help guide agency-wide operational changes for as many as 600 dams to benefit up to 80,000 river kilometres and tens of thousands of hectares of related floodplain and estuarine habitat. This paper summarizes the progress to date on defining and implementing environmental flows through the SRP, and evaluates the technical, social, legal, and institutional factors that act as dominant enabling conditions and constraints to implementation.