Mountain meadows are ecologically important, but often degraded, groundwater dependent ecosystems that retain and store water in upland forested landscapes. They tend to occur in low-gradient, broad valleys where water naturally slows and sediment accumulates, making them efficient locations for restoration. Over a century and a half of land use has degraded many meadows in the Sierra Nevada, reducing their hydrological and ecological functionality. Process-based restoration is a potentially economical and scalable restoration approach for numerous, small, remote, degraded mountain meadows. The approach uses onsite materials and leverages fluvial processes to achieve restoration objectives including increases in wetted area, groundwater elevations, sediment capture, and development of multithreaded channels. These changes in hydrological functionality can lead to improved ecological function over time. This study compares pre- and post-restoration surface and groundwater conditions in a degraded riparian meadow in the Sierra Nevada, California U.S.A. to understand changes in meadow hydrogeomorphic function following process-based restoration. Restoration included the installation of 35 postless beaver dam analog structures in ~1 km of incised meadow channel. Stage-discharge data at the inlet and outlet of the project area were paired with groundwater data collected from 15 wells distributed across the meadow in a power law model to estimate increased water storage of 3700 m 3 (~3 acre-ft) due to restoration. After the wet winter of 2023, we estimated that pools behind structures filled to over half their volume with fine sediment. We also applied hydrodynamic modeling to evaluate fluvial changes at high flows and found that restoration increased flow complexity and wetted surface area. These short-term responses highlight the potential speed and effectiveness of low-tech, process-based restoration in achieving desired restoration outcomes.

Runoff and erosion can increase after wildfires, but little is known about the effects of wildfire plus post-fire salvage logging, or mitigating these effects. Past research has identified soil compaction and reduced surface cover as controls on runoff and erosion, but the relative contributions of these changes are not clear. Two years after high severity burning by the 2015 Valley Fire in California, replicated rainfall simulations were carried out in four soil conditions across compaction and cover factors: uncompacted/compacted by logging machinery and bare soil/60% wood slash-cover. Runoff after 71 mm of rainfall totaled 27 mm in the uncompacted bare plots and 39 mm in the compacted bare plots. Runoff in the slash-covered plots decreased by 50% and 33% as compared to the uncompacted and compacted bare plots, respectively, although none of the differences in runoff were significant. Rainsplash averaged 30 g for the bare plots, regardless of compaction, and decreased significantly by 70% on slash-covered plots. Sediment yield totaled 460 and 818 g m-2 for the uncompacted and compacted bare plots, respectively, and slash significantly reduced these amounts by 72% and 69%, respectively. Our results showed that post-fire soil erosion in high severity burned unlogged areas was still very high two years after the wildfire. The combination of wildfire and salvage logging doubled soil erosion by increases in both runoff amount and sediment concentration. Antecedent soil moisture (dry or wet) was the dominant factor for runoff, while surface cover was the dominant factor for erosion and sediment delivery. Covering the soil with slash reduced both runoff and erosion, suggesting this treatment would reduce long‐term sediment delivery from burned areas and skid trails. Saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) and interrill erodibility (Ki) calculated from these simulations confirmed previous research and will support modeling efforts related to wildfire and post-fire salvage logging.