Restoration Under Uncertainty: Designing Streams for What We Don’t Control
Austin Byers, MSc, CERP
Stantec
Baltimore, MD
Stream restoration is increasingly expected to perform under conditions that designers cannot fully predict or control—nonstationary hydrology, altered sediment regimes, evolving land use, climate change, funding uncertainty, and long-term maintenance constraints. Yet many restoration approaches continue to rely on assumptions of stability and precision that rarely persist beyond construction. This presentation argues for a shift in stream restoration practice toward explicitly designing for uncertainty rather than attempting to design it away. Drawing on contemporary restoration challenges, this thought leadership discussion reframes uncertainty as a fundamental design parameter. It explores how concepts such as redundancy, structural and geomorphic flexibility, tolerance for variability, and adaptive maintenance can be embedded into restoration strategies without abandoning ecological intent. Rather than optimizing for a single predicted condition, resilient stream designs acknowledge a range of plausible futures and prioritize persistence, recoverability, and risk reduction. By examining how uncertainty manifests across planning, design, construction, and post construction performance, this presentation encourages practitioners to rethink what success looks like in constrained and changing watersheds. The goal is not to lower expectations, but to align restoration outcomes with the realities of dynamic systems—producing projects that are more transparent, more durable, and ultimately more defensible over time.
About Austin Byers, MSc, CERP
Austin is a Principal and Business Center Practice Lead in Environmental Services for the Mid-Atlantic and the Nature-based Solutions (NbS) Infrastructure Sector Lead for North America. With 17+ years of experience in ecological assessments, restoration/mitigation design, and permitting, he is a Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioner and a lead expert in NbS designs at the nexus of the built and natural environment.