UC Davis

River restoration projects with the goals of habitat enhancement and improved flood protection involve ecological, structural, and socio-economic river design. The current best practice virtually assesses the hydro-geo-climatic river landscape with remote sensing techniques and two-dimensional numerical modelling. The resulting data inform the flood-safe design of ecohydraulically viable river design features. Here, we demonstrate the application of a novel algorithm for programmatic river landscape optimization as a function of seasonal habitat area gained, physical stability during floods, and construction costs. In a case study on California’s Yuba River (USA), we illustrate the design of an artificial side channel for enhancing the habitat for Pacific salmon. We show that the placement of nature-based engineering, such as native vegetation plantings or large wood can be almost completely automated. In contrast, the automated optimization of ecologically valuable terraforms (self-sustaining morphodynamic structures) remains a challenge for future numerical models and design algorithms.