Stream restoration has become an increasingly common strategy utilized by watershed restoration agencies to obtain nutrient and sediment reductions to comply with Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) and Total Maximum Daily Load requirements. As such, practitioners are seeking more efficient methods to evaluate stream reaches where sediment delivery could be reduced, and to report credits for sediment and nutrient reductions. Traditional methods to estimate credit for streambank stabilization include monitoring and modeling approaches, such as the Bank and Nonpoint Source Consequences of Sediment (Rosgen, 2001) method used for MS4 crediting in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and in other parts [...]

National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Phase I Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) permittees in Maryland have been conducting monitoring for more than 20 years to meet their permit requirements, the most recent of which specifies the use of monitoring to assess the effectiveness of watershed restoration efforts. The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) directed the MS4s to focus their monitoring efforts on small watersheds where significant restoration opportunities were planned, and to conduct pre- and post-restoration monitoring to evaluate whether the best management practices (BMPs) were effective in restoring physical, chemical and/or biological conditions. As a result [...]