Vegetation thriving within the meandering channel of Benson Slash Creek.
Riffles now provide habitat for aquatic species like insect lervae, mussels, and fish.
Buttonbush and willow saplings will shade the stream as they grow, cooling the water and reducing evaporative loss.
Benson Creek lies within the Cache River Watershed in the Arkansas delta. The Cache and its main tributary Bayou DeView suffer from degraded water quality, characterized by elevated levels of nutrients, biocides, and (most noticeably) 
sediment. According to locals, as recently as 50 years ago most of the low-gradient rivers and streams in eastern Arkansas still "ran clear... and (were) deeper and narrower as well."
New scientific evidence has shown that sediment and nutrient-laden waters not ony degrade habitat close to the source, but can affect downstream systems, sometimes hundreds 
of miles away. Degraded water quality in Arkansas has been shown to contribute to the second-largest zone of oxygen-depleted coastal waters in the world. Also known as the "dead zone," the hypoxic waters off the Louisiana coast (where the Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico) have more than doubled in size since 1984.
One of the main goals of this stream restoration is to serve as a demonstration site for water quality improvement within the Lower Mississippi River region. Our monitoring plan includes installing and collecting data from a continuous sampling station located just downstream of our 
project area. This station, along with 6 others dispersed within the Cache watershed, is part of a larger study by The Nature Conservancy, in partnership with Arkansas Natural Resources Commission (ANRC), to understand the sources of elevated suspended sediment in the Cache River and Bayou DeView
The success or failure of this stream restoration depends on many factors, many of which are intangible and difficult to monitor. It can be effectively judged, however, based on how the affected ecosystem responds to our efforts. As with all of our restoration projects, we are monitoring the pre- and post-resoration site conditions in order to determine measures of success.
One aspect of our monitoring plan for Benson Slash Creek is instream biological sampling of fishes and macroinvertebrates (small 'bugs' including insect larvae, crustaceans, and mollusks). Following guidelines outlined in EPA's "Rapid Bio-Assessment 
Protocol," fish are stunned with a jolt of electricity applied from a backpack electrofisher. They are collected in a bucket, identified in the field, and subsequently released. Macroinvertebrates, on the other hand, are collected with D-frame nets and identified in the laboratory.
In addition, we have set up plant monitoring plots criss-crossing the floodplain and adjacent terraces of Benson Creek in order to monitor how the plant life responds to the site's new hydraulic regime. I am personally excited to watch the gradual change from agricultural field to bottomland hardwood forest.
