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Beavers (Castor canadensis) have not been adequately included in critical zone research, yet they can affect multiple critical zone processes across the terrestrial-aquatic interface of river corridors. River corridors (RC) provide a disproportionate amount of ecosystem services. Over time, beaver activity, including submersion of woody vegetation, burrowing, dam building, and abandonment, can impact critical zone processes in the river corridor by influencing landscape evolution, biodiversity, geomorphology, hydrology, primary productivity, and biogeochemical cycling. In particular, they can effectively restore degraded riparian areas and improve water quality and quantity, causing implications for many important ecosystem services. Beaver-mediated river corridor processes in the context of a changing climate require investigation to determine how both river corridor function and critical zone processes will shift in the future. Recent calls to advance river corridor research by leveraging a critical zone perspective can be strengthened through the explicit incorporation of animals, such as beavers, into research projects over space and time. This article illustrates how beavers modify the critical zone across different spatiotemporal scales, presents research opportunities to elucidate the role of beavers in influencing Western U.S. ecosystems, and, more broadly, demonstrates the importance of integrating animals into critical zone science.
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This content will become publicly available on November 1, 2025
Re-centering relations: The trouble with quick fix approaches to beaver-based restoration
This Forum brings together river restoration researchers and practitioners to stimulate debate about the recent explosion of interest in North American beaver (Castor canadensis) and beaver-related practices in North American river restoration science and management. While the beaver is described in recent literature as a low-cost, high-impact ecosystem engineer capable of minimizing the impacts of wildfire, drought, flood, and disturbance across the continent, we consider the importance of shifting from a focus on prescriptive results—on what beaver get humans—and towards engaging with beaver in relational process. Through a set of provocations that highlight the potential damage beaver fixes pose for stream restoration, for beaver, and for the lands and waters they inhabit with humans and other beings, we invite settler river scientists, river restorationists, and river thinkers to question the increasingly taken-for-granted logic of beaver as isolated creature, ecosystem engineer, and river savior; defer to the millennia of theory about beaver and their relations on this continent, partnering with beaver and with the Native peoples who have known them longest; and reconnect beaver back to people, place, and time in support of lively, dynamic, diverse, flourishing river systems across the continent.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2009353
- PAR ID:
- 10548475
- Publisher / Repository:
- Geoforum
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Geoforum
- Volume:
- 156
- Issue:
- C
- ISSN:
- 0016-7185
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 104121
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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