Behind our house lay a and . Though only a few s, it constituted wilde — Ellen E. Wohl

"Rivers are the great shapers of . Rivers transport supplied for hillslope and , in some cases controlling the gradient of the hillslopes (Burbank et al., 1996). As they incise or aggrade to maintain a consistent relationship with their base level, rivers create s that in turn influence local climate; provide travel corridors for animals and humans; and support aquatic and riparian ecosystems that contain some of the Earths highest levels of biodiversity. ... Although the study of rivers is well-established, the great majority of investigators have worked on the lowland rivers where most people live. Mountain rivers began to receive increasing attention as a subset of rivers only during the last two decades of the twentieth century."

"About the time I was trying to decide what kind of I wanted to be, I took a hike along the canyon of the in central Arizona. I remember looking at the s along the canyon and feeling a quiet pride—and wonder—that I now understood how those sandbars got there and why they were located exactly there. Ive always had trouble turning back rather than following just one more bend of the river to see whats ahead. Contemplating those sandbars, I realized I could spend my life following the next bend and the one after that—and the choice was made. I like natural environments. Cities and rural areas, not so much. I also like to read history and biography and tend to make note of relevant river tidbits I come across, such as descriptions of big logjams or abundant beaver dams that travelers described a century ago on rivers that no longer have those features. And I enjoy traveling and seeing new natural places."

"Saving the Dammed is Ellen Wohls homage to s, describing their unique engineering prowess, the wider environmental impacts they exert, and why we should care. Throughout the book, Wohl binds a lifetime of professional riverine experience, observations of her local beaver population, gray literature, and primary literature to convey the benefits of beavers and convince the reader why we need more beaver-modified ecosystems."

"I often think about maps, because so much of what I do involves measurement. To explain features or processes, you must first describe them. In science the description must be precise and to be accepted, and this requires measurement."

"... relatively few people are aware of how nineteenth- and twentieth-century patterns impacted the mountain rivers of the . When I moved to Colorado in 1989, I was impressed by the sparkling water of the mountain rivers, and I too assumed that these were natural, fully functional rivers. It was only after I began to read historical accounts of the Colorado and to examine the streams more closely that I realized how dramatically they had been altered. I began to think of them as virtual rivers, which had the appearance of natural rivers but had lost much of a natural rivers ecosystem functions."

"The and its large tributaries historically hosted an extraordinary assemblage of large-river fish species. The , , , , and ) all have morphological adaptation for life in turbid, fast-flowing waters. Most of these species are now or as a result of flow regulation from s, s, and ."