How can ecosystem ecology learn from and inform fisheries restoration?

Fisheries scientists and managers often undertake stream restoration projects with the goal of improving both physical habitat quality and fish recruitment via bottom-up food web pathways.  Yet, the nutrients and organic matter fluxes and transformations that underpin bottom-up pathways are rarely monitored. Here, we highlight unique partnerships between fisheries managers, fish ecologists, and ecosystem ecologists designed to restore systems and study magnitude and direction of effects on ecosystem processes, fish populations, and their prey.  In a climate of limited funding, these projects are also ideal opportunities to conduct experimental whole-ecosystem manipulations.