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Riparian areas account for as little as 2% of the settled portion of Alberta�s landscape, but they provide essential ecological functions, including water storage, forage production and critical habitat for two thirds of wildlife species, including threatened and endangered species. Healthy functioning riparian areas offer resiliency, ecological services and stability. There are several tools that are useful for evaluating restoration success in disturbed uplands, but restoration monitoring tools for streams and wetlands tend to be focused more on avoidance of wet areas or compensation for environmental damages when wetlands are disturbed. For the past two decades, Cows and Fish has led and championed the use of Riparian Health Assessment tools to help land managers, landowners, livestock producers and others to improve riparian health and mitigate and reduce the negative impacts of land use on watersheds. However, we increasingly find that the tool is also useful for planning and monitoring restoration of natural and human-caused disturbances affecting streams and wetlands. The riparian health assessment promotes understanding of the ecological elements and functions that must be recovered to successfully restore riparian areas, and provides a set of metrics based on scientific parameters�that are useful in evaluating whether restoration efforts have been successful at achieving a healthy, functioning riparian area. The poster will demonstrate the riparian health assessment tool and provide specific illustrations and examples of how the tool can be used to plan and evaluate restoration of riparian habitat, while at the same time creating a common language between technical experts, land managers and land practicioners.