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In the Sierra Nevada Range a recently adopted and successful restoration technique, the Pond and Plug Method, attempts to raise an incised channel to the meadow surface. This technique takes material available on site to dam the incised channel in several places, which creates a pond behind each plug as the groundwater table rises back to closer to the meadow surface. An old, or occasionally new, stream channel is hydrated or created, on the meadow surface and it is closely connected to the active floodplain. Water flowing through the meadow is now slowed by floodplain spreading, meanders, and roughness from increased vegetation. One proposed benefit of this type of restoration is higher base flow in the late summer months downstream of the projects. This benefit has been observed in some cases, but in other projects the opposite has been observed where prolonged or increased base flow does not extend into the fall, due to the current drought and increased evapotranspiration or deep percolation. Conceptually meadows may act as sponge, storing abundant water from snowmelt or precipitation and releasing water in dry periods; valve, recharging the meadow through springs and regulating water outflow; and drain, water drains from the meadow to a regional aquifer. To test these ideas, we studied eight restored meadows over three summers for patterns in meadow hydrology. Once the meadows or parts of meadows have been defined as one of the three model types this study hopes to link these models with the local geology, soils, meadow gradient, and or meadow geography.