In the Mid-Atlantic, the focus of stream restoration is primarily nutrient and sediment load reduction and stabilization. Often, biological monitoring is overlooked because it is not the primary goal of restoration or it is seen as too risky to claim ecological uplift because the overall watershed conditions are not being improved. Creating project specific goals based on the pre-existing conditions and design features better highlights successes and failures in practices intended to attract or maintain biological communities. RES is conducting a long-term effort of pre- and post-restoration biological monitoring to help define what is achievable in different types of watersheds and with different types of restoration, specifically looking at which design features contribute to in-stream ecological uplift. While we are still at the beginning stages of data collection, we are already seeing valuable results that will help us predict aquatic biological response to stream restoration. I will present on several divergent sites in Virginia that represent the types of responses we have been seeing and the trends and conclusions we have made on making predictions on achievable ecological uplift on a site by site basis.