Research resource review: River Conservation and Management

Based heavily on the outputs from the international conference ‘River Conservation and Management: 20 Years On’ held in September 2010 in York, UK, this book states that its content (1) is intended for academics, scientists and practitioners interested in river conservation and river management; and (2) seeks to highlight the predicted challenges and future direction for river conservation and management. This review will discuss how successful the text has been in delivering these two elements.

The book comprises four main themes: catchment conservation, ecosystem integrity and threats to river systems; methods and approaches; recovery and rehabilitation; and integrating nature conservation within wider river management. The book concludes with a discussion about dealing with an uncertain future. This approach to grouping chapters allows the reader to focus on a specific topic area, but, nonetheless, there is a lot of synergy and overlap between the subject areas. To some extent, these synergies are made explicit in the introductory chapter by making the point that rivers and streams, unlike other habitats, are rarely completely lost to the landscape, but instead have become severely altered by human-induced alterations: dams, for example, reduce connectivity, and invasive species affect the whole ecosystem balance, with climate change and water quality compounding the impacts on these fragile systems. Given the significant alterations over many years, questions that frame the rest of the book’s content are then posed, such as: what is restoration as opposed to conservation; what are the threats to riverine ecosystems; and what methods should we use to determine conservation and management measures that can increase ecological resilience?

Many of the chapters focus on, or allude to, the implications of climate change in terms of the additional uncertainty that this adds to developing best-practice river conservation and management plans. Ormerod and Durance in Chapter 9, for example, explore the argument that temperature and rainfall pattern changes can have profound impacts on riverine ecosystems, with resultant effects often being complex and contradictory (see also Cosgrove et al. in Chapter 10). This is especially the case in the context of habitat variability or vulnerable ephemeral channels, and it is critical to tease out the links between land management and annual hydrological range. Yet the book recognizes that climate change itself is not the only element that causes significant management problems in rivers, with salinity, over-abstraction and deforestation issues (among others) reviewed from around the world. The importance of the hyporheic zone (broadly defined as the part of the river system that links river flow with the underlying groundwater through the substrate) is also advocated as an important element in the functioning of rivers, and further research is called for to improve our understanding of its true impact, as highlighted by Wood et al. in Chapter 13.

Ecosystem services is a another topic which transcends the stated themes, with the underlying concept that users and service providers need to pay for schemes that can result in the sustainability of services to support both people and biodiversity. The view is that the concept can be understood by everyone and allows for the rebuilding of natural capital for all river systems. Although the book provides some good examples of attempts to implement the concept from a research perspective, it also quite clearly advocates that, while the concept is sound, quantifying ecosystem services is inherently difficult, especially in situations where a service does not have an actual ‘product’ to value, such as a flood protection scheme. There is consequently a danger that some services may be overlooked by policy- and decision-makers. Thus there is an urgent need to develop more accurate valuation methods and direct applications of river restoration/conservation policy-making. Making this link between policy and ecosystem services is one of the main elements considered by Semrau and Hurck in Chapter 19. On the Emscher River in Germany, the concept of ecological importance is linked directly to spatial planning such that it provides a way of evaluating sites of high importance for restoration based on lateral connectivity when possible, developing ecological hotspots, identification of unaffected tributaries as nodes to enable recolonization of flora and fauna, and establishment of opportunities for urban wetland creation to provide floodplain-related habitats and biological reconnections. While Smerau and Huck advocate that the concept has worked well for the Emscher River, other authors explore the limitations of conceptual frameworks; these can provide good ideas but, as demonstrated through the International Water Resources Management (IWRM) approach for managing the multiple competing uses of water resources in catchments, in large complex river basins such as the Yangtze in China there is often too much physical, land-use and cultural variability for practical success. That said, the chapter by Bridgewater et al. does state that maintenance of adequate flows in rivers throughout different seasons (i.e. delivering environmental flows) has been one successful element of this river basin-driven management approach, and implies that many countries are in the process of changing policies to reflect this. This can be especially poignant where drought conditions are a significant problem. Of course, this is only part of the picture, and currently such approaches rarely address issues such as sediment and water quality but nevertheless should be seen as worthy of reflection.

The reader of this text must remember that this conference was held in Europe and therefore discussion about the implementation of the Water Framework Directive was bound to figure highly on the agenda. Many other publications focus on this subject, but what comes through here is the fact that other countries outside the European Community are adopting the principles of the Water Framework Directive (see, in particular, Chapters 29 and 30). The discussion within the book seems to suggest that its relevance to other countries has particularly taken hold in the context of providing a way to deliver ecologically beneficial adaptive management in heavily modified river systems, and as a way to ensure local and national policies protect pristine or near-pristine river systems.

Monitoring and river restoration assessment continues to be an emotive topic and is given due attention within this book. Various chapters advocate the importance of long-term biological- and chemical-change data sets as a way of providing valuable insights into the effectiveness of interventions and this, it is suggested, can lead to better allocation of resources.

Various approaches are discussed, including broad assessment methods that look at habitat trends and morphological condition, and that provide useful tools to evaluate change over time. Such approaches, however, are not necessarily sensitive enough to pick up the individual effects of river restoration or conservation measures at the reach scale. Limitations of different monitoring approaches is an underlying discussion throughout many of the chapters here. Donkins et al. in Chapter 11, for example, discuss the Mean Trophic Rank (MTR) system that was originally developed in the UK for the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. The authors of this chapter ask the question: can Mediterranean river plants translate into quality assessment systems? They attempt to answer this through the use of the MTR as a method but, as is often the case with approaches designed specifically with one question in mind, they are not fit for purpose in another environment or to answer different questions. In the case of the MTR, while successful for use in many UK rivers, translation of the method to other climatic conditions where the eutrophication gradient is higher due to extreme conditions lessens its performance. Best approaches, scale of measurement and whether you should focus on measuring biotic or abiotic parameters form a debate that, while touched upon in this book, is not fully addressed. Linking of project objectives to appropriate monitoring and assessment protocol is barely mentioned, and neither is the issue of who pays to improve the evidence base and understanding of the world’s river systems for both ecological and economic value. A discussion paper of this type would have contributed significantly to the outputs, but perhaps this is a discussion for the future based on the outputs of this book.

Realistically, the book provides a snapshot of the various levels of complexity associated with river management, and reflects on changes over the last 20 years. In that context, it could not hope to discuss every issue in detail. What this book does do well, however, is allow the reader to pause for thought, and it recognizes that, although some river management issues are fundamentally similar throughout the world, others are far more locally specific, depending on a complex mix of economic stability and climate. While scientists and practitioners can learn a significant amount from networking with others and understanding the concepts, methods and frameworks that have been put in place, a great deal of caution must be applied to assuming that any of these elements can be simply transferred from one situation to another; local pressures and variability play a massive role in catchment land use and future trajectories. The effect of this on the management and conservation of riverine environments can be immense and should not be underestimated, especially when we consider that many countries are undergoing physical, chemical and biological degradation, due to population and/or industrial expansion. On that note, there is an underlying call throughout the book for the development of management strategies that can help to increase the resilience of these fragile systems, but sadly the book falls short of taking this discussion forward. It is likely that this could make it difficult for practitioners to engage fully in the subject content, which was one of the book’s aims. That said, the importance of River Restoration Centres, as a way of collecting information and translating scientific concepts such as those discussed in this book into practical documents and outputs, is discussed. Such centres, which are now present across many continents, have been instrumental in disseminating best-practice guidelines and help for a range of interested parties. Yet difficulties still exist in translating concepts into on-the-ground delivery.

Two of the prime examples of river restoration in England are the River Cole and Skerne projects completed nearly 20 years ago. Holmes and Janes, in Chapter 23, review the development of these sites and the challenges encountered during their conception. It was particularly interesting to note that, despite this being one of the founding river restoration projects in Europe, the challenges encountered then are still as poignant now. It is indeed perhaps worrying to note that some of the same messages stated then, in terms of what was required on a practical level, the public support necessary and the development of clear objectives to establish river rehabilitation aims, are much the same now as then. The debate therefore must now be: if we are now aware of the problems and obstacles associated with delivering best-practice river conservation and management, what are we doing in changing our approaches to reflect this knowledge? What the book appears to advocate is that there is an urgent need for a significant paradigm shift in the way we perceive and deliver our river management and conservation to ensure we increase biological resilience, along with societal and economic benefits as commented upon by Large in the concluding chapter. Governments and other policy-makers continue to call for an increase in the evidence base of success and degradation but, as Langford et al. in Chapter 21 stress, it may take 50 years to confidently demonstrate invertebrate recovery after improvements in water quality (for example), due to the natural system perturbations. But can we afford to wait another 50 years to have conclusive evidence before investing in improving the resilience of these fragile systems against the backdrop of constant pressures associated with economic gain and uncertainty surrounding climate change?

In the context of continuous changes in legislation, policies, public perception, climatic variability and advances in science and technology, critically evaluating 20 years of river conservation and then making an assessment of what still remains to be done is clearly a challenge at a countrywide scale, let alone from a global perspective. Overall, this book has successfully tackled this challenge head on and highlighted some key concepts. It will be interesting to see what the next 20 years will herald and whether or not rivers will be given a higher conservation value in terms of the part they play in providing overall ecosystem value.