Process-Based Ecological River Restoration: Visualizing
Three-Dimensional Connectivity and Dynamic Vectors to Recover Lost
Linkages. G.M. Kondolf, A.J. Boulton, S.J. O'Daniel, G.C. Poole,
F.J. Rahel, E.H. Stanley, E.Wohl, A. Bång, J.
Carlstrom, C. Cristoni, H. Huber, S. Koljonen, P.
Louhi, and K. Nakamura. Ecology and Society. 11(2): 5. 2006.
Human impacts to aquatic ecosystems often involve changes in hydrologic
connectivity and flow regime. Drawing upon examples in the literature
and from our experience, we developed conceptual models and used simple
bivariate plots to visualize human impacts and restoration efforts in
terms of connectivity and flow dynamics. Human-induced changes in
longitudinal, lateral, and vertical connectivity are often accompanied
by changes in flow dynamics, but in our experience restoration efforts
to date have more often restored connectivity than flow dynamics.
Restoration actions have included removing dams to restore fish
passage, reconnecting flow through artificially cut-off side channels,
setting back or breaching levees, and removing fine sediment deposits
that block vertical exchange with the bed, thereby partially restoring
hydrologic connectivity, i.e., longitudinal, lateral, or vertical.
Restorations have less commonly affected flow dynamics, presumably
because of the social and economic importance of water diversions or
flood control. Thus, as illustrated in these bivariate plots, the
trajectories of ecological restoration are rarely parallel with
degradation trajectories because restoration is politically and
economically easier along some axes more than others.
Or...
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