Restoration of Degraded Rivers: Challenges, Issues and Experiences

Restoration of Degraded Rivers: Challenges, Issues and Experiences
Author: D.P. Loucks
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2013-04-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9401728941

In the continued quest for increased economic benefits from our water resources, numerous structures and operating policies for controlling the river flow have been built and implemented. These structures and associated operating policies can facilitate navigation; they can provide greater quantities of reliable water supplies to meet agricultural, industrial and municipal water demands; they can generate hydroelectric power and energy; and they can provide increased flood protection, recreation, and other benefits. Over the past half-century we have converted many of our rivers into engineered waterways. These straightened, often periodically dredged, engineered rivers are complete with dikes, reservoirs, weirs, and diversion canals. All this engineering has enhanced economic development. However, as rivers and their floodplains become stressed from the excessive use and misuse of their resources, their contribution to economic development can be threatened. Evidence of economic and ecological degradation, especially in relatively large river systems such as the Danube, the Mississippi, the Rhine, and the Volga, has increased our appreciation of beneficial roles natural aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems play in water quantity and quality management. We have recognized the need to pay more attention to letting nature help us regulate water quantity and quality rather than working against nature and its variabilities and uncertainties. Today there are efforts underway in many developed river basins to 'de engineer' or return these straightened and controlled rivers to a more natural state.

Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems

Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 580
Release: 1992-01-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780309045346

Aldo Leopold, father of the "land ethic," once said, "The time has come for science to busy itself with the earth itself. The first step is to reconstruct a sample of what we had to begin with." The concept he expressedâ€"restorationâ€"is defined in this comprehensive new volume that examines the prospects for repairing the damage society has done to the nation's aquatic resources: lakes, rivers and streams, and wetlands. Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems outlines a national strategy for aquatic restoration, with practical recommendations, and features case studies of aquatic restoration activities around the country. The committee examines: Key concepts and techniques used in restoration. Common factors in successful restoration efforts. Threats to the health of the nation's aquatic ecosystems. Approaches to evaluation before, during, and after a restoration project. The emerging specialties of restoration and landscape ecology.

Restoring Neighborhood Streams

Restoring Neighborhood Streams
Author: Ann L. Riley
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2016-07-12
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1610917405

This book presents the author’s thirty years of practical experience managing long-term stream and river restoration projects in heavily degraded urban environments. Riley provides a level of detail only a hands-on design practitioner would know, including insights on project design, institutional and social context of successful projects, and how to avoid costly and time-consuming mistakes.

River Restoration

River Restoration
Author: Bertrand Morandi
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2021-09-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1119410002

River Restoration River restoration initiatives are now widespread across the world. The research efforts undertaken to support them are increasingly interdisciplinary, focusing on ecological, chemical, physical as well as societal issues. River Restoration: Political, Social, and Economic Perspectives provides a comprehensive overview of research in the field of river restoration in humanities and the social sciences. It illustrates how, in the last thirty years or so, such approaches have evolved and strengthened within the restoration sciences. The scientific community working in this domain has structured itself, often regionally and circumstantially, to critically assess and improve restoration policies and practices. As a research field, river restoration tackles three thematic axes: Human-river interactions – especially perceptions and practices of rivers, and how these interactions can be changed by restoration projects Political processes, with a particular interest in governance and decision-making, and a specific emphasis on the question of public participation in restoration projects Evaluation of the social and economic benefits of river restoration River Restoration: Political, Social, and Economic Perspectives encompasses these three topics, and more, to provide the reader with the most up-to-date and holistic view of this constantly evolving area. The book will be of particular interest to human and social scientists, biophysical scientists (hydrologists, geomorphologists, ecologists), environmental scientists, public policy makers, design or planning officers, and anyone working in the field of river restoration.

Multiple Criteria Optimization

Multiple Criteria Optimization
Author: Xavier Gandibleux
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 515
Release: 2006-04-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0306481073

The generalized area of multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) can be defined as the body of methods and procedures by which the concern for multiple conflicting criteria can be formally incorporated into the analytical process. MCDM consists mostly of two branches, multiple criteria optimization and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). While MCDA is typically concerned with multiple criteria problems that have a small number of alternatives often in an environment of uncertainty (location of an airport, type of drug rehabilitation program), multiple criteria optimization is typically directed at problems formulated within a mathematical programming framework, but with a stack of objectives instead of just one (river basin management, engineering component design, product distribution). It is about the most modern treatment of multiple criteria optimization that this book is concerned. I look at this book as a nicely organized and well-rounded presentation of what I view as ”new wave” topics in multiple criteria optimization. Looking back to the origins of MCDM, most people agree that it was not until about the early 1970s that multiple criteria optimization c- gealed as a field. At this time, and for about the following fifteen years, the focus was on theories of multiple objective linear programming that subsume conventional (single criterion) linear programming, algorithms for characterizing the efficient set, theoretical vector-maximum dev- opments, and interactive procedures.

Groundwater Intensive Use

Groundwater Intensive Use
Author: Andrés Sahuquillo
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2005-06-30
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780415364447

Intensive use of groundwater has resolved the demand for drinking water and, through irrigation, has contributed to the eradication of malnourishment in many developing countries. The spectacular worldwide increase in groundwater use in the last decades, especially in arid and semi-arid regions, has been a silent revolution carried out by millions of small farmers. In some instances, groundwater abstraction has caused problems of quality degradation, excessive drawdown of groundwater levels, land subsidence, reduction of spring and baseflows or degradation of groundwater-dependent ecosystems. Most of these problems could be anticipated, mitigated, or even avoided with more active water agencies, adequate regulations and users’ participation in management. Groundwater Intensive Use contains a selection of papers presented at a symposium held in December 2002 in Valencia, Spain. It constitutes a step forward in creating a greater worldwide awareness of the relevance of groundwater in water resources policy. The book presents new ideas and accounts of recent advances in technical, economic, legal, administrative and political issues. It addresses groundwater development to ecosystems sustainability, through different or complementary approaches. A wide series of case studies from North and South America, Europe, South Asia and North and Sub-Saharan Africa cover the various issues. These case studies represent countries with a wide diversity of social circumstances, from areas in which development is emerging, to communities with a long history of successful groundwater use.

Large-Scale Ecology: Model Systems to Global Perspectives

Large-Scale Ecology: Model Systems to Global Perspectives
Author:
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 690
Release: 2016-10-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0128110953

Advances in Ecological Research is one of the most successful series in the highly competitive field of ecology. This thematic volume focuses on large scale ecology, publishing important reviews that contribute to our understanding of the field. - Presents the most updated information on the field of large scale ecology, publishing topical and important reviews - Provides all information that relates to a thorough understanding of the field - Includes data on physiology, populations, and communities of plants and animals

Environmental Software Systems

Environmental Software Systems
Author: Ralf Denzer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2013-04-17
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0387355030

Environmental Informatics (or Enviromatics) is a maturing subject with interdisciplinary roots in computer science, environmental planning, ecology, economics and other related areas. Its practitioners must be prepared to work with many diverse professional groups. It forms the foundation for computer-assisted environmental protection. This book contains an edited version of papers presented at the 3rd International Symposium on Environmental Software Systems (ISESS '99), which was held at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, from August 30 to September 2, 1999, and was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). The text is divided into six sections: Enviromatics - Introduction; Environmental Issues; Environmental Information Systems - Tools and Techniques; Environmental Information Systems - Implementations; Environmental Decision Support Systems; Specialised Topics. This state-of-the-art volume will be essential reading for computer scientists and engineers, ecologists, and environmental planners and managers.