Restoration of Degraded Rivers: Challenges, Issues and Experiences: 39 (NATO Science Partnership Subseries: 2, 39) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0792349423 ISBN 13: 9780792349426

Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Synopsis

There have been frequent, extensive efforts made over recent decades to develop and manage water resource systems to meet multiple purposes and objectives, especially for large rivers. Control of the spatial and temporal distribution of water in those rivers in order to meet more effectively a variety of economic in-stream and off-stream purposes and uses and increased point and non-point pollutant loadings has often reduced the health of the rivers' aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and decreased the rivers' floodplain and wetland areas. The result has been a loss in ecosystem biodiversity and reduced self-purification capacities and an increase in the magnitude of the peak flows - and economic damage - accompanying major floods.This book focuses on the central issue of how best to design, manage and operate water control facilities so as to meet ecological and environmental as well as economic objectives - objectives that in some ways may be in conflict with one another. Numerous case examples are described, covering the restoration needs and activities taking place in river basins in Central Asia, Eastern and Western Europe and North America.

Methods of organising, planning, financing, managing and negotiating agreements associated with river rehabilitation activities are also presented.

Edition details

• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0792349423
• ISBN 13: 9780792349426
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 494
• Editor: Loucks D.P.