British River Structure and Function: Implications for Restoration

The will commence with an overview of the current state of our rivers, the opportunities to improve our rivers (EU WFD etc.) and the need to understand how our rivers behave, rather than imposing preconceived 'solutions' to local problems. This will introduce the main river typology explaining the format and chapters in Section A of the book. 

We propose an innovative approach in Sections B and C of the volume.  This will be composed of shorter, but no less important, contributions from practitioners / regulators detailing their most relevant examples of pristine functioning river types in the UK. This will contain location and wider river context data, pictorial information and qualitative descriptions of the sites and will be collated to correspond with the typology used for the main chapters in Section A.  Section C will follow the same format but will showcase restoration sites on each of the river types. By bringing current case study material into the volume and juxtaposing it with the science base, readers will be given a unique insight into how river science is used in practical restoration approaches.

A summary chapter will consider UK river types and function and review the innovative approaches outlined.  This will allow users to proactively plan projects to restore fluvial processes concentrating on river-catchment linkages.  Understanding of the latter is key in designing robust yet sensitive restoration schemes which also anticipate potential river system response to re-naturalisation.