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| Scientific and management values of the River Styles® framework |
| Key attributes of the River Styles Framework as an integrative river classification scheme |
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The River Styles framework:
- Works with the natural diversity of river forms and processes. Due recognition is given to the continuum of river morphology, extending from bedrock-imposed conditions to fully alluvial variants (some of which may comprise unincised valley floors). The River Styles framework can be applied in any environmental setting.
- Is framed in terms of generic, open-ended procedures that are applied in a catchment-specific manner. Reaches are not 'pigeon-holed' into rigid categories; rather, new variants are added to the existing range of River Styles based on a set of discrete attributes (i.e. the valley setting, geomorphic unit assemblage, channel planform, and bed material texture).
- Evaluates river behaviour, indicating how a river adjusts within its valley setting. This is achieved through appraisal of the form-process associations of geomorphic units that make up each River Style. Assessment of these building blocks of rivers, in both channel and floodplain zones, guides interpretation of the range of behaviour within any reach. As geomorphic units include both erosional and depositional forms, and characterise ALL riverscapes, they provide an inclusive and integrative tool for classification exercises.
- Provides a catchment-framed baseline survey of river character and behaviour throughout a catchment. Application of a nested hierarchical arrangement enables the integrity of site-specific information to be retained in analyses applied at catchment or regional levels. Downstream patterns and connections among reaches are examined, demonstrating how disturbance impacts in one part of a catchment are manifest elsewhere over differing timeframes. Controls on river character and behaviour, and downstream patterns of River Styles, are explained in terms of their physical setting and prevailing biophysical fluxes.
- Evaluates recent river changes in context of longer-term landscape evolution, framing river responses to human disturbance in context of the 'capacity for adjustment' of each River Style. Identification of reference conditions provides the basis to determine how far from its 'natural' condition the contemporary river sits and interpret why the river has changed. Analysis of reaches at differening stages of geomorphic adjustment at differing localities (ie space-time transformation or ergodic reasoning) is applied to interpret evolutionary pathways for reaches of the same type.
- Provides a meaningful basis to compare type-with-type. From this, the contemporary geomorphic condition of the river is assessed. Analysis of downstream patterns of River Styles and their changes throughout a catchment, among other considerations, provides key insights with which to determine geomorphic river recovery potential. This assessment, in turn, provides a physical basis to predict likely future river structure and function.
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| Key management applications of the River Styles® framework |
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The River Styles framework:
- Provides a basis to order a nested hierarchy of physical information in a consistent, coherent, and integrative manner, presenting a systematic and meaningful basis for communication. From this, information gaps, and the need for more detailed assessments of biophysical information, can be determined. Catchment-framed assessments provide a template onto which finer scale resolution work can be added, without compromising the integrity of the information base for the catchment as a whole.
- Shows how the physical structure of rivers throughout a catchment provides a template to evaluate interactions of biophysical processes. A consistent basis is provided to appraise issues of uniqueness, rarity, naturalness, geodiversity, and representativeness.
- Helps to develop proactive, rather than reactive, management strategies that 'work with nature', ensuring that site-specific strategies are linked within a reach and catchment-based 'vision'.
- Determines realistic 'target conditions' for river rehabilitation, focusing management attention on underlying causes of 'problems', rather than the symptoms of change. This enables specific river rehabilitation treatments to be designed.
- Can be used to more effectively priorities resource allocation to management issues, balancing efforts at river conservation and rehabilitation. This requires differentiation of reaches of high conservation value (in terms of the geodiversity and/or rarity of River Styles) and degraded or stressed rivers. Priorities can be determined within- and between-catchments, presenting an open and transparent physical basis for decision-making.
- Can be used to select representative or reference sites across the range of River Styles in programs to monitor river condition and audit the effectiveness of river management strategies. These benchmarking and monitoring procedures can be applied at scales ranging from within-catchment programs through to regional, State or even National river management programs. For example, classification of wild and scenic rivers can be undertaken to determine the 'best remaining reaches' of different types of rivers, providing an appraisal of which components of diversity and functioning have been compromised and whether these trends can be reversed.
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