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River management

What's best on the banks?

Nature volume 388, pages 328–329 (1997)Cite this article

In the United States, strategies for the conservation of aquatic ecosystems emphasize the protection and restoration of streamside (riparian) forests1,2 — that is, current official policy encourages the reversion of streamside areas to mature forest. But it has not always been thus, and throughout most of the twentieth century US government agencies have actively removed wood debris from channels to improve navigation or allow fish easier passage. These practices began to change in the 1970s, after it was recognized that the accumulation of coarse organic debris from forests leads to the greater incidence of ecologically beneficial cover, slow-water refugia and pools, and increased sediment storage3.

Writing in Geology4, Stanley Trimble has introduced a new twist into this arena. He studied four reaches of Coon Creek, in the state of Wisconsin, each of which has grassed and forested stretches. His surveys show that channels flowing through forests tend to be wider than channels flowing through grasslands, an effect he attributes to the tendency for wood debris to concentrate flow into channel banks and erode them. From differences in average channel cross-sectional area, Trimble infers that clearing of riparian forests can decrease downstream sediment loads, and thereby help to decrease the downstream effects of land management, because grass cover can protect banks against erosion and increase local sediment deposition. Although he acknowledges the danger of arguing from a single case study, Trimble warns that the restoration of riparian forests may not be good public policy.

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Figure 1: The issue of whether the banks of streams and rivers are better left to revert to forest or not is a complicated one, for streamside trees can either stabilize or erode the banks on which they grow.

References

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  1. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, 98195, Washington, USA

    David R. Montgomery

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  1. David R. Montgomery
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Montgomery, D. What's best on the banks?. Nature 388, 328–329 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/40976

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