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Allocation of River Flows for Restoration of Floodplain Forest Ecosystems: A Review of Approaches and Their Applicability in Europe

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Abstract

Floodplain forests are flood-dependent ecosystems. They rely on well-timed, periodic floods for the provision of regeneration sites and on tapered flood recession curves for the successful establishment of seedlings. These overbank flood events are described as “regeneration flows.” Once floodplain forest trees are established, in order to grow they also require adequate, although variable, river stage levels or “maintenance flows” throughout the year. Regeneration flows are often synonymous with flood flows and only occur periodically. There is a disparity between this need for varied interannual flows over the decadal time frame and the usual annual cycle of flow management currently used by most river management agencies. Maintenance flows are often closer to established minimum flows and much easier to provide by current operational practices.A number of environmental flow methodologies, developed in North America, Australia, and South Africa are described in this review. They include the needs of the floodplain environment in the management and allocation of river flows. In North America, these methodologies have been put into practice in a number of river basins specifically to restore floodplain forest ecosystems. In Australia and South Africa, a series of related “holistic approaches” have been developed that include the needs of floodplain ecosystems as well as in-channel ecosystems. In most European countries, restoration of floodplain forests takes place at a few localized restoration sites, more often as part of a flood-defense scheme and usually not coordinated with flow allocation decisions throughout the river basin. The potential to apply existing environmental flow methodologies to the management of European floodplain forests is discussed.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been funded by EU research contract: EVK1-CT-1999-00031FLOBAR2 [Floodplain Biodiversity and Restoration 2 (FLOBAR2): Integrated Natural Science and socio-economic approaches to flow management]. We would like to thank Bill Adams, Angela Arthington, Jacky Girel, Chris Joyce, Jackie King, Tim Moss, and Keith Richards for providing references, comments, and advice on the manuscript. Our thinking on the subject of environmental flows has been much helped by discussions with the FLOBAR2 advisory committee, including Peter Allen-Williams (DEFRA), Russell Cryer (RSPB), Mark Diamond (Environment Agency), Nigel Holmes, Gary Kerr (Forestry Commission), Keith Kirby (English Nature), George Peterken, Christoph Zockler (UNEP-WCMC), and people who attended the FLOBAR2 workshop in Cambridge in May 2002. Owen Tucker kindly redrew the figures.

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  1. Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge, CB2 3EN United Kingdom

    Francine M. R. Hughes

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1K 3M4

    Stewart B. Rood

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Hughes, F., Rood, S. Allocation of River Flows for Restoration of Floodplain Forest Ecosystems: A Review of Approaches and Their Applicability in Europe. Environmental Management 32, 12–33 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-003-2834-8

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