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Assessing Restoration Effects on River Hydromorphology Using the Process-based Morphological Quality Index in Eight European River Reaches

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Abstract

The Morphological Quality Index (MQI) and the Morphological Quality Index for monitoring (MQIm) have been applied to eight case studies across Europe with the objective of analyzing the hydromorphological response to various restoration measures and of comparing the results of the MQI and MQIm as a morphological assessment applied at the reach scale, with a conventional site scale physical-habitat assessment method. For each restored reach, the two indices were applied to the pre-restoration and post-restoration conditions. The restored reach was also compared to an adjacent, degraded reach. Results show that in all cases the restoration measures improved the morphological quality of the reach, but that the degree of improvement depends on many factors, including the initial morphological conditions, the length of the restored portion in relation to the reach length, and on the type of intervention. The comparison with a conventional site scale physical-habitat assessment method shows that the MQI and MQIm are best suited for the evaluation of restoration effects on river hydromorphology at the geomorphologically-relevant scale of the river reach.

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Acknowledgements

The work incorporated in this paper was funded through the European Union’s FP7 programme under Grant Agreement No. 282656 (REFORM). The present study was developed within the context of Deliverable D6.2 of the REFORM programme. The authors sincerely thank the Associate Editor, Angus Webb, and two anonymous reviewers for their precious comments and feedback.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    B. Belletti, L. Nardi & M. Rinaldi

  2. Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

    B. Belletti

  3. University of Natural Resources and Life Science (BOKU), Institute of Hydrobiology and Aquatic Ecosystem Management, Vienna, Austria

    M. Poppe

  4. Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

    K. Brabec

  5. National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), ISPRA, Italy

    M. Bussettini

  6. Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy

    F. Comiti & E. Marchese

  7. Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warszawa, Poland

    M. Gielczewski, P. Marcinkowski, T. Okruszko & M. Stelmaszczyk

  8. Department of Geosciences, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    B. Golfieri & N. Surian

  9. Finnish Environment Institute, Helsinki, Finland

    S. Hellsten

  10. University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany

    J. Kail

  11. Aquatic Ecology Department, EAWAG, Dübendorf, Switzerland

    A. Paillex

  12. Department of Water Resources and Drinking Water, EAWAG, Switzerland

    M. Schirmer

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  1. B. Belletti
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  2. L. Nardi
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Correspondence to B. Belletti.

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Belletti, B., Nardi, L., Rinaldi, M. et al. Assessing Restoration Effects on River Hydromorphology Using the Process-based Morphological Quality Index in Eight European River Reaches. Environmental Management 61, 69–84 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-017-0961-x

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