From microhabitat ecohydraulics to an improved management of river catchments: bridging the gap between scales

Abstract

[EN] Ecohydraulic studies in rivers range from local-scale studies, which target a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying biological responses to microhabitat hydraulics, to large-scale studies, which address the influence of hydro-morphological management on catchment biodiversity. A major challenge in the field is to bridge the gap between local- and large-scale studies, in order to base the large-scale physical management of rivers on general and transferable ecohydraulic processes. This Special Issue includes ten articles that illustrate progresses and difficulties to bridge this gap. It gathers microhabitat-scale studies focused on the identification of major ecohydraulic mechanisms, reach-scale studies that typically target generality and transferability across reaches, and examples of catchment-scale management based on general ecohydrological knowledge. The Special Issue illustrates how ecohydraulics have evolved to better integrate dynamic physical processes, ecological concepts and the consideration of ecosystem services. Although this remains challenging in practice, the Special Issue shows the need to integrate dynamic hydraulic descriptors of the environment for improving the cost-effectiveness of large-scale rivermanagement and restoration. These articles were presented at the 10th International Symposium on Ecohydraulics in Trondheim, Norway (2014), where the first symposium on ecohydraulics was organised 20 years before. The 10th issue of the symposium celebrated 20 years of ecohydraulic research and had about 300 delegates, giving 194 talks and presenting 86 posters.