2024-B11 Evaluating whether Nature Based Solutions and rewilding can contribute towards successful river restoration

Overview

Virtually every river in the UK has a legacy of significant modification by human activities with major implications for hydrology, geomorphology and ecosystem function. Recently there has been increasing interest in “nature-based solutions” and working at landscape scales in order to restore river processes and ecosystems. As well as river restoration, this catchment-based focus can include techniques such as natural flood management and rewilding. However, there is still significant debate regarding best practise in river restoration, particularly in the face of a changing land-use and climate context. The lack of opportunity to practice and gather evidence of landscape scale restoration projects across whole river catchments remains a major challenge. Yet we need to understand how specific restoration and rewilding activities influence ecosystem services at a landscape scale, to guide river management strategies under current and future scenarios of environmental change. To do this requires well planned restoration coupled with appropriate monitoring that can identify causal relationships which have been largely missing from restoration science. This project offers the opportunity to not only gather data on a diverse range of rewilding and restoration activities, but to help shape the project design and subsequent monitoring approach and communicate findings to a diverse range of stakeholders.  

You will join a vibrant interdisciplinary research group and conduct field-based research on the River Blythe currently undergoing restoration and rewilding (Figure 1). Working closely with project partners you will design and undertake field experiments alongside planned restoration works, combined with environmental survey, and historical data analysis from the River Blythe and other key restoration case studies. Specifically, the project will test the influence of catchment scale land-use change on the efficacy of conventional reach and site scale riparian corridor restoration works.  The main objectives will be to: (1) Develop an understanding of the range of demands and services required of the study river by stakeholders, the potential synergies and conflicts between them, and how they shape river restoration goals (2) Assess the response of river processes to restoration works and how effective these are at enhancing the ecosystem services required by stakeholders; and, (3) Disentangle the effects of restoration works on the riparian corridor from land use changes also occurring within the wider catchment to understand where these interact. The results of the research will provide a basis to inform future restoration and management strategies.  

Figure 1: The River Blythe where the legacy of river management (straightening and dredging) has significantly degraded in channel habitat diversity.