Lise Vaudor

How is success or failure in river restoration projects evaluated? Feedback from French restoration projects.

Since the 1990s, French operational managers and scientists have been involved in the environmental restoration of rivers. The European Water Framework Directive (2000) highlights the need for feedback from restoration projects and for evidence-based evaluation of success. Based on 44 French pilot projects that included such an evaluation, the present study includes: 1) an introduction to restoration projects based on their general characteristics 2) a description of evaluation strategies and authorities in charge of their implementation, and 3) a focus on the evaluation of results and the links between these results and evaluation strategies. The results show that: 1) the quality of an evaluation strategy often remains too poor to understand well the link between a restoration project and ecological changes; 2) in many cases, the conclusions drawn are contradictory, making it difficult to determine the success or failure of a restoration project; and 3) the projects with the poorest evaluation strategies generally have the most positive conclusions about the effects of restoration. Recommendations are that evaluation strategies should be designed early in the project planning process and be based on clearly-defined objectives.

Monitoring gravel augmentation in a large regulated river and implications for process‐based restoration

The artificial gravel augmentation of river channels is increasingly being used to mitigate the adverse effects of river regulation and sediment starvation. A systematic framework for designing and assessing such gravel augmentations is still lacking, notably on large rivers. Monitoring is required to quantify the movement of augmented gravel, measure bedform changes, assess potential habitat enhancement, and reduce the uncertainty in sediment management. Here we present the results of an experiment conducted in the Rhine River (French and German border). In 2010, 23 000 m3 of sediments (approximately the mean annual bedload transport capacity) were supplied in a by-passed reach downstream of the Kembs dam to test the feasibility of enhancing sediment transport and bedform changes. A 620-m-long and 12-m-wide gravel deposit was created 8 km downstream from the dam. Monitoring included topo-bathymetric surveys, radio-frequency particle tracking using passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags, bed grain size measurement, and airborne imagery. Six surveys performed since 2009 have been described (before and after gravel augmentation, and after Q2 and Q15 floods). The key findings are that (i) the augmented gravel was partially dispersed by the first flood event of December 2010 (Q1); (ii) PIT tags were found up to 3200 m downstream of the gravel augmentation site after four years, but the effects of gravel augmentation could not be clearly distinguished from the effects of floods and internal remobilization on more than 3500 m downstream; (iii) linear and log-linear relationships linking bedload transport, particle mobility, and grain size were established; and (iv) combined bathymetry and PIT tag surveys were useful for evaluating potential environmental risks and the first morpho-ecological responses. This confirmed the complementary nature of such techniques in the monitoring of gravel augmentation in large rivers. Copyright