ECRRNEWS - 1/2011
FEBRUARI
Introduction

In this newsletter
Introduction

1

International Riverfoundation
Regional Strategy Development 2
The influence of natural andanthropogenic processes ona regulated riverine Landscape 3

Dear ECRR members,This is the first newsletter in 2011. Winter, a long periode of heavy rainfall, snow and ice,
is almost behind us. It made us realize once again that prediction of the weather is notan easy job and nature always has surprises in store. Mankind should be modest and beaware that one cannot control the environment completely in spite of all the merits of ourtechnologically advanced society.
In the past period several members have been more or less involved in developments oftheory of sustainable water management or best practises of ecological river restorationin the field. Several have been sharing knowledge as well, which is one of the main
targets of the ECRR. Others are starting preparations for active participation on the sixth
World Water Forum (WWF 6), that will take place in Marseille within a year from now. We
will inform you later on that.

Capacity Building for HydroMorphological Monitoring and
Measures in Croatia

6

INBO-Academy and ECRR

7European Events 2011;
relevant for ECRR

8

We are glad to announce 3 quite different articles from the bosom of our membershipfile. We hope these will stimulate others to write copy for one of the next newslettersor provide information for the website (www.ecrr.org). Anyhow we count on manyand enthusiastic contributions in the coming period, so that we also can greet a new
springtime for the ECRR!

Call for articles

8

Secretariat ECRR

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ECRRNEWS - 1/2011
International Riverfoundation Regional Strategy Development

The International Riverfoundation (IRF, www.riverfoundation.org.au) promotes thesustainable management of the world’s rivers, lakes and wetlands to improve
the health of these precious resources and the communities dependent uponthem.
International Riverfoundation rewards best practice in river management;
informs and empowers river managers worldwide; and inspires organisations
and communities to protect our river systems for future generations.
The International Riverfoundation is financed by donations given by concerned
individuals, companies and governments. Its work being restricted only by theamount of funds it can raise.

Historical development
Since 2003 the International
Riverfoundation (IRF) has engagedin activities that facilitate and promote
the advancement of best-practice,collaborative and sustainable rivermanagement across the globe. The IRF
has established itself in Australia as arespected, philanthropic organisation,
promoting and rewarding excellence incollaborative river basin management. The
IRF’s important programs and partnerships
include:• the National and International
Riverprizes, recognised and valued
across much of the Australian river andcatchment management sector• the Riverprize winners ‘Twinning’
Program, which has expanded thereach of the IRF outside Australia, andhas built the basis for a highly valuableinternational partner network• the cohort of IRF Ambassadors, apotentially influential core group of IRF
champions .
• the IRF as a joint owner ofthe successful International
Riversymposium.
• outreach programs, such as that in theBremer River (Qld), are demonstrating
the IRF’s ability to not only promote
excellence in river basin management,
but also to catalyse and facilitate it.
All these elements demonstrate significant
value and good-will creation by a notfor-profit organisation that has been in
existence for only seven years.

International activities.
Over the last seven years, a strong cohortof Riverprize winners, ambassadors,
twinning project partners and othersupporting organisations has evolved.
There are now over thirty projects,
ambassadors and twinning partners
around the globe, and across every
inhabited continent.
In spite of this, the IRF remains
insufficiently recognised and valued byimportant international river basin andmulti-lateral organisations, governments,
NGOs and other sector players.
At the heart of the proposed new
IRF international strategy is theproper empowerment of regional IRF
ambassadors, twinning partners andsupporters to help deliver the IRF’s global
mission and objectives. To address thischallenge, it is proposed that new regional

structures, facilities and activities be
implemented over the next two years. To
occur firstly in North America and Europe,and later (>2013) in Asia, Africa and SouthAmerica (the Australian presence may
also be regionalised to include Pacificneighbours such as New Zealand).
The challenges and objectives mentioned
above provided the basis for discussions
on February 3 (London) to come to a
proposal for the wider European region.
The IRF Gary Jones (IRF Chair) andMatthew Reddy (IRF CEO) had invited anumber of International River Foundation
stakeholders. Amongst them Martin Janes,
Manager of the River Restoration Centre in
the UK and Bart Fokkens, Chairman of theEuropean Centre for River Restoration. It
was proposed that the IRF and the ECRR
will establish a formal partnership relation.
The IRF will soon present their plans how
to bring the proposal forward in Europe in2011.

IRF Regional Strategy meeting on February 3 in London with IRF Chair, CEO and stakeholders with Martin Janes(RRC) and Bart Fokkens (ECRR) in the middle.

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The influence of natural and anthropogenic processes on a regulated riverine Landscape

K.C.G.J. Princen MSc.
Dr. G.W. Geerling2,3Dr. H.J.R. Lenders1
Dr. R.S.E.W. Leuven1

1,2,4

Radboud University Nijmegen, Institutefor Water and Wetland Research,
Department of Environmental Science,
P.O. Box 9010,
NL-6500 GL NIJMEGEN,
The Netherlands.
2
Radboud University Nijmegen,Institute for Science, Innovation andSociety, Department of Sustainable
Management of Resources,
P.O. Box 9010,
NL-6500 GL NIJMEGEN,
The Netherlands.
3
Deltares,
P.O. Box 177,
NL-2600 MH, DELFT,
The Netherlands.
4
Witteveen+Bos,
P.O. Box 233,
NL-7400 AE DEVENTER,
The Netherlands.

1

In natural river systems, landscape diversity is achieved through continuous disturbanceby hydro-morphological processes. However, in a regulated river these processes
are hampered and landscape diversity is based on a mix of anthropogenic andhydro-morphological processes. In the Netherlands, measures to increase the flood
conveyance capacity of rivers are combined with ecological restoration of the river. As
the restoration efforts consist of numerous projects, they provide opportunities to restore
the river not only on a floodplain basis, but on a river stretch scale. Moreover, theycreate possibilities to increase landscape diversity by providing room for natural (hydromorphological) processes or by mimicking these processes by applying management
strategies such as Cyclic Floodplain Rejuvenation (Peters et al., 2006 and Baptists et al.,
2004; Geerling 2008 and Geerling et al., 2008). However, there is a lack of knowledge on
how a regulated riverine landscape functions and which factors steered the ecosystem
to its present state (Bravard, 1986; Hughes et al., 2001; Ward et al., 2001; Geerling
et al., 2006). One of the methods developed to represent riverine landscape diversity
as caused by disturbance and succession processes is a so-called spatial-temporal
distribution (Bravard et al., 1986; Geerling et al., 2006 and Greco et al., 2007). The
spatial-temporal distribution shows the relation between the surface area of ecotopes
versus their age; this ecotope-age distribution shifts as the balance between disturbanceand succession changes, for example by river regulation. The loss of disturbancecould lead to aging of the landscape and a loss of ecotopes associated with dynamic
environments resulting in a temporal discontinuous landscape (Bravard et. al., 1986 andGeerling 2008). The goal of this research was to examine the spatial-temporal distributionof ecotopes in floodplains of a regulated river, to establish the factors that caused this
distribution and the implications for future management. The floodplains along a 27.5 kmlong stretch of the lower Rhine delta in the Netherlands between the municipalities of
Lobith and Nijmegen were examined. The ecotope map of 2009 provided by the Dutch
Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Water management was used as the base map
for this research (RWES, 2010). The ecotopes in this map were examined upon their age,origin, starting situation and presence of ‘natural’ grazing using historical maps and data
analysed using a Geographical Information System (ESRI, 2006).
The study showed that the ecotopes have a mean age of 54 years and mostly originate
from excavations (40%). The geographical age distribution is shown in figure 1 (see nextpage) and the spatial relationship between ecotopes and their origin is shown in figure
2. The study showed that the landscape consists of areas that are either in ecologicalsuccession (30%, for example natural forest) or areas that can be considered stable(70%, like agricultural grasslands); the geographical distribution is shown in figure 3.
Areas that are in ecological succession mostly consist of intermediate succession stages(grassland and herbaceous vegetation) and mature stages (bush and natural forests).
Only a small share of the total surface area consists of pioneer vegetations (4%). The
influence of ‘natural’ grazing on the landscape started by its introduction in 1987 andwas applied in 32% of the total landscape in 2008. This type of management has led to amore open landscape within the first 20 years of succession favouring the developmentof grassland and pioneer vegetations over herbaceous vegetation, bush and naturalforest on areas where no ‘natural’ grazing was applied. However, no clear conclusion
could be drawn whether ‘natural’ grazing contributes to a sustainable open landscape on
the long term or if it just lowers the succession speed.
The landscape can be considered to be a temporal discontinuous landscape withecological successions on a local scale, fragmented across the landscape. The
share of stable ecotopes (70% of the landscape) and associated low influence of
natural (hydro-morphological) processes on the landscape are the main cause of this
discontinuity resulting (among others) in a low share of pioneer vegetations (4% of thetotal landscape). The restoration of temporal continuity is therefore served by restoring

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ECRRNEWS - 1/2011
the influence of natural (hydro-morphological) dynamics of the system and (thereby)
decreasing the share of stable ecotopes, for example by creating new pioneer sites andtaking agricultural areas out of farming management. The studied ecotopes form a biotic
history book of this river stretch (see figure 4) with many different origins, associatedecotopes and social-economical influences. This should be taken into consideration withthe ongoing changes in the landscape. We hope that this study can make a contribution
to set management goals for ecological restoration of the river, but also to help preserve
the ecological-cultural relics of this rich landscape.
This article is a result of the Master Thesis Project ‘The spatial and temporal distributionof ecotopes in floodplains of a regulated river’ and can be provided on request. Contact
information: k.princen@witteveenbos.nl

Figure 1: Spatial distribution of ecotope age in present day floodplains along the Rhine/Waal River (NL).

Figure 2: Ecotope type split across ecotope origins.

Figure 3: Geographical distribution of ecotopes in ecological succession (red) and stable ecotopes (blue) in present day floodplains along the Rhine/Waal River (NL).

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ECRRNEWS - 1/2011
Figure 4: Major events that determined the current landscape composition. The top of the figure shows the relative share of surface area by succession types over time.
The table below summarises the major events that steered the current landscape composition (adapted from Lenders, 2003; completed with information from this study).

Baptist, M.J., Penning, E.W., Duel, H., Smits, A.J.M., Geerling, G.W., Van der Lee, G.E.M. andAlphen, J.S.L., 2004. Assessment of the effects of cyclic floodplain rejuvenation on
flood levels and biodiversity along the Rhine river. River research and applications 20:
285-297.
Bravard, J.P., Amaros, C., &Pautou, G., 1986. Impact of civil engineering works on the
successions of communities in a fluvial system. Oikos 47: 92-111.
Geerling, G.W., Kater, E., van den Brink, C., Baptist, M.J., Ragas, A.M.H., & Smits, A.J.M.,
2008. Nature Restoration by floodplain excavation: the hydraulic effect of 16 years of
sedimentation and vegetation succession along the Waal River, NL. Geomorphology(2008) 99: 317-328.
Geerling, G.W., Ragas, A.M.J., Leuven, R.S.E.W. , van den Berg, J.H., Breedveld, M.,
Liefhebber, D., Smits, A.J.M., 2006.Succession and rejuvenation in floodplains along
the River Allier (France).Hydrobiologia 565:71-86.
Geerling G.W., 2008. Changing rivers: Analysing fluvial landscape dynamics using remotesensing. PhD thesis, Centre for Sustainable Management of Resources, Radboud
University of Nijmegen,Nijmegen, The Netherlands. 189pages.
Greco, S.E., Fremier, A.K., Larsen, E.W., & Plant, R.E., 2007. A tool for tracking floodplain
age land surface patterns on a large meandering river with application for ecologicalplanning and restoration design. Landscape and Urban Planning 81: 354-373.
Hughes, F.M.R., Adams, W.M., Muller, E., Nilsson, C., Richards, K.S., Barsoum, N., Decamps
H., Foussandier, R., Girel, J., Guiloy, H., Hayes, A., Johansson, M., Lambs, L., Pautou,
G., Peilry, J.L., Perrow, M., Vautier, F., & Winfield M., 2001. The importance of different
scale processes for the restoration of floodplain woodlands. Regulated Rivers: research
and management 17: 325-435.
Lenders, H.J.R., 2003.Environmental restoration of the river landscape in the Netherlands.
A blend of five dimensions. PhD thesis, Faculty of Science, Radboud University
Nijmegen, Nijmegen. 205 pages.
Peters, B.W.E., Kater, E. & Geerling, G.W., 2006. Cyclisch beheer in uiterwaarden: Natuur
en veiligheid in de praktijk. Centrum voor Water en Samenleving, adboud Universiteit
Nijmegen, Nijmegen. (206 pages) (In Dutch). RWES, 2010. Ecotopen bijsluiter 3ecyclus Rijntakken Oost/Maas. EcotopenkarteringRijntakken-Oost, 2009. Data and ICT
service of Dutch Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Water management, Delft.
2 pages.
Ward, J.V., Tockner, K., Uehlinger, U. and Malard, F., 2001. Understanding natural patters andprocesses in river corridors as the basis for effective river restoration. Regulated rivers:
research and management 17: 311-323.

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ECRRNEWS - 1/2011
Capacity Building for Hydro-Morphological Monitoring and Measures in Croatia

Since 1st of January a new G2G
project between the Croation andDutch Government has started.
Croatian Waters, State Institutefor Nature Protection in Croatia
and Dutch Government Service
for Land and Water Management
and the Regional Waterauthority
Brabantse Delta in the Netherlands
work together in a project Capacity
Building for Hydro-Morphological
Monitoring and Measures in Croatia.
In the context of activities of the
ECRR this is a very interesting
project as will be explained.

Mirna - Kamenita vrata (MKV)In the process of EU integration, theRepublic of Croatia has to harmonize
monitoring practices with the Water
Framework Directive (WFD) and has todevelop methods for ecological statusassessment of surface water, to betaken up in national legislation. The
national monitoring system for the main
biological quality elements is beingbrought in line with WFD requirements(macroinvertebrates, macrophyta,
phytobenthos, fish). As hydro-morphology
is a new element introduced through the
WFD, as is the case for all EU Member
States, progress in this field is runningbehind and this element urgently needs
to be developed to comply with EU
standards.
The WFD requires the achievementof good status of surface waters,
entailing chemical, biological and hydromorphological good status. According
to the preliminary assessment in e.g.
the Mirna river basin in Istria, hydromorphological pressures – such as flood
protection works - are the cause of failingto meet the good status in approximately
one third of the water bodies in the basin.
A number of these water bodies lie within
Natura 2000 sites or are hydrologicallylinked to these. A comparable situation canbe found in other basins of Croatia. At thesame time, Natura 2000 legislation requires
the attainment of favourable conservation
status for the Natura 2000 areas and thedrawing up of management plans to ensure
this status. The Mirna river basin offers an
excellent opportunity to test the applicationof both WFD and Natura 2000 given thepresence of various (potential) Natura 2000
sites that are negatively affected by hydromorphological pressures. The project cancontribute to the development of a national
strategy for integration of Natura 2000
and WFD objectives. It is evident that theobjectives of the ECRR and this project
meet very well.

Croatian waters has ample experience inflood protection but mostly by technicalmeasures that negatively affect theecological status. Experience is lacking
in the assessment and mitigation ofnegative effects of hydro-morphologicalmodifications on habitats and biota.
This G2G project is now aiming at:
Developed procedures and capacity forhydro-morphological monitoring at national
level and methodology for the definition ofhydro-morphological measures based on acase study in the Mirna river basin in Istriein accordance with the requirements of the
WFD (Art. 8 & 11) and Birds and Habitat
Directives (Art 6).
The main results that are targeted on are:
1. Accepted methodology and trained
staff for hydro-morphology assessment
in compliance with the WFD
2. Guidelines developed on the definitionof hydro-morphological measuresin support of WFD and Natura 2000
objectives, through a Pilot in the Mirna
river basin and comparison with casesin 2-3 (sub-) river basins in other areas
in Croatia
3. Capacity developed within Croatian
Waters, the State Institute for Nature
Protection and relevant stakeholders tomonitor, define and evaluate hydromorphological measures.
During the inception phase the outlinesof activities to reach the results were
elaborated. In that phase it became clearthat knowledge and experience abouthydromorphology in Karst areas are rare inEurope.
Any suggestions will be gratelfully received
by the project management. Pleasecontact Dagmar.Surmanovic@voda.hr, or
W.F.Oliemans@minlnv.nl or
I.Kroodsma@minlnv.nl

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ECRRNEWS - 1/2011
INBO-Academy and ECRR
The European Centre for River Restoration, join their forces to distance / e-learning to Basin Organisations management staff
River restoration is an effective
tool to implement EU Directive,
and chiefly the Water Framework
Directive; on the other hand,existing legislation gives good
opportunities to implement riverrestoration measures.

Introductory Course on River
Restoration for decision-makers
Last January 24th, the first online courseorganised by CIREF-INBO and ECRR
started. For two weeks, two sessions a
week of two hours long (were carried out
with the following programme:

In 2010 the a pilot “Introductory
course” was given to Basin
Organisation staff to help tounderstand how to use ecologicalriver restoration measures forreaching the Good Ecological Status
or Potential of their water bodies
and to fight against floods. The aimof that first course was testing the
INBO and ECRR members both forthe topic itself and for the way thelecture was delivered.

Session 1: Introduction to River
Restoration and Good Ecological Status• Introduction to River Restoration in
Europe-- Why is restoration needed?
-- What are the main principles of
ecological River Restoration?
-- What is the state of the art of River
restoration / how did it develop?
• Water Framework Directive (WFD) andRiver Restoration-- Good ecological status and good
ecological potential.
-- European Eco-regions and WFD in
relation to Integrated River basin
management (IRBM).
-- WFD Plans of measures in relation to
the River Restoration measures.
• Policy drivers for River Restoration-- Climate change adaptation
measures.
-- Flood prevention.
-- Fisheries.
-- European Ecological networks.

Because of the success of thepilot, another course was recently
organised by CIREF. The successof this Spanish Introductory
Course on River Restoration for
decision-makers is reported inthis newsletter. It is foreseen that
INBO, ECRR and National River
Restoration Centres will develop
in the near future complete online
teaching programmes in different
languages.

Session 2: Hydrogeomorphology and
RR: interaction with Good Ecological
Status• Definition of hydromorphology
and associated concepts, linkage
between human pressures,hydrogeomorphology, ecologicalresponses.
• Introduction of physical restoration,
Classification of measures from localscale to regional scale, from recreation
to the process integration.
• Challenging issues and experiences in
restoration.
Session 3: River Restoration: an
ecological integrity improvement andflood risk control tool
• Estructure and functioning ofriver systems - Ecohydrologicalmanagement of rivers - Experiences in
Spanish rivers.
• Design and execution of restoration
techniques in the basin management
plans and European regulations
context.
• Challenges in the implementation of
RR actions in different river types andhydrological extreme events.
Session 4: Round table with all
lecturers to develop the discussion onmost interesting matters, and answer toparticipants questions.
Wrap up session.
The objective of the course was to provide
participants with an integrated view of
Ecological River Restoration and how they
could use RR to achieve GES.
This course is an adaptation in Spanishof the course run by INBO-Academy(International Network of Basin
Organisations) and ECRR (European
Centre for River Restoration) in spring2010. INBO and ECRR collaborated with
CIREF in the organisation of this course.
The picture shows how it works:
the teacher (upper left corner), the list ofparticipants (left side), the Powerpoint
presentation (centre of the screen)
downloadable documents (under the ppt)
and the chat (right side) that can be used
to contact the teacher and other students.

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ECRRNEWS - 1/2011
The moderator has to give authorisation
to enter the room, give the right to speak
to the students, etc. The students have intheir desktop different and easy to handle
tools that they can use to carry out different
actions (rise your hand, applaud, speak
louder, etc).
All 25 places scheduled for the course werecovered with students coming from basinorganisations, universities and privatecompanies from both the Iberian Peninsula
and Latin America.
The course was given by Lourdes
Hernández (session 1) president of CIREF,
Askoa Ibisate (session 2) University of theBasque Country, Fernando Magdaleno(session 3), Ministry of Environment and
Evelyn García, Catalan Water Agency, inthe round table of the last session (together
with all three teachers). A small fee wascharged to avoid inscriptions of people whoare not seriously interested in the course
and to be used in new projects related topromotion of river restoration.

Evaluations of teachers and students werevery positive in both senses, contents ofthe course and the online teaching systemused. Many students asked for more online
courses related to river restoration, going
into deeper knowledge in some aspects.
There were different ideas amongst
participants as real students and decisionmakers about the timetable, since somehad difficulty to combine the course withworking time.
After this experience, CIREF is very
positive about online teaching as a way
to achieve some of the objectives of theassociation in a cheap and easy way.
Therefore the Training Committee has
started working on the preparation of acomplete online teaching programme in
Spanish, organised in different levels andteaching units. CIREF would like to carryout this programme In the near future
together with ECRR and INBO.
February 16th 2011. For more information,please contact josu.elso@cirefluvial.com.

Call for articles
The newsletter of the ECRR should also
be a way to share with one another what
interesting work is being done, information about seminars or literature.
One way of doing this is by writing an article of any project, event or literature you
may be acquainted with. Send this article(maximum of 500 words) to the secretariat of the ECRR at info@ecrr.org.
We will take a close look to the content
and if it is coherent with the philosophyof ECRR (ecological river restoration andsharing knowledge) your article will be
published with pleasure in the next edition(s) of the ECRR Newsletter.
The secretariat of the ECRR hopes toreceive any article on ecological river restoration from any of its members.

European Events 2011; relevant for ECRR For events in other continents please consult the website
Date / periode

Titel/issue

Location

Links

River Corridor Restoration Conference

Ascona, Switserland

08-09 April

International SEDNET Event

Venice, Italy

14 April

Annual RRC

Nottingham, UK

10-14 April

Status and Future Large Rivers

Vienna, Austria

02-05 May

Ecosystems, ground and Surface waters

Vienna, Austria

12-13 May

Contributions to water security

Tashkent, Uzbekistan

18-20 May

Clean water of Russia

Yekaterinaburg,
Russia24-27 May

Course Modelling Habitat Fish andInvertebrates

Warsaw, Polen

http://www.eawag.ch/medien/veranstaltungen/events/rcrc2011/index_EN
http://www.sednet.org/conference2011.htm
http://www.therrc.co.uk/RRC%202011%20
Draft%20Programme.pdf
http://worldslargerivers.boku.ac.at/wlr/
http://web.natur.cuni.cz/hydroeco2011/
http://www.cawater-info.net/6wwf/conference_
tashkent2011/index_e.htm
http://www.eecca-water.net/index.
php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1377&I
temid=75&lang=english
http://www.mesohabsim.org/

08-12 Aug

“Rivers as Linked Systems”
International Society for River Science

Berlin, Germany

http://www.riversociety.org/berlin.html

21-27 AugWorld Water Week

Stockholm, Sweden

27-30 Sept

INBO

Porto, Portugal

10-14 Oct

Bioindication in monitoring of freshwater
ecosystems

St Petersburg, Russia

http://www.siwi.org/worldwaterweek
http://www.inbo-news.org/spip.
php?mot120&lang=en
http://www.ecrr.org/events-october-2011.html

18-20 Okt

Iberian Congress on RR

Leon, Spain

29 Oct-04 Nov

International waterweek

Amsterdam, Holland

13-18 March

http://www.restaurarios.es/
http://www.eurekanetwork.org/c/document_
library/get_file?uuid=ef081217-4a05-4f07-bf650a8743a2536a&groupId=10137

Secretariat: DLG Government Service for Land and Water Management, P.O.Box 20021,
3502 LA Utrecht, The Netherlands | www.ecrr.org. Executive secretary Mr. Wim Zeeman.
If you do not wish to receive the ECRR newsletter in the future, please send an email to
info@ecrr.org with the subject “unsuscribe”. This will also terminate your ECRR membership.

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