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Integrated assessment frameworks for evaluating large scale river corridor restoration
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This report is the third and final report in the Ecological Regeneration Options (ERO) project series. Its purpose is to assist in developing integrated assessment methodologies for evaluating ecological regeneration options in the Avon-Ōtākaro Red Zone (AORZ). This is an important topic to ensure that their potential benefits are recognised alongside those of alternative land uses. This report complements the previous two reports in the ERO series. These provide information on floodplain restoration principles (Orchard, 2017) and an assessment of restoration opportunities in the AORZ using a local knowledge approach (Orchard et al., 2017).
The focus of this report is on facilitating robust assessments of the ecological regeneration options presented by the AORZ. A specific objective was to develop an integrated assessment framework to support comparison of those options against each other and against alternative land uses. First, the topics of river corridor evaluation and integrated assessment are briefly introduced and examples of integrated assessment in relevant planning contexts identified. A framework for the integrated assessment of ecological regeneration options is then presented.
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The Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) is widely used for mapping, ecosystem assessment, and natural capital ecosystem accounting. On the basis of the experience gained in using it since the first version was published in 2013, it has been updated for version 5.1. This policy brief summarises what has been done and how the classification can be used.
The Canterbury region of New Zealand experienced a sequence of strong earthquakes during 2010-2011. Responses included government acquisition of many thousands of residential properties in the city of Christchurch in areas with severe earthquake effects. A large and contiguous tract of this ‘red zoned’ land lies in close proximity to the Ōtākaro / Avon River and is known as the Avon-Ōtākaro Red Zone (AORZ). The focus of this study was to provide an overview of the floodplain characteristics of the AORZ and review of international experience in ecological restoration of similar river margin and floodplain ecosystems to extract restoration principles and associated learnings.
Compared to pre-earthquake ground levels, the dominant trend in the AORZ is subsidence, together with lateral movement especially in the vicinity of waterway. An important consequence of land subsidence in the lower Ōtākaro / Avon River is greater exposure to flooding and the effects of sea level rise. Scenario modelling for sea level rise indicates that much of the AORZ is exposed to inundation within a 100 year planning horizon based on a 1 m sea level rise. As with decisions on built infrastructure, investments in nature-based ‘green infrastructure’ also require a sound business case including attention to risks posed by climate change. Future-proofing of the expected benefits of ecological restoration must therefore be secured by design.
Understanding and managing the hydrology and floodplain dynamics are vital to the future of the AORZ. However, these characteristics are shared by other floodplain and river restoration projects worldwide. Identifying successful approaches provides a useful a source of useful information for floodplain planning in the AORZ. This report presents results from a comparative case study of three international examples to identify relevant principles for large-scale floodplain management at coastal lowland sites.
Following the Canterbury earthquake sequence of 2010-11, a large and contiguous tract of vacated ‘red zoned’ land lies alongside the lower Ōtākaro / Avon River and is known as the Avon-Ōtākaro Red Zone (AORZ). This is the second report in the Ecological Regeneration Options (ERO) project that addresses future land uses in the AORZ.
The purpose of this report is to present results from an assessment of restoration opportunities conducted in April 2017. The objectives of the assessment were to identify potential benefits of ecological restoration activities across both land and water systems in the AORZ and characterise the key options for their implementation. The focus of this report is not to provide specific advice on the methods for achieving specific restoration endpoints per se. This will vary at different sites and scales with a large number of combinations possible. Rather, the emphasis is on providing an overview of the many restoration and regeneration options in their totality across the AORZ. An additional objective is to support their adequate assessment in the identification of optimum land uses and adaptive management practices for the AORZ.
Participatory processes may play a useful role in assessment and stakeholder engagement by providing opportunities for social learning and the co-creation of new knowledge. We used a facilitated local knowledge based approach that generated a large quantity of reliable and site specific data in a short period of time. By inviting participation from a wide knowledge-holder network inclusivity is improved in comparison to small-group expert panel approaches. Similar approaches could be applied to other information gathering and assessment needs in the regeneration planning process.
Findings from this study represent the most comprehensive set of concepts available to date to address the potential benefits of ecological regeneration in the AORZ. This is a core topic for planning to avoid missed opportunities and opportunity costs. The results identify a wide range of activities that may be applied to generate benefits for Christchurch and beyond, all involving aspects of a potential new ecology in the AORZ. These may be combined at a range of scales to create scenarios, quantify benefits, and explore the potential for synergies between different land use options.
A particular challenge is acquiring the information needed within relatively short time frames. Early attention to gathering baseline data, addressing technical knowledge gaps, and developing conceptual frameworks to account for the many spatio-temporal aspects are all key activities that will assist in delivering the best outcomes. Methodologies by which these many facets can be pulled together in quantitative and comparative assessments are the focus of the final report in the ERO series.
Water management in the Canterbury region of New Zealand is reaching sustainability limits in terms of water availability and cumulative effects of its use. The Canterbury Water Management Strategy was developed as a collaborative governance approach to formulate a new way of managing water in the region. A key component of strategy development was the sustainability appraisal of strategic alternatives (the first such application in New Zealand). The paper describes the appraisal process set in a sustainability framework based on four well beings (economic, environmental, social and cultural) and New Zealand resource management legislation. A paradigm shift has been required to water management based on a strategic approach to the management of the resource (rather than effects-based management of projects); on collaborative governance approaches to decision-making with multi-stakeholder and community engagement (in contrast to the adversarial approach of applicant-driven development within environmental constraints); and on proactive achievement of sustainability outcomes (rather than reactive consideration of adverse effects).
Natural riverine ecosystems are characterized by a high level of heterogeneity manifest across a range of spatio-temporal scales. Ecotonal habitats are both the result of and contributors to the spatio-temporal dynamics of riverine ecosystems. Natural disturbances play an important role in maintaining a diversity of ecotonal habitats. A typology of riverine ecotones is developed that provides an expansive perspective scaled along four dimensions (longitudinal, lateral, vertical, and temporal) and that encompasses environmental gradients and boundaries as well as distinct transition zones between adjacent patches. From this broad perspective it is apparent that riverine of fresh waters, biodiversity, bioproduction, and ecological connectivity. River regulation disrupts the natural disturbance regime downstream, thereby reducing the diversity of ecotonal habitats and their connectivity with the main river channel. The altered role of ecotonal habitats induced by regulation is especially pronounced in alluvial floodplain rivers, which are characterized by a mosaic of habitat patches that collectively occupy a wide range of successional stages. Downstream hydrologic changes, such as truncated sediment transport and reductions in the frequency and intensity of flooding, typically lead to altered successional trajectories, desiccated floodplain waterbodies, severed migration pathways, and reduced exchange rates of nutrients and organic detritus across ecotone boundaries. Effective management of regulated rivers should focus on maintaining or restoring the important roles of ecotones by re-establishing interactive pathways and by reconstituting a disturbance regime that leads to a diversity of habitat patches and successional stages.
1. River–floodplain systems are among the most diverse and complex ecosystems. The lack of detailed information about functional relationships and processes at the landscape and catchment scale currently hampers assessment of their ecological status.
2. Intensive use and alteration of riverine landscapes by humans have led to severe degradation of river–floodplain systems, especially in highly industrialised countries. Recent water‐related regulations and legislation focussing on high standards of ecological integrity back efforts to restore or rehabilitate these systems.
3. Most restoration projects in the past have suffered from a range of deficits, which pertain to project design, the planning process, the integration of associated disciplines, scaling issues and monitoring.
4. The so‐called `Leitbild' (i.e. a target vision) assumes a key role in river restoration and the assessment of ecological integrity in general. The development of such a Leitbild requires a multistep approach. Including explicitly the first step that defines the natural, type‐specific reference condition (i.e. a visionary as opposed to an operational Leitbild), has great practical advantages for restoration efforts, primarily because it provides an objective benchmark, as is required by the European Water Framework Directive and other legal documents.
5. Clearly defined assessment criteria are crucial for evaluating ecological integrity, especially in the pre‐ and postrestoration monitoring phases. Criteria that reflect processes and functions should play a primary role in future assessments, so as to preserve and restore functional integrity as a fundamental component of ecological integrity.
6. Case studies on the Kissimmee River (U.S.A.), the Rhine River (Netherlands and Germany), and the Drau River (Austria) are used to illustrate the fundamental principles underlying successful restoration projects of river–floodplain systems.
Canada's Flood Damage Reduction Program (FDRP), launched in 1975, initiated a national shift away from reliance on flood control structures such as dams to the use of non-structural measures, including floodplain mapping and zoning. Previous evaluations of the FDRP have not captured the full range of benefits and costs associated with it. This paper reports on a systematic assessment of associated benefits and costs of the FDRP in the province of Ontario (that is, benefits and costs that are not related to the programme's primary objectives.) Using a two-round policy delphi survey involving 50 panellists with pertinent expertise, a broad range of associated benefits and costs was identified, relating to four broad areas (environmental protection, land-use planning, floodplain management and ‘other’). Panellists decided collectively that benefits such as improved administration of zoning in hazard areas and protection of important environmental features could be credited to the FDRP. In contrast, most of the additional costs – such as increased expenses for developers – were not considered important by the group. The paper concludes that the federal government's decision to wind down this important non-structural floodplain management initiative – based on the argument that it was a narrow, single-sector initiative – was lamentable.
Since the industrial revolution, human impacts on landscapes and river systems globally have intensified significantly. Humans nowadays artificially increase and decrease fluxes of water, sediment and nutrients on a scale far exceeding natural fluxes. Rivers integrate such changes occurring throughout their drainage basins, and thus can be considered as indicators of landscape processes and river basin "health" more broadly. This special issue brings together a set of papers that explore interactions of climate change and river processes, influences of land use changes, effects of reservoirs, as well as new approaches to sorting out the relative importance of these diverse influences on rivers and uncertainties in modeling future behavior. These papers contribute to a growing body of work demonstrating the fundamental differences between large rivers in the Anthropocene and rivers in prior time periods.
