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Geoscience Letters

Official Journal of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS)

Fig. 6 | Geoscience Letters

Fig. 6

From: Truths of the Riverscape: Moving beyond command-and-control to geomorphologically informed nature-based river management

Fig. 6

River recovery diagram. This schematic conceptualisation situates the contemporary state/condition of a river in relation to its evolutionary trajectory (Brierley and Fryirs 2005; Fryirs and Brierley 2016). The vertical axis reflects deterioration in condition from top to bottom (i.e., from state A to D to F). Lateral axes reflect transition from degradation to recovery. If a reach has not moved far from its intact (best condition) state, restoration is possible (state B). If restoration back to the initial state is no longer possible, but river condition is improving (i.e., recovery is evident), the reach lies on a creation pathway (state E). The left hand side summarises responses if irreversible river change occurs (in this instance from a meandering to a low sinuosity partly confined river). Continued degradation is envisaged in states I, J and L, whereas state H shows recovery along a restoration pathway for this new type of river and state K shows recovery along a creation pathway. Green boxes are reaches in good geomorphic condition, yellow in moderate and red are in poor geomorphic condition (see Truth 3)

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