Riparian Restoration
CHAPTER 2: IMPACTS
Traditional management and engineering practices, coupled with increases in developed and dispersed recreation use, are cumulatively producing a range of effects from damaging to devastating on many riparian ecosystems.
Traditional Design
Traditionally, designers and engineers have focused on providing recreation experiences through infrastructure and access with little regard for the consequences to natural systems, such as flood plains and riparian forests, and effects on wildlife. They developed sites primarily with regard to how visitors would benefit. See figure 18. The design process did not include a holistic scientific approach with a goal of sustaining riparian and aquatic structures and functions while allowing human use. See figure 19.
Figure 18—This area was filled to build a parking lot (flat area in
upper
right) and the bank was stabilized using riprap.
Figure 19—This well-used wooden structure was built to facilitate visitors
dragging motorboats from one lake to another. Although this
was a
naturally
occurring low area, it was altered when the structure was built;
the banks
were denuded and not replanted. They continue to erode. As
visitors tie their
boats to vegetation, they trample the bank,
causing
more erosion and damaging
the riparian ecosystem.
In many cases what made a site attractive was ruined by the development. Designers and engineers overlooked detrimental effects of buildings, parking lots, and roads on riparian ecosystems. For example, they often cut off flood plains from their streams and lakes by roads, trails, and parking areas. By design, they removed vegetation critical to the health of riparian ecosystems., In the process, wildlife habitat was lost (Knight and Gutzwiller 1995).
E-mail: 