Preservation and restoration of river ecosystems

Recently, physical river restoration and rehabilitation in Europe has become a priority for local, regional, national and international authorities. The key to restoration is the understanding of the complex spatial and temporal interactions between physical, chemical and biological components in a whole catchments scale. The catchment comprises aspects of spatial and temporal scale and hierarchy. Thus, an effective decision support system should include the catchment approach in the restoration plan. Such whole watershed approach can generate solutions which can be more effectively applied to sustainable management that includes both water resources quality, quantity, and biota diversity and abundance. The nowadays restoration approach should prioritize and balance human impacts and develop management tools that increase system resilience to changing human impacts at local and global scales.