Monitoring the resilience of rivers as social-ecological systems: a paradigm shift for river assessment in the twenty-first century

Abstract

Rivers have an important role in the development and continued prosperity of many countries through, inter alia, the ecosystem services they provide. Two concepts have captured the attention of natural resource managers enthusiastic to embrace linked human-environmental dimensions of social-ecological systems: resilience thinking and ecosystem services. This chapter argues that advancing national interests in river ecosystem sustainability in the twenty-first century will require river assessment programmes to pay greater attention to the linkages between social factors and the condition of biophysical elements of river ecosystems. It briefly describes the development of the major, biophysically-focused contemporary river assessment and monitoring approaches. The chapter then assesses the utility of biophysical parameters for assessing rivers as social-ecological systems. Finally, it develops a framework describing how the social and ecological components of river ecosystems can be included in river assessment programmes, based on principles of resilience thinking and strategic adaptive management.