An ecosystem framework for river science and management

Abstract

River science, the interdisciplinary study of fluvial ecosystems, focuses on interactions between the physical, chemical and biological structure and function of lotic and lentic components within riverine landscapes (Thoms, 2006; Dollar et al., 2007). These interactions are studied at multiple spatiotemporal scales within both the riverscape (river channels, partially isolated backwaters, and riparia of small streams to large rivers) and the surrounding floodscape (isolated oxbows, floodplain lakes, wetlands, and periodically inundated drylands). River science continues to expand from descriptive studies of the physical or biological structure of river channels to a field which includes, among other things, biophysical processes involving conceptual and mathematical modelling, empirical investigations and experimental analysis of these complex process–response systems. This emergence has also seen river scientists contributing effectively at the turbulent boundary of science, management and policy (Cullen, 1990, Parsons et al., Chapter 10). Successful interdisciplinary science requires the merger of two or more areas of understanding into a single conceptual–empirical structure (Pickett et al., 1994; Thoms, 2006). Implicit to this process is the development, testing and application of new ideas, as well as the continued integration of concepts, paradigms and information from emerging sub-disciplines and other scientific fields that operate across a range of domains, scales and locations. The progression of science is a dynamic process influenced by current and historical developments, with the accumulation of knowledge within formal logical frameworks. Such frameworks are often built from direct observations which are synthesised within hypotheses and then empirically tested (Graham and Dayton, 2002). Frameworks are useful tools for achieving integration of different disciplines and have been used in many areas of endeavour. A framework is neither a model nor a theory; models describe how things work, theories explain phenomena, whereas frameworks show how facts, hypotheses and models may be linked (Pickett et al., 1999) Frameworks, therefore, provide a way of ordering phenomena, thereby revealing patterns of structure and function (Rapport, 1985).