The Riverine Ecosystem Synthesis: Toward Conceptual Cohesiveness in River Science

Abstract

The impetus to write a book on the riverine ecosystem synthesis emerged at the 2005 annual meeting of the North American Benthological Society in New Orleans, and barely 2 months later, we signed a contract with Academic Press. This book was to be an expansion of a manuscript that was In Press at that time in River Research and Applications (Thorp et al., 2006). However, the true origin of this synthesis, journal publication, and book was a rivers meeting held in Albury, NSW, Australia, in July 2003 where Jim gave a plenary talk (with suggestions from Mike) at the request of Martin, the conference leader. Martin had asked Jim to speculate and not to worry about being controversial - he got his wish! Shortly after the meeting, the three of us joined together to write a conceptual paper that greatly expanded the hypotheses presented at that meeting. Three important goals of our symposium talk, journal article, and book have been to (i) develop some measure of conceptual cohesiveness for the study of riverine landscapes by synthesizing crucial elements of the many lotic ecology models published from 1980 to the present along with those of landscape ecology and fluvial geomorphology; (ii) present a new perspective on how riverine landscapes are physically and ecologically structured along longitudinal and lateral dimensions; and (iii) integrate approaches from small to large spatiotemporal scales throughout the riverine landscape as a framework for research. A fourth goal emerged during discussions of the book itself - making theory for riverine landscapes both easy to apply by practicing ecologists/environmental scientists and useful for studying the significantly altered rivers found in most countries. This last goal has expanded to include recommendations for river management, monitoring, and rehabilitation. ... Readers of this book will find that its major emphasis is still fundamental perspectives on the structure and functioning of riverine landscapes - from headwater streams to great rivers and from main channels to floodplains. These perspectives combine aquatic ecology with fluvial geomorphology and landscape ecology. However, two other important components are present. First, we present a recommended guide for applying the theoretical synthesis to actual field analyses. Second, we show how this synthesis relates to riverine landscapes that have been significantly modified in one or more fundamental ways. We believe that it could be vitally important for natural resource managers and for scientists interested in river conservation and rehabilitation take the predictions of the RES into account when developing, for example, monitoring programs encompassing upstream-downstream and channel-slackwater gradients.