Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
an historic mill located on the river and should
provide
coring and Mark Szeger is thanked for help
preparing the diagrams. ES acknowledges the
support of a Natural Environment Research
Council Open CASE studentship (NE/G011524/1)
in association with Natural England.
further
valuable
information
regarding
the
structure
and
composition
of
benchmark
communities.
The method presented here is currently being
applied and tested at two other lowland sites (River
Wensum, Norfolk and River Hull, Yorkshire).
On both of these rivers, the active channel
has been moved historically (realigned) to
increase land drainage and the dates of these
operations are known. The historic channels
are still present although floodplain succession
has transformed them into shallow wetland
habitats. The underlying river sediments, last
active immediately before engineering works,
can be easily sampled by coring and/or sediment
pits, and provides an excellent opportunity to
establish benchmark conditions for both rivers.
Given that future restoration activities are likely
to occur, the information provided by examining
the palaeochannel sediments and the sub-fossil
remains they contain, will also serve as a valuable
benchmark
References
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for
post-restoration
monitoring
of
recovery of the instream community.
An important future challenge will be to
develop protocols that maximize the usefulness
of palaeoecological data in the development and
support of strategic physical restoration plans.
Judicious site selection for sediment coring is
central to such protocols. Sites must be chosen
to have sufficiently broad relevance to whole
river systems to allow extrapolation of results
to unsurveyed reaches. Combining the use of
palaeoecological data and historical information on
physical channel modifications will help to evaluate
the likely spatial extent of losses of functional
riverine habitats and their associated biota.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support
of Sadie Hobson (Natural England) and Julia
Hawley for providing access to the site, background
information regarding historic activities and for
assistance with field sampling. Barry Kenny is
thanked for assistance with field sampling and
Berglund
JE
(ed.).
John
Wiley
&
Sons
Ltd:
Chichester;
703-13.
