Examining different geomorphic recovery drivers and factors hindering geomorphic recovery is important to designing reach to catchment scale river management programs. The New South Wales government aims to understand the drivers in river deterioration and geomorphic recovery. This, in turn, informs the interaction between flow and physical form to enhance ecological health and understand limits to human activities that promote or hinder recovery.
Part of the NSW River Styles project is to develop relationships between rivers of similar geomorphic character and the factors that alter recovery in degraded rivers. Comparisons between similar rivers with significant differences in institutional relationships, knowledge sources, funding with varying rates of geomorphic recovery reveal important features that underpin direction and river rehabilitation projects. This was set by literature review over five decades of river management programs in two adjacent coastal rivers, Wollombi Brook and MacDonald River and mapping existing geomorphic condition against projected recovery rates.
Analysing threats to river integrity by way of multi-decadal social and land use history is important to projecting future recovery pathways. It also informs catchment managers of perceived and actual threats to river recovery. It adds to standard hydraulic, channel form and sediment transport analysis.
The future for river management includes comparisons between channel form, sensitivity and response to land use pressures, and options between engineering intervention and passive management to address significant degradation and ongoing threats to river integrity.