A multiscale statistical method to identify potential areas of hyporheic exchange for river restoration planning

Chiara Magliozzi, Gianpaolo Coro, Robert C. Grabowski*, Aaron I. Packman, Stefan Krause

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

24 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The hyporheic zone (HZ) is an area of interaction between surface and ground waters present in and around river beds. Bidirectional mixing within the HZ, termed hyporheic exchange flow (HEF), plays significant roles in nutrient transport, organic matter and biogeochemical processing in rivers. The functional importance of the HZ in river ecology and hydrology suggests that river managers should consider the HZ in their planning to help compromised systems recover. However, current river restoration planning tools do not take into account the HZ. This paper describes a novel multiscale, transferable method that combines existing environmental information at different spatial scales to identify areas with potentially significant HEF for use in restoration prioritization and planning. It uses a deductive approach that is suited for data-poor case studies, which is common for most rivers, given the very limited data on the spatial occurrence of areas of hyporheic exchange. Results on nine contrasting European rivers, demonstrate its potential to inform river management.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)311-323
Number of pages13
JournalEnvironmental Modelling and Software
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2019

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action, Horizon2020 within the project HypoTRAIN (Grant agreement number 641939 ); G. Coro was also supported by the BlueBRIDGE project (Grant agreement number 675680 ); A.I. Packman was also supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant agreement number EAR-1344280 ). We thank the Networked Multimedia Information Systems Laboratory (Ne-MIS) , Research Laboratory of ISTI-CNR Italy, for providing full support for the development of this research, the Biebrza National Park for providing the needed data for the development of the River Biebrza case of study (data sources: “ Preservation of wetland habitats in the upper Biebrza Valley” ( LIFE11/NAT/PL/422 ) co-funded by LIFE+ , the financial instrument of the European Commission , the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management and Biebrza National Park ; “Restoration of hydrological system in Middle Basin of the Biebrza Valley. Phase I" co-funded by LIFE+ project). Thanks to Dr. Christian Anibas for his availability in sharing information on the River Biebrza, the Environment Agency and Dr. Marc Naura who provided the River Habitat Survey data for the U.K. catchments. We thank the British Geological Survey, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the UK Met Office, the European Soil Data Centre, the European Environment Agency and the Polish Geological Institute as data providers. We also thank Prof. Ian Holman and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action, Horizon2020 within the project HypoTRAIN (Grant agreement number 641939); G. Coro was also supported by the BlueBRIDGE project (Grant agreement number 675680); A.I. Packman was also supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant agreement number EAR-1344280). We thank the Networked Multimedia Information Systems Laboratory (Ne-MIS), Research Laboratory of ISTI-CNR Italy, for providing full support for the development of this research, the Biebrza National Park for providing the needed data for the development of the River Biebrza case of study (data sources: “Preservation of wetland habitats in the upper Biebrza Valley” (LIFE11/NAT/PL/422) co-funded by LIFE+, the financial instrument of the European Commission, the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management and Biebrza National Park; “Restoration of hydrological system in Middle Basin of the Biebrza Valley. Phase I” co-funded by LIFE+ project). Thanks to Dr. Christian Anibas for his availability in sharing information on the River Biebrza, the Environment Agency and Dr. Marc Naura who provided the River Habitat Survey data for the U.K. catchments. We thank the British Geological Survey, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the UK Met Office, the European Soil Data Centre, the European Environment Agency and the Polish Geological Institute as data providers. We also thank Prof. Ian Holman and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action, Horizon2020 within the project HypoTRAIN (Grant agreement number 641939); G. Coro was also supported by the BlueBRIDGE project (Grant agreement number 675680); A.I. Packman was also supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant agreement number EAR-1344280). We thank the Networked Multimedia Information Systems Laboratory (Ne-MIS), Research Laboratory of ISTI-CNR Italy, for providing full support for the development of this research, the Biebrza National Park for providing the needed data for the development of the River Biebrza case of study (data sources: ?Preservation of wetland habitats in the upper Biebrza Valley? (LIFE11/NAT/PL/422) co-funded by LIFE+, the financial instrument of the European Commission, the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management and Biebrza National Park; ?Restoration of hydrological system in Middle Basin of the Biebrza Valley. Phase I" co-funded by LIFE+ project). Thanks to Dr. Christian Anibas for his availability in sharing information on the River Biebrza, the Environment Agency and Dr. Marc Naura who provided the River Habitat Survey data for the U.K. catchments. We thank the British Geological Survey, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the UK Met Office, the European Soil Data Centre, the European Environment Agency and the Polish Geological Institute as data providers. We also thank Prof. Ian Holman and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords

  • Catchment management
  • Cluster analysis
  • Hyporheic exchange flow
  • Hyporheic zone
  • River basin management
  • Statistics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Environmental Engineering
  • Ecological Modelling

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