A conceptual framework of riparian ecosystem management and its key problems

Abstract

As the ecotone of the aquatic ecosystem and terrestrial ecosystem,riparian ecosystem has unique vegetation,soil,topography,geomorphology and hydrology features and a series of environmental,social and economic functions.Hence to improve the management of resources,ecology and environment of the riparian ecosystem for sustainable development of watershed has become a significant issue in the watershed ecology and ecosystem ecology. The characteristics of the riparian ecosystem were analyzed.The riparian ecosystem was the result of three-dimensional interaction between terrestrial ecosystem and aquatic ecosystem.As a typical ecotone,the frequent anthropogenic disturbances,geomorphological process and hydrological process could influence the riparian ecosystem in the ecological process and species succession.According to the aim of ecosystem management,the uniqueness,complexity and dynamics of the riparian ecosystem should be taken into account. After introduction of the progress in the riparian ecosystem management,the concept and elements of the riparian ecosystem management were defined.A practical process for riparian ecosystem management was given in this paper,which consisted of seven steps.The first one is scoping of object,area,stakeholders,etc.,then comes to the problem diagnosis.The third step is goal setting,including broad and operational goals.After the above processes,the riparian ecosystem was integratively assessed,in which ecosystem health and integrity were taken as indictors for assessing ecosystem structure,and ecosystem service was valued to reflect ecosystem function.The management policy and its implementation was the sixth step,which was the most important one in this process,and feedback and adaptive adjustment was the last step in the process.Four key problems were identified for riparian ecosystem management,including the research scales,the riparian width of management,the coordination of ecological values and local riparian ecosystem management. According to the developments and present studies on the riparian ecosystem management,the theory of the riparian ecosystem management,induction of ecological model,application of the interdisciplinary approaches,application of the 3S technologies and modern mathematics method as well as quantitative case study should be the front problems for further studies of the riparian ecosystem management.