Restoring urban river habitats. Lessons learned for monitoring, appraisal and management from the River Wandle, South London, UK.

Abstract

<p>In recent decades, the number of urban river restoration projects has grown considerably, with schemes designed to daylight rivers and reconnect them to their floodplains and deliver a range of environmental, social and economic benefits including building flood resilience in a changing climate. However, the limited pre and post-project appraisal continues to have implications for evaluating the success of projects and improving future schemes. In this presentation we share an example of a river restoration project aimed to tackle the urban river syndrome, loss of aquatic biodiversity and habitat degradation and present the results from several post-project appraisals carried out between 2013 and 2018 that examined different aspects of the river habitat. The lessons learned from combining the findings of several studies not only informs on-going management of the Wandle but the approach can help guide the appraisal of urban rivers more widely. In particular, we show the potential of Citizen Science surveys as for identifying early warning signs of deteriorating river condition and as a foundation for long term affordable monitoring of river restoration schemes.</p>