Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Conversions of selected units of hydrologic measurement
- 1 Water and Life
- 2 Challenge and opportunity
- 3 Unfolding recognition of ecosystem change
- 4 Natural waters
- 5 Plant–soil–water–ecosystem relationships
- 6 Groundwater
- 7 Lakes and wetlands
- 8 River channels and floodplains
- 9 Impounded rivers and reservoirs
- 10 Domestic and industrial water management
- 11 Decision processes
- 12 Integrative approaches
- Appendix: Guide to Internet resources on water and environment
- References
- Index
8 - River channels and floodplains
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Conversions of selected units of hydrologic measurement
- 1 Water and Life
- 2 Challenge and opportunity
- 3 Unfolding recognition of ecosystem change
- 4 Natural waters
- 5 Plant–soil–water–ecosystem relationships
- 6 Groundwater
- 7 Lakes and wetlands
- 8 River channels and floodplains
- 9 Impounded rivers and reservoirs
- 10 Domestic and industrial water management
- 11 Decision processes
- 12 Integrative approaches
- Appendix: Guide to Internet resources on water and environment
- References
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
River channels and their floodplains have a long record of human use, modification, and environmental consequences, e.g., as compared with groundwater (Figure 8.1). A river channel is defined here as any linear depression on the earth's surface that regularly conveys surface runoff from a watershed to a natural outlet in a lake, inland sea, or ocean. This definition excludes ephemeral rills that range in width from millimeters to centimeters on a hillslope (addressed in Chapter 5 on soil moisture where their freshwaters mix with salt waters in estuarine and deltaic coastal environments.
The geographer and regional planner Patrick Geddes (1949) described the human importance of these flows from headwaters through riparian corridors and deltas in a theory known as the “valley section of human civilization.” Geddes hypothesized different patterns of human occupance and resource utilization in the upper, middle and lower reaches of a river valley, and he argued for coordinating these upstream–downstream relationships in a regional approach to planning – an idea subsequently applied by environmental planners like Ian McHarg in the Potomac, Susquehanna, and Delaware rivers in the eastern USA (Spirn, 2000). Although this chapter recognizes a much greater diversity in river forms, processes, and uses, it shares the continuing concern for coordinating human uses, hazards, and management of rivers and floodplains (Figures 8.2 and 8.3).
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- Chapter
- Information
- Water for LifeWater Management and Environmental Policy, pp. 139 - 159Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003