How can we use theoretical understandings of rivers to inform management practices?
Location
Logan Country Club
Event Website
http://water.usu.edu/
Start Date
4-3-2012 6:30 PM
End Date
4-3-2012 7:15 PM
Description
Grounded and authentic management applications link field-based insights to theoretical understandings, acknowledging the emergent, contingent and uncertain nature of landscape adjustments. Classification schemes are often used to translate theoretical understandings of river systems to real world situations. The mindsets with which rivers are analysed and managed fashion the scientific information that is developed and the way in which that information is used. Increasingly, engineering concerns for uniformity, stability and predictability are viewed alongside geomorphic concerns for diversity, variability and evolutionary trajectory. These disciplinary framings apply different approaches to river classification. Prescriptive applications of rigid classification schemes fail to protect and/or enhance the perceived values and services of any given system, managing rivers to a series of ‘norms’. Classification is not an end point in its own right. Open-ended, learning approaches to enquiry frame classification as a platform for developing and sharing other information. An approach to ‘reading the landscape’ appraises geomorphic relationships in any given catchment, striving to ensure that management efforts respect and work with the inherent diversity and dynamics of any given river system.
How can we use theoretical understandings of rivers to inform management practices?
Logan Country Club
Grounded and authentic management applications link field-based insights to theoretical understandings, acknowledging the emergent, contingent and uncertain nature of landscape adjustments. Classification schemes are often used to translate theoretical understandings of river systems to real world situations. The mindsets with which rivers are analysed and managed fashion the scientific information that is developed and the way in which that information is used. Increasingly, engineering concerns for uniformity, stability and predictability are viewed alongside geomorphic concerns for diversity, variability and evolutionary trajectory. These disciplinary framings apply different approaches to river classification. Prescriptive applications of rigid classification schemes fail to protect and/or enhance the perceived values and services of any given system, managing rivers to a series of ‘norms’. Classification is not an end point in its own right. Open-ended, learning approaches to enquiry frame classification as a platform for developing and sharing other information. An approach to ‘reading the landscape’ appraises geomorphic relationships in any given catchment, striving to ensure that management efforts respect and work with the inherent diversity and dynamics of any given river system.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/runoff/2012/AllAbstracts/64