Author(s)

C. Van Liefferinge, D. De Smedt, R. Banasiak, R. Verhoeven & P. Meire

Abstract

Ecological evaluation for river meandering restoration. A case study on five Flemish rivers C. Van ~iefferin~e', D. De Smedtz, R. Banasiak2, R. Verhoeven2 & P. ~ e i r e ' I Research group of Ecovstem Management, University of Antwerp Belgium 2Hydraulics laboratory, Ghent University, Belgium Abstract Ecological data provide crucial information to evaluate the present status of vegetation, fish andor wildlife communities. The assessment of the success (or failure) of river restoration (or rehabilitation) is only possible when ecological information was gathered before implementation. This means that monitoring is a crucial step in the planning of restoration projects and that it has to start in a very early stage of the planning process. During this project it was not our intention to start an extensive monitoring campaign. We decided to do a pre-restoration evaluation of the selected sites to see if restoration will most likely lead to a significant increase of the ecological value of the rive

Keywords