RIVER RESEARCH AND APPLICATIONS

River Res. Applic. 18: 239247 (2002) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/rra.667

A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO RIVER RESTORATION: A CASE STUDY IN THE LOWER SEINE VALLEY, FRANCE
I. POUDEVIGNE,a, * D. ALARD,a R. S. E. W. LEUVENb and P. H. NIENHUISb
b

Universit e de Rouen, Laboratoire dEcologie, UPRES-EA 1293, 76821 Mont Saint Aignan Cedex, France Department of Environmental Studies, Faculty of Science, University of Nijmegen, PO Box 9010, NL-6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT Restoration of regulated rivers presents fundamental challenges because of the complexity and adaptive nature of riverine ecosystems. It is now agreed that restoration strategies need to restore the system as a whole (structure, function and dynamics). Most studies are faced with the same difculties concerning the right scale for restoration actions, the representative attributes of the riverine system and the measures capable of surveying restoration action impacts. This work proposes an approach to river restoration borrowed from the conceptual and theoretical background of landscape ecology. Leaning on experience on biodiversity restoration along the Lower Seine river, we propose a systemic approach based on the hierarchical nature of riverine systems. This approach suggests that like any system, riverine ecosystems can be simplied into basic units which are complementary and integrated in a hierarchical structure. Simplication leads to focusing on one component of the ecosystem at a relevant scale of space and time (organization level). Here, we focus on two attributes of this ecosystem at different scales: community organization and landscape organization. These organization measures, realized at different observation scales, provide insight to the ecological response of the system in time. They are measures of the stability of the system and can provide effective tools for predicting or following the impact of restoration actions on riverine landscapes. Copyright 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
KEY WORDS:

systems; rivers; restoration; biodiversity; landscape; organization; hierarchy

INTRODUCTION: AIMS AND CHALLENGES IN RIVER RESTORATION Ecosystems can be dened as dynamic assemblages of interacting components, organized on multiple scales of space and time (Levin, 1992). Riverine ecosystems are changing ecosystems far from equilibrium, alternating between periods of relative stasis and dramatic change (Levin, 1999; Ward et al., 1999). Ecosystems naturally go through these regular cycles of self-organization and collapse (Holling, 1995). Antagonistic stages depend on the nature and intensity of the interactions among the systems components (Carpenter et al., 1999). Stream regulation reduces ow amplitude, induces temperature changes, alters material transport and major biophysical patterns. As a result, spatial correlation between upstream and downstream, between the waters and the oodplain are altered (Stanford et al., 1996; Nienhuis et al., 1998; Smits et al., 2000). Loss of physical interaction among the ecosystem abiotic components leads to loss of interaction potential among the other system components such as population dynamics and biogeochemical cycles (Tockner et al., 1999; Ward et al., 1999). Restoration strategies have thus focused on re-establishing these interactions. The rst restoration strategies focused on restoring riverine ecosystem structure (a bank, a side-channel, a riparian vegetation), but it was often noted (Stanford et al., 1996) that such man-made structures would not maintain themselves. Later restoration programmes focused on restoring function (biogeochemical cycles) or dynamics (river ow, biodiversity processes). Because of the complexity of riverine ecosystems, restoration of their structure, function or dynamics presents fundamental challenges (Bornette et al., 1998; Smits et al., 2000). Most restoration studies
* Correspondence to: I. Poudevigne, Universit e de Rouen, Laboratoire dEcologie, UPRES-EA 1293, 76821 Mont Saint Aignan Cedex, France. E-mail: Isabelle.Poudevigne@univ-rouen.fr

Copyright 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 10 December 2000 Revised 16 May 2001 Accepted 12 July 2001

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are faced with the same difculties such as the right scale for restoration actions, the representative ecosystem attributes, the ecosystem target references, and the ecosystem measures to follow up the impact of restoration actions (Aronson and Le Floch, 1996; May, 1994; Prance, 1995; Costanza et al., 1993). River restoration research can make use of landscape ecology, restoration ecology or systems sciences to build up the necessary conceptual and theoretical background to answer such questions (Risser, 1992; Levin, 1998; Pickett and Cadenasso, 1995; M uller, 1992). Recent works, for example in the eld of landscape ecology, propose the concept of ecosystem health (Ferguson, 1996). Applied to restoration, such a concept suggests that restoration actions must go through three steps which are: determining the antecedents (taking into account the systems past); measuring some attributes (target attributes) of the systems health (biodiversity indices, organization indices, productivity indices); and last, proposing an adapted therapy (restoration actions) in reference to optimal target attributes. This paper proposes an approach to river restoration using some of these concepts and theories. To illustrate our approach, examples were chosen from studies undertaken over the last four years in the lower Seine valley. We focused on two spatial scales (the riverine system and the valley system; Figure 1), and on two measures (community organization and landscape organization). Community organization is a biological indicator while landscape organization is a structural indicator, and both are used to determine the ecosystem health. The community chosen was birds, which are often used as indicators of landscape quality (Balent and Courtiade, 1992; Flather et al., 1992). Details on these studies can be found in Poudevigne et al. (1997). THE SEINE SYSTEM: ANTECEDENTS At the end of the last Ice Age (c. 8000 BC), the Seine river stabilized its course, creating the present-day valley landscape morphology (Figure 1). A meandering river with a oodplain bordered by steep chalk cliffs, cut into the Cretaceous plateau of the Parisian basin, is now observed. The alluvial oodplain was submitted to the recurrent disturbance of the ood pulse. Up to the Middle Ages, the riverine system went through many cycles of self-organization and collapse (e.g. in response to rare ood events). On a long time scale, these recurrent cycles can be viewed as regular oscillations, which maintained the ecosystem in a dynamic equilibrium. The ood regime was the main source of disturbance which organized the riverine landscape. Though the impact of man had been felt since the Bronze Age (c. 4000 BC), the most important human impact on the riverine system was the regulation of the river. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Seine was almost entirely channelized to enhance agricultural use of the rich alluvial soils, secure river navigation and prevent ooding (Huault et al., 1975). The lower Seine oodplain is still submitted today to both tidal and winter ooding. But in both cases, because the river morphology is modied, inundation is usually due to the rise of ground water. The conclusions of a recent research programme on the lower Seine basin describe the river water as among the most polluted in the world. The urban and industrial land use bring high contents of metals (cadmium, mercury, zinc, lead) and organic micropollutants. The high nitrate and phosphorus contents also suggest large inputs from agricultural activities in the basin. Traditional agriculture modelled the landscape of the oodplain to create what was called a bocage: a mosaic of wet grasslands in the alluvial oodplain for bovine breeding, hedges for cattle retention, ditches to control water movement, ponds (e.g. for hunting), and a few crops on the driest lands. Traditional agriculture in Europe is characterized by a strong dependence on natural features: fertile at lands were preserved for cultivation, while agronomically poorer lands (wet lands, steep lands) were used for grazing. In the Seine valley the steep calcareous grasslands were extensively grazed by sheep, the wetlands of the alluvial oodplain were left to extensive bovine breeding, while the drier colluvial lands were cultivated and inhabited (Figure 1). The main disturbances which organized the riverine landscape were regular grazing and mowing as well as regular rises of the water table. During the last 40 years, the riverine landscape has undergone strong pressure from human activities (industrialization, urbanization). Changes in agricultural systems and technical progress have led to both intensication processes (more crops, larger plots, drainage) and abandonment (of very wet grasslands, hedges, ditches). As the land use changes, new habitats appear, and the factors of landscape organization change (Poudevigne et al., 1997).
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Dieppe Le Havre Rouen Honfleur Barrage de Poses Paris Chartres

Reims StDizier

France

Auxerre

Langres

Scale : 50 km

Valley system : components related to the river in terms of fluxes of species, energy and matter

Riverine system : alluvial floodplain and river related components

Non alluvial system : indirectly related components

Chalk grasslands River system

NE

crops clay inhabitations wet grasslands colluvium chalk

1 Seine river

alluvium poplars Scale : 100 m

SW

Figure 1. A schematic diagram of the valley oor of the Seine river, 20 km west of Rouen. The Seine basin is shown in the inset

ORGANIZATION MEASURES AS INDICATORS OF THE ECOSYSTEM HEALTH Landscape organization The landscape pattern of the Seine valley is the result of both ecological gradients (e.g. topography, geomorphology, humidity and salinity) and agricultural management (e.g. intensive cultivation, extensive grazing, irrigated cultivation and abandonment). This landscape and the degree of connection between these different components represent the physical framework of all processes implied in the riverine system. Information theory provides interesting tools to measure this degree of connection between the different strata modelling the landscape. Landscape organization, also called vertical organization, is the information brought by one stratum (land cover for example) on another stratum (soils for example). It can be measured with indices based on information theory (De Pablo et al., 1994; Phipps, 1981). These indices measure the redundancy between two information strata. By providing measures on the nature and intensity of the relationships between the elements of the system, these indices give indications as to the factors which organize the landscape. To illustrate this approach, we have considered a belt transect of this valley landscape (Figure 1). The land cover along this transect was studied at two different dates: 1963 and 1989. The results show that in 1963,
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97% of the alluvial soils were covered with wet grasslands and 94% of the wet grasslands occupied alluvial soils (Table I). In 1989, only 72% of the alluvial soils were covered with wet grasslands; the remaining areas were covered with crops, poplars or habitation. To measure this change we can use an organization index (index C ), dened by De Pablo et al. (1988) as C = (H (V ) H (V Sj ))/H (V ), where H (V ) = pi log2 pi and pi is the proportion of the land cover i variable, H (V ) is the diversity (Shannon) index of the area, and H (V Sj ) is the diversity of each soil type Sj . Index C shows a decline of over 29% in 25 years. This indicates that the factors which organize the landscape (i.e. the land use pattern) are less linked to natural constraints (i.e. the habitat pattern). Interpretation of these results can be inferred from the changes in agriculture observed over the last few decades in Europe (Bouma et al., 1998; Thi ebaut, 1993). In 1963, the landscape was organized along a traditional agricultural pattern as demonstrated by the strong correlation between land use pattern and habitat pattern. The landscape pattern of this formerly dominantly rural area was the result of collective management of the land. The present landscape is the result of a myriad of decisions taken at a local level (individual farms but also land users from other activities, e.g. ports, tourism, parks, quarries). This change of decision level is responsible for the present fragmentation and increasing heterogeneity of this landscape (Balent et al., 1998). Landscape organization is an important attribute of the valley system as it describes the degree of interaction and coherence of the system as regards the key factors which control it. It also provides an interesting tool to monitor or predict changes in the riverine landscape. Understanding the organization and dynamics of the landscape is essential to approach the processes which take place within this framework. In the Seine valley, the landscape pattern can be considered as an environmental lter: a sum of factors, a set of sieves through which, out of an initial species pool, species unsuited to the pattern are deleted (Alard and Poudevigne, 2002). In other words, landscape patterns control processes such as species assemblage. In that sense species assemblage can also be considered as an indicator of landscape quality. Community organization To illustrate the possible link between landscape and community organization, we comment here on the results of a bird study undertaken in another belt transect of the riverine landscape, which has undergone the same structural changes (Poudevigne et al., 2002). Data collection involved a eld survey of the avifauna and sampling of the main factors potentially explaining the distribution and composition of the species (environment, landscape, habitat and management variables). A bird count survey was conducted at the end of May (20-minute counts within 500 by 500 m cells). Ten landscape variables were collected within the same
Table I. Changes in several structural variables in the landscape of the Seine Valley at St Martin over 19631989 (from Poudevigne et al., 2002) Landscape elements Landcover Habitations (ha) Grassland (ha) Abandoned grassland Crops (ha) Poplars (ha) Orchards (ha) Chalk grassland (CG, ha) Abandoned CG (ha) Forest Structure measure Structural diversity Number of plots Mean area of plots (ha) Length of hedges (km)
Copyright 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

1963 25.84 740.81 9.2 243.27 9.79 40.57 58.78 23.66 0.67 994 1.52 14.43

1989 84.16 551.59 59.07 353.23 21.98 37.87 39.24 11.56 5.17 0.71 800 1.78 5.89

Change (%) +225.7 25.5 +542 +45 +124 6.6 33.2 78 +5.97 19.5 +17.1 40.5
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cells to provide ecological and structural information on the landscape. Sample data on communities were examined using multivariate analysis: Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA), a direct ordination method, was used here to understand the relationship between species (birds) and environment (landscape attributes). Hierarchical Clustering was also used to identify groups of landscape with the same species assemblage dened by the CCA. The ordination proposes landscape typology based on bird response along the landscape gradient: dominant arable lands, wet grasslands and reedbeds bordering the Seine waters. The results of this study showed that though many habitats were degraded or had declined during the last 40 years, the number of species in these habitats is the highest. A closer inspection of the data revealed that the bird species found in these habitats were common species of the Seine valley species pool and are found in other habitats. This result underlines that a simple count of species (species richness) needs to be completed with other attributes of the community (structure, composition, function), as suggested by Noss (1990). For this purpose, we have used a measure of the dispersion of species within each record (Figure 2). Factorial Diversity (FD) is calculated as the conditional variance of sample scores on the rst factors of the CCA (Thioulouse and Chessel, 1992). FD is a within-sample diversity based on the dispersion of species in a sample along an ecological gradient (represented by the factorial axis of the ordination). It can be considered as representing an important aspect of the ecological heterogeneity of this sample (Balent, 1991). We assume that ecological heterogeneity is negatively related to ecological coherence (organization) of the community in the landscape. Measures of richness and FD along the landscape gradient in the Seine valley show contrasting patterns. While species richness is clearly lower in grasslands than in arable lands, records in these land types tend as a mean to exhibit self-organized assemblages (lower FD). Samples taken in the reedbeds host, among the usual reedbed species (e.g. Acrocephalus scirpaceus, Panurus biarmicus ), some species which are relevant to other habitats (e.g. Cuculus canorus, more specic of cultivated lands, or Motacilla ava more common to wet grasslands). This gives rise to the ecological heterogeneity of these species assemblages.

RESTORATION TARGETS, A MATTER OF SCALE In terms of restoration or conservation, the reference system chosen can either be a dynamic system (changing ecosystem far from equilibrium) or a self-organized system in a metastable state, or both. The choice is all the more complex in that it is largely dependent on scale. Figure 3 summarizes the dynamics of the Seine valley since the last Ice Age, and schematizes the different stages of self-organization and collapse. The system collapses when an environment (e.g. rare ood event) or human disturbance (e.g. channelization) pushes the system out of its regular oscillations. A hypothesis can be formulated as to the relationship between the threshold of such disturbances and the degree of self-organized state preceding the collapse. The scale at which these oscillations are observed determines the amplitude and regularity of the oscillations. On a long time scale, the recurrent cycles of organization and collapse created by the uvial regime can be seen as regular oscillations. At the scale of the riverine system, regular uvial or agricultural disturbances can be viewed as disturbance regimes of regular oscillation (Figure 3). Such regimes contribute to the self-organization and in the long term to the metastability of the riverine system, whatever its origin (ood or grazing maintenance). At the scale of a habitat patch (an alluvial grassland), such regimes can oscillate the subsystem from high energy levels (alluvial forest) to low energy levels (deposited sediment). The disturbance at this scale can be viewed as the collapse of the subsystem. In terms of system management, the choice of restoration targets is thus a matter of scale.

DISCUSSION Riverine ecosystems are not only species-rich ecosystems and hot-spots of biodiversity (Ward, 1998), they also represent essential processes such as denitrication or carbon stockage. In the context of global change (Baker, 1995; Vitousek, 1994), the loss of such ecosystem processes is a serious threat for ecological services on which humans depend (Daily, 1997). Developing sustainable approaches to such systems implies understanding
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Factorial diversity 0.4

0.3

var 1

Strong factorial diversity : strong dispersion of species along the analysis gradient within a sample

Reedbed 0.2

0.1 Grassland 0.0 Low factorial diversity : low dispersion of species within a sample, coherent species assemblage Arable 2 1 0 1 2

Axis of the correspondence analysis : landscape gradient

Richness index 11 Arable

Richness

Comparison with a structural index of diversity : richness index (number of species within a sample) along the same gradient

9 7 5 3 Grassland 1 2 1 0 1 2 Reedbed

Landscape gradient
Figure 2. Contrasted variation patterns of two measures of bird species diversity in a riverine landscape of the Seine valley. Factorial diversity is an index of community organization. The variation patterns are modelled by loess tted curves (a trend surface analysis)

what maintains its resilience, its structural or functional stability and how human intervention might affect it (Nienhuis and Leuven, 1997; Levin, 1998). This paper illustrates the use of two organization measures which convey understanding as to how the stability of the riverine system is maintained. Landscape organization informs on the driving factors which organize the landscape (landscape pattern), and the scale of these factors. Our analysis of the Seine valley reveals that the riverine landscape of this valley is more or less disconnected from the river system and its dynamic processes. The main driving factors of this landscape are agricultural activities rather than uvial processes. Nevertheless, long-term traditional agriculture (regular grazing and mowing disturbances) has convened to create, just as the preceding uvial regime created before, a metastable landscape. If the processes at hand in this new agro-ecosystem were different from the uvial system (limited denitrication for example), some processes such as biodiversity were not seriously impaired. Indeed, the riverine landscape created by the agricultural disturbances has engendered new habitats (hedges, ponds, pastures) and a new heterogeneous habitat mosaic. Some of these riverine habitats (grazed wet grasslands, managed reedbeds) host specic and rich bird species of patrimonial value (e.g. bittern (Botaurus stellaria ) and corncrake (Crex crex )). As long as the traditional agriculture was maintained this metastable landscape was capable of hosting selforganized species assemblages. At present, changes in land use are altering this stability. Wet grassland areas are declining, reducing hosted populations and probably species richness. Isolation and alteration of reedbed
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Energy build up through structure and interaction Century flood Chanelisation & ruralisation Changes in land management

Dominance of trees Dominance of high grasses Traditional agricultural regime

Dominance of sedimentation

Fluvial regime

Grazing & mowing Disturbance gradient Fluvial disturbance

Other disturbances

Periods of metastability, the riverine system moves through time as locally unstable but globally stable, it builds up to self organisation Periods of collapse as part of natural cycle of a resilient system, environment disturbance pushes the system out of its chreods (usual pathway) Periods of collapse as a unique stochastic event, human disturbance pushes system irreversibly out of its metastable state

Time

Figure 3. Hypothetical sequence of disturbance regimes in the Seine valley at the scale of a riverine landscape. The gure schematizes the different stages of self-organization and collapse of the riverine landscape since the last Ice Age

habitats has brought new species to these otherwise very specic assemblages. Extension of arable land has allowed very common species to spread within the former wetland. Community organization provides understanding as to which species assemblages react to which change. The organization of a system depends on the intensity and the nature of the relationships between the different elements describing that system. From a methodological point of view, this offers the possibility to reliably measure the organization of a landscape (by the relationships between ooding, agricultural, habitat and landscape patterns), or the organization of a species assemblage (by the relationships between species in terms of competition or niche partitioning). The concept of organization (Kolasa and Pickett, 1989) features among the attributes of the ecosystem which refer to its stability, as an organized system is also a stable or rather metastable one (sensu Levin 1970). Both measures of landscape and community organization propose an understanding as to how the riverine ecosystem remains in a metastable state, but they give no indications as to the reference state it should reach. In the case of the Seine valley two self-organized states can be proposed as restoration references: either (i) we aim at restoring the traditional agricultural organization of the bocage landscape (a hundred years ago); or (ii) we aim at restoring the pristine organization of the alluvial oodplain (4000 years ago). Hierarchy theory suggests that restoration strategies on a large spatial scale imply long-term restoration (Leuven et al., 2002). Time can thus be an element of choice as the rst option will take years or decades while the second would take centuries. But the most restrictive element of choice is probably the morphological specicity of the Seine valley. Unlike other large western European rivers (e.g. Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt), the Seine river has a periglacial origin: the river is embanked in its Cretaceous bed leaving a very thin strip of alluvial
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oodplain restrained on both sides by chalk cliffs. Many river restoration studies in Europe propose concepts such as space for rivers (Nienhuis et al., 1998; Smits et al., 2000). For the narrow Seine valley such a concept would mean total disappearance of any agricultural activity. If the choice left is stark (restoring agricultural landscapes or restoring riverine forest without human activities), it is also because the second option is rather an idealistic but unreachable goal while the rst runs counter to the present changes induced by human activities which transform the riverine landscape from an agricultural area to an industrial and a periurban one. No restoration targets have yet been under study for the Seine valley. On a short term, and with respect to the constraints just mentioned, a realizable option would be the restoration of sustainable (instead of traditional) agriculture in the Seine valley by collective management of spatial resources and activities. The idea is to integrate the different stakeholders or managers (urbanists, farmers, National Parks, local authorities) in a collective project at the scale of a territory (in this case the whole valley system). This project would need to address both local scales (restoring habitats for species populations) and more global scales (restoring the interaction potential between habitats or metapopulations).

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