Nature and Landscape Management

Nature Conservation 4/2009 — 31. 8. 2009 — Nature and Landscape Management — Print article in pdf

Water Course Restoration, Renaturation and Ecologically Aimed Management

author: Tomáš Just

Pursuant to the European Community‘s Water Framework Directive, at present ways how to improve water course morphological state have been sought in the Czech Republic.

The appropriate measures resto­ring semi-natural state of water courses are called water restoration. Although they could be quite various, in the Czech Republic the term means building measures which are expected to provide key positive effects in a short period, since the final building approval. Current new water management planning considers water course restoration in the same way, so proposals for water course restoration have been beco­ming a part of to River Basin Management Plans (RBMP). Moreover, such measures are not sufficient for real improving the morphological character of water courses because they are always expensive and highly demanding from a point of view of the organisation to have large-size effects at the hydrological network scale. Therefore, current ecological water course management, i.a. employing and supporting spontaneous renaturation processes and implementing reasonable measures after floods, will purposefully be moving towards better morphological state of water courses. It is particularly important to link water course management focusing on their morphological state with flood prevention, protection and mitigation, the latter being a weak point of the current water management in the Czech Republic.