California Colloquium on Water - Hérve Piégay

"The Espace de Liberte: Managing with River Processes"
Hérve Piégay, Research Director, National Centre for Scientific Research

After a long tradition of hard engineering of rivers, France and the EU are moving to a new paradigm of river management that sets aside a corridor within which the river can migrate and flood. Even downstream of large dams, many rivers still experience sufficiently large floods to inundate floodplains, erode banks, deposit gravel bars, develop complex channel geometries, and establish riparian vegetation critical for many species. Likewise, oxbow lakes and other off-channel water bodies provide critically important habitats for important species. Results from a multi-year research program shed light on the processes needed to maintain ecologically diverse habitats along the Sacramento River, drawing upon sedimentologic studies, vegetation analysis, and analysis of historical change from aerial photography. Management experience on the Ain and other French rivers suggests that many conflicts along the Sacramento River could be obviated by application of the concept of the 'Espace de Liberté', whereby the river is given a corridor within which it can dynamically erode and flood. In the 100-mi reach from Red Bluff to Colusa, nearly half of the riparian lands likely to be eroded within the next 50 years has been purchased or placed under conservation easement, paving the way for an eventual corridor for the river.

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