ABSTRACT
Design-with-nature approaches to channel management emphasize strategic, catchment-scale planning and consultation, requiring a vision for action that reconciles management objectives with past, present and probable future physical conditions in the catchment, together with specification of attainable management targets (10.1). A variety of measures that ‘work with the river’ are available to pursue these aims (10.2) including catchment and corridor policies, methods for improving network connectivity, instream devices, channel reconstruction and methods for reinforcing the channel perimeter. There is a notable requirement for additional structured learning through project evaluation to determine how far these measures are achieving their specified targets in a sustainable way but it is apparent that, in moving towards design-with-nature, channel management in the last 30 years has undergone a revolutionary change in approach (10.3).
