From sediment transport, morphology and ecology to river basin management
NCR Days 2001 Book of Abstracts
Without any doubt it was a challenge to organise the NCR days 2001 at Wageningen after the promising start of the first NCR days in November 2000. But the “ambiance” of the Wageningse Berg overlooking the River Rhine gave us already an excellent starting-point.
As organisers of these days we were pleased to notice a full house of one hundred young ánd (a little bit) less young, but all very committed, river scientists from universities, research institutes, river management and consultancy agencies. We saw quite some new faces and witnessed a good mixture of 20 oral presentations from different disciplines selected out of nearly 40 subscriptions. And we had also 25 poster presentations on a wide range of subjects with fruitful and lively discussions during the poster sessions. Which gave us the idea for the subtitle of this publication: “from sediment transport, morphology and ecology to river basin management”.
Thirty eight of these oral and poster presentations have been compiled in this Publication of NCR. As chairmen of the various sessions we encountered a very co-operative group of participants who didn’t hesitate to promote their poster in a “two-minute-talk” in a Hyde Park Corner atmosphere or change the overall conference language into English as soon it was known that there was one foreign participant in the audience who did not understand Dutch.
Add to this the fact that at this conference the representative of the European Centre for River Restoration (ECCR) appointed “our” NCR as the national focal point of their organisation and we may venture to conclude that NCR is on the right track. But this certainly does not suggest that there is nothing to improve in the near future !
The participants made a passionate plea for more integral river studies and more and better communication on the results of the scientific studies to the interested citizen or potential users of these results such as consultancy agencies. And many participants also were in favour of a continuation of the successful IRMA-SPONGE research program, a co-operation of 30 organisations of 6 Rhine or Meuse bordering countries, managed by NCR, with promising and valuable results, in a new program to expand the international river basin approach.
Now we have the challenge for the NCR days 2002: one hundred very committed participants form an ideal group size for a successful conference like we had in 2001. But we also should like to expand the participation to involve selected students presenting their results and to incorporate extra disciplines like socio-economics. And we certainly don’t want to lose our experienced “Eminences grises” whose contribution to the discussions and stimulating comments on the ongoing research of
young scientists are highly appreciated. The University of Nijmegen who will organise the NCR days 2002 will have to deal with this dilemma. When you are reading this, NCR has published another document in its “NCR publications series”. This series in combination with our web site (www.ncr-web.org) also shows the progress in our maturation towards a real national centre for river studies. We are looking back at a very inspiring two day conference and, even more, are looking forward to November 7th and 8th, 2002 to meet you all again at Nijmegen.
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