Innovative components
Biodiversity declined markedly over the past 150 years with the biodiversity loss in fluvial ecosystems exceeding the global average. River restoration now combines flood safety and biodiversity requirements but the effects are so far locally. At the scale of large river tributaries the recovery remained elusive. Over 179 floodplains, we quantify changes in biodiversity of protected and endangered species over 15 years of river restoration in the embanked floodplains of an entire river delta. We distinguish seven taxonomic groups and four functional groups in more than 2 million field observations of species presence.
Findings and implications to practice
Of all 179 fluvial floodplain sections examined, 137 showed an increase in biodiversity, particularly for fast-spreading species. Birds and mammals showed the largest increase. This shows that flood risk interventions were successfully combined with biodiversity recovery. However, future projects should consider requirements for all endangered species. Explore the storyline for practitioners to get a visual and scrollable overview of the findings.
Biodiversity changes in the embanked floodplains of the Rhine delta between 1997 and 2012 (Source: Figure 1, Straatsma et al. 2018)
Journal publication
Straatsma, M. W., Bloecker, A. M., Lenders, H. J. R., Leuven, R. S. E. W., & Kleinhans, M. G. (2017). Biodiversity recovery following delta-wide measures for flood risk reduction. Science Advances, 3(11). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1602762
Related dataset
Related dataset to this publication is available as supplementary material at http://advances.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/3/11/e1602762/DC1 and includes a detailed description of the BIOSAFE model; details of the BIOSAFE input; a list of parameter abbreviations and a excel file with BIOSAFE input and output.
Related outputs
Low-hanging fruits in large-scale fluvial landscaping measures
We show that the multidimensional evaluation of river interventions in the Waal river opens up opportunities to discuss possible trade-offs.
19/09/2018 by Menno Straatsma et al.
Contains: Publication open access
Biodiversity recovery following delta-wide measures for flood risk reduction
We show the biodiversity recovery from 15 years flood risk adaptation that consider nature requirements building a spatial extension to calculate biodiversity scores.
08/11/2017 by Menno Straatsma et al.
Contains: Dataset upon request Publication open access Storyline for practice
Last modified: 24/01/2019