Archive for the tag 'Ecosystem services'

Urban river futures: Deconstructing Desmond

As large swathes of Scotland and northern England start the mopping-up process after Storm Desmond ripped through the British Isles over the weekend, some frankly terrifying photos have continued to emerge, showing a whole new side to some of our best-loved urban rivers. It’s one of those clichés of environmental consciousness that we all live […]

Rivers by Design: A new primer for urban and post-industrial river restorationists everywhere

Last week’s annual River Restoration Centre conference was buzzing with conversation about an exciting new publication by the EU LIFE+ funded RESTORE partnership project: the Rivers by Design manual. Rivers by Design is subtitled A guide for planners, developers, architects and landscape architects on maximising the benefits of river restoration. So it was always likely […]

Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 21 January

From Seattle to Atlanta via Boston, Denver and Salt Lake City, a new study by the United States Geological Survey examines the varying effects of urbanisation on different stream and river ecosystems … while the UK’s Environment Agency commits to massive £3.5 million deculverting of the River Roch in Rochdale’s historic centre (extra BBC footage […]

Film night: Toxic bioaccumulation in post-industrial rivers… are urban fish safe to eat?

This is an issue that’s kept UK-based river restorationists awake at night for years – but never with quite enough evidence to convince regulatory colleagues that toxic bioaccumulation of arsenic, mercury, PCBs, endocrine-disrupting flame retardants and other contaminants probably works the same at the apex of our inland waterways’ food webs as it does in […]