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Proposal of a complementary tool to assess environmental river quality: The River Classification Index (RCI)

A. Machado,A. Veról,B. P. Battemarco,M. Miguez

Published 2020 in Journal of Cleaner Production

ABSTRACT

Abstract The river restoration approach brought several contributions to river basin management offering different river assessment tools, proposing quantitative methods and aggregated indexes with the aim of defining an environmental river status. However, many of the existing classification systems still use only the water quality as reference or, when considering a more complete framework, they are not easily applicable by river managers. Considering this fact, this work presents the River Classification Index (RCI), which offers a simple, fast and broad view of the environmental status of a river and can be combined with physical-chemical-biological parameters. The RCI aims to quantify the environmental quality of a watershed and support planning strategies. It is composed by the weighted product of two indicators representing the river connectivities and riverbank conditions, both normalized into a common scale between 0 and 1. Different weights can reproduce different perceptions of decision makers. The RCI was applied in two case studies, one in a heavily modified river basin, the other in a reasonably well preserved river basin, assessing the current situation and prospecting future alternative scenarios. Both watersheds are subjected to urban development and threatened by land use modifications. The obtained results were coherent with the conceptual expectations. The future scenarios considering the river restoration approach provided the best results, while the unplanned and unconscious urban growth proved to be hazardous.

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