The 21st century has been defined as the century of nature restoration. For rivers, restoration is an essential tool to achieve “good ecological status” of water courses as required by European and Swiss legislation. Although the number of restoration projects has increased in recent years, scientific understanding of the underlying principles determining how hydromorphological variability in restored corridors of rivers relates to ecosystem functioning, to biodiversity and to water quality is still limited. Further, the extent to which river restoration increases the resilience of the ecosystem, improves groundwater quality, or even endangers drinking water supply from alluvial aquifers, is questionable.

The general scientific goal of the CCES project RECORD is to gain a mechanistic understanding of how the river-river corridor-groundwater system functions in hydrological, biogeochemical and ecological terms. The projects aim at estimating how these interactions are altered by river restoration measures. In particular, the projects intend to

• investigate how restoration affects water quality, both in the river itself and in groundwater,
• relate groundwater ecology to sedimentological, hydraulic, and biogeochemical characteristics of the groundwater habitats, and ascertain possible feedback mechanisms.

Thus, RECORD advances our contribution to building the scientific basis for sustainable management of water resources. more

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