A review of ecological restoration techniques in fluvial rivers

Rivers play an important role in people׳s living and agricultural production, however, intense human activities have broken the original ecological balance, and affected structures and functions of the river ecosystem. To restore the damaged river ecosystem back to a healthy status, effective ecological restoration measures need to be implemented. The main problems that the damaged rivers face are either the locally altered hydrological processes affected by construction of hydraulic facilities, or the deterioration of water quality resulted from pollution emissions, or both. In this study, ecological restoration techniques of the rivers affected by engineering control or pollution are reviewed respectively. In addition, three kinds of methods, i.e. physical, chemical and biological–ecological methods are introduced in details for the rivers affected by water pollution. At present, the development of river restoration techniques shows the following trends: 1) the scale of ecological restoration is becoming larger; 2) ecological restoration measures are required to meet multiple objectives; and 3) the management of water environment is changing from water quality management to aquatic ecosystem management.