Progresses and Perspectives in the Study of Riparian Zone

Riparian areas are important ecotones between the terrestrial and aquatic zones which serve a variety of productive, protective and aesthetic functions. Because of continual exploitation of riparian areas, the ecological environments of many riparian areas have suffered deterioration at various degrees. Therefore, it is necessary to research the structure, function and change of riparian zone for river protection, riparian land use and landscape integrated analysis and so on. This paper analyzes the current situation of riparian zone research at home and abroad,including: interaction between some riparian elements; function, effective width, ecological planning, construction and management of riparian vegetation; riparian land use; data processing and mapping of riparian zone and so on. These researches not only analyze the function and role of riparian zone, but also explain the changing characteristic and driving force of different elements in the riparian zone. All of these will do goods to the management of riparian resources. Then, this paper probes into the shortcomings in these studies, and points out that proceeding contrastive analysis of different typical region, choosing appropriate method of landscape analysis and improving technology of data collection and mapping will be the main contents in the research of riparian zone in the future.