Geology topics

Herve Piegay

Publications and source records attributed to Herve Piegay.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2025

Principles of riverscape health

Riverscapes are the integration of terrestrial and aquatic systems from headwaters to estuaries that provide habitat and ecosystem benefits when in good health. However, current riverscape degradation is pervasive, impairing the function and resulting benefits of these systems. Healthy riverscapes are adaptive and some can ‘heal’ after disturbance with minimal to no human assistance. As riverscape health is threatened, a need exists to address current degradation and understand the potential for riverscape restoration—concisely communicating what comprises healthy riverscapes is essential to direct limited resources and increase efficacy of restoration and conservation efforts. Healthy riverscapes have (i) space to interact within their valley bottom; (ii) natural flow, sediment, and vegetation regimes appropriate to the biophysical setting and river type; and (iii) structural forcing to support diversity and that creates varied residence times for water, sediment, and vegetation. These three principles are grounded in interdisciplinary science and lessons from riverscape scientists and restoration practitioners across the world. Understanding the context, anthropogenic influences, boundary conditions, and legacy effects influencing riverscapes is essential for the appropriate application of these principles in pursuit of achieving riverscape health. Emphasizing a holistic, biogeomorphic view of riverscapes through these principles can guide policies, restoration actions, and monitoring frameworks that ensure that riverscapes remain capable of accommodating and adjusting to disturbances while continuing to support biodiversity and human benefits.

WIREsWATER (Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Primer↗

USGS2019

The natural wood regime in rivers

The natural wood regime forms the third leg of a tripod of physical processes that supports river science and management, along with the natural flow and sediment regimes. The wood regime consists of wood recruitment, transport, and storage in river corridors. Each of these components can be characterized in terms of magnitude, frequency, rate, timing, duration, and mode. We distinguish the natural wood regime, which occurs where human activities do not significantly alter the wood regime, and a target wood regime, in which management emphasizes wood recruitment, transport, and storage that balance desired geomorphic and ecological characteristics with mitigation of wood-related hazards. Wood regimes vary across space and through time but can be inferred and quantified via direct measurements, reference sites, historical information, and numerical modeling. Classifying wood regimes with respect to wood process domains and quantifying the wood budget are valuable tools for assessing and managing rivers.

BioScience↗

USGS2017

Assessment of transfer patterns and origins of in-channel wood in large rivers using repeated field surveys and wood characterisation (the Isère River upstream of Pontcharra, France)

When and whence does wood enter large mountain alluvial rivers? How stable through time are characteristics and quantities of wood deposited in a reach? These simple questions related to the complex practice of wood budgeting are explored on the Isère River in France. We hypothesise that (i) the wood originates from the riparian zone all along the alluvial reach and that (ii) the characters and quantity of wood in the reach can vary through time according to flood occurrence and provenance. In order to validate these hypotheses, two complementary approaches were performed: (i) wood pieces were surveyed along 190 km river length and taxonomy, in-channel wood macromorphology, and dendrochemistry were used to infer wood origin (local vs. upstream, respective subbasin contributions) and transport conditions; (ii) wood movement was monitored using both tracking techniques in specific sampling plots and with an experiment orchestrated using wood placement coupled with a significant artificial flood. Surveys were done over a period of 3 years so as to include two distinct sampling events to explore wood deposition and mobilisation within a channel network under different flood conditions. One of the subbasins, the Arly River, underwent a 1-in-30-year flood in 2004, allowing us to assess its effect on in-channel wood quantity and characteristics. Results confirm that wood is primarily introduced by erosion from river banks but they are not always as close as expected from the sites of deposition. Temporal variability of wood introduced, deposited, and transferred downstream is also significant in terms of abundance and origin as shown by dendrochemical and macromorphological signatures. The types of wood observed along the channel length changes through time. Large flood signature can be detected from wood characteristics and uplands make a slight contribution. But in average, wood characteristics do not change much (no significant difference between years and tributaries in wood characteristics based on discriminant analysis). Data suggest that the interannual variability is fairly low, so that the diversity of wood characteristics is maintained by the complex and multiple sources of wood in the network. Further research is needed to better understand such patterns and to study physical breakage in space and time to better infer distance between sources and depositional zones.

Isère River↗