Protection of river environments depends on how they are managed using current ideas and technology. Gravel-Bed Rivers Workshops play a vital and integral role toward developing new ideas and management methods in the protection of these environments. This book is the fourth “Gravel-Bed Rivers Workshop”. Read what over 60 internationally recognized authors say about fluvial processes, the environment, and management of gravel-bed rivers. Learn about efforts to restore more-natural ecosystem functions to adversely impacted rivers. And for some mind-stretching, consider the hydraulic/geomorphic implications of cataclysmic floods on Earth and Mars.

Beginning in 1980 and held at five-year intervals, these workshops have brought together leading international researchers to present and discuss new results, concepts and state-of-the-art methods to analyze fluvial processes and manage gravel-bed rivers. The fourth workshop was held at Gold Bar, Washington, near the dynamic Skykomish River and strikingly beautiful Cascade Mountains. Workshop papers and discussions are published to document new concepts and ideas for broad use by those who study, manage or have general interests in rivers.

This fourth Gravel-Bed Rivers Workshop covers three focus topics. The first topic reviews new developments regarding fluvial processes, sediment transport and channel morphology -- in eight chapters on distinct subjects. The second and third focus topics strongly emphasize gravel-beds rivers in the environment, their influences, and their management -- in the next 19 chapters. River restoration is examined for large European and North American rivers as parts of several of the environment-management chapters. Seven appended "short papers" report on research in progress, presented at the Workshop in a poster-discussion session. Also included are two special-interest chapters -- on giving a detailed analysis and morphologic/hydraulic interpretation of cataclysmic floods and one summarizing a field exercise in management options for a long braided-meandering reach of the Skykomish River near Gold Bar. This book will be useful especially to researchers, libraries, educators, and policy makers. Publ. 1999 WRP.