The National Riparian Lands R&D Program

Riparian lands play a vital role in a healthy, productive landscape. They offer a specialised habitat and corridors linking other parts of the landscape, providing a refuge for plants and animals in times of environmental stress, and becoming refuges from which species can move out and recolonise adjacent areas when more favourable conditions return.
They can exert a strong influence on in-stream health, and have the potential to affect water quality and quantity. They can influence the shape and stability of river channels, and hence break outs and flooding. Riparian lands also have special cultural, recreational and aesthetic significance, particularly when close to urban areas.

In Australia, poor management, or lack of management, has led to the substantial degradation of riparian lands. The removal, fragmentation and drastic alteration of vegetation cover, combined with changed flow regimes has increased the incidence of bank erosion, resulting in a loss of agricultural land during floods, changes to river shape and decreased water quality. The economic costs of the poor management of riparian lands are significant. 10% of the $450 million spent each year on water quality treatment for human use may be attributed to the degradation of riparian lands. Remedial works, such as protective infrastructure and flood mitigation measures designed to prevent or reverse riparian degradation, represent a substantial cost to landholders, communities and governments, and is estimated at costing $100 million per year. These estimates take no account of production losses, nor the environmental services provided by riparian lands and healthy riparian vegetation.

In 1993, the Land & Water Australia Board (then the Land & Water Resources Research & Development Corporation) agreed to fund the National Riparian Lands R&D Program. This followed a study that showed although riparian zone processes were thought to be crucial for healthy rivers, there was very little published Australian data about these processes, or about how riparian land should be managed to maintain its key functions.

Key Findings
To read about the accomplishments of the Program see Rip Rap Edition 31 " Wrapping up Riparian.