Wealth, diversity and challenges of river landscapes

Abstract

In France, over half of the territorial communities border a river. Up to the end of the 19th century, the French landscape was built around these water streams which were perfect spots to develop a number of activities. Starting at the end of the first world war, almost all traditional uses disappeared, or receded, and men started to integrate rivers as elements of land development. Water was collected depending on the needs, and then thrown back without any particular care. Today, water appears as an essential and endangered raw material, and rivers are more and more perceived as essential components of the landscape and of our heritage. The economic necessity, the social demand, the ecological needs make it necessary to monitor as accurately as possible aquatic systems. This awareness comes along with several national and regional regulations. In front of these new development problems, landscape specialists are more and more on the font line, especially in urban and periurban environments. This article explains how important it is, in this field, to work in terms of « goals », to adjust the actions and landscape recommendations to these goals, and to use a work scale adopted by enforcing a number of methodological principles and requirements. It explains the need to involve all actors interested in rivers and shows the importance of identifying « landscape ambience units » which, because of their characteristics, generate specific modes of intervention that belong to the field of ecological engineering.