Riparian zones represent an important ecosystem providing a range of
functions and services important to humans—e.g., biodiversity support,
a reduction in erosion risk, or the transport of pollutants from the
surrounding landscape to watercourses. At the same time, it is,
unfortunately, an environment that has been often subjected to
significant pressure during the agricultural cultivation of the
landscape or the development of industrial and residential activities of
human society. Thus, a large number of riparian ecosystems have
disappeared or degraded. The assessment of the overall ecological status
of riparian habitats constitutes an important source of information for
the needs of watercourse management and landscape planning in the
riparian landscape, the aim of which should be to maintain good status
or to improve the current unsatisfactory state of these habitats.
However, in order to reliably evaluate the current ecological status of
the landscape, it is necessary to have information on the reference
status, i.e., a potentially natural status that would prevail without
human influence. For this purpose, a methodology that can determine the
potential natural status of riparian zones in Central European
conditions was developed. In this study, it was found that approximately
a quarter (26 %) of all river basins in the Czech Republic reach very
low environmental values of the potential natural status of riparian
zones and, conversely, approximately 29 % of river basins are expected
to develop significantly above average riparian zone quality if we
neglect human impact.
Examples of Recent Floods in Europe
