Good practices for the management and restoration of ephemeral streams

Abstract

Segura (2014) and Segura and Sanchis (2015) warned us that in most projects geomorphological restoration is not addressed in all its complexity and there is frequently a lack of understanding of the hydrosedimentary dynamics in fluvial systems, even more so in the case of ephemeral ones. Other problems that they indicated were i) the difficulty in making historical images compatible as a reference when the dynamics are so intense and complex, ii) the impossibility of managing the sedimentary deficit by the hydrographic administration, unless the extraction of aggregates is prohi bited definitively, and iii) the fact that restoration actions do not consider signs of recovery and the capacity of resilience of the channels, so there is no recognition that the cheapest and most effective strategy in ephemeral streams would be facilitating self-regeneration, because of their great energy. Currently, they are perceived from a similar perspective, given that there have hardly been any advances made in this area.