Does Large Wood in River Restoration Improve Water Quality and Ecological Health?

Freshwater ecosystems are declining due to climate change and physical pressures on species worldwide, whereby extensive damage to river systems across the globe has driven to a huge loss of habitat and biodiversity. This has prompted, for example, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the Water Framework Directive, and the Habitat Directive to compel urgent actions to protect and restore riverine environments, enhance habitat and catchment management. Large wood (LW) is an essential tool for river restoration, actively promoting the re-establishment of natural processes and biodiversity of river systems. Thus, LW in rivers is globally used to restore river functioning by enhancing fluvial processes and habitat diversity, such as increased flow variation and creation of fluvial landforms. However, the impact of LW on water quality, biodiversity increase, and ecology — especially in mitigating agrochemicals and pathogen discharges from, e.g., Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) — is still in its infancy. This PhD will address this knowledge gap, with the overall aim to estimate how processes related to water quality respond to river restoration with LW.