THE RESEARCH PLAN
In Canada and globally, rivers are threatened by increasing demands for water, development and other
activities in the watershed, and our changing climate. While our understanding of how rivers work
continues to advance, uptake of innovative science for the protection and management of rivers and
their resources is lagging around the world. A sustainable future for our rivers requires that researchers
work collaboratively with management to ensure that the latest science and tools for understanding
changes of consequence in rivers are used and that adaptive management approaches are in place to
respond to increasing pressures on these systems and to new knowledge and technologies.
OUR RESEARCH PRIORITIES
CRI’s research plan focuses on protecting and improving the health of rivers by conducting the
innovative science needed to create a paradigm shift in river management. This will be accomplished
by:
1. Developing and promoting meaningful indicators and thresholds of change for river ecosystems;
2. Understanding sustainable links between water flow and biological processes in rivers;
3. Advancing monitoring and management practices related to how human activities affect river
ecosystems.
Critical Links
between Physical
and Biological
Processes
Meaningful
Indicators and
Thresholds of
Change
Innovative
Management and
Monitoring
Standards and
Practices
Research Plan 2013 - 2018
The Canadian Rivers Institute
RESEARCH GOALS
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Ensure more effective and consistent use of report cards for assessing river health.
o Outcome goal: Conduct science to support the development of reporting tools that
integrate ecological condition and reflect meaningful change in river ecosystems.
Increase awareness of the importance of flow, the ecological services it supports, and the
demand for this knowledge in the management of river ecosystems.
o Outcome goal: Innovative, world-leading research on the key links between water flow
and biological processes in river ecosystems.
Improve national and international approaches and capacity for assessing and monitoring river
ecosystem health.
o Outcome goal: Techniques that best reflect the health and sustainability of river
ecosystems including improved assessment of cumulative effects in Canada and
internationally.
Achieve increased use of leading science in policies for water management.
o Outcome goal: Develop the innovative approaches and mechanisms for science to be
quickly and efficiently integrated into river management.
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
The priority areas of the CRI’s Research Plan were developed in consultation with our partners to
support the science vision. For the next 5 years, the CRI will embark on an innovative, interdisciplinary,
and collaborative science programme with the following outcomes:
1. meaningful indicators and thresholds of change for river ecosystems (Core Objective #1);
2. identifying the critical links between the physical nature of flowing water and its biological
processes from headwaters to estuaries (Core Objective #2);
3. innovative management and monitoring standards and practices, including the concept of
cumulative effects assessment, to ensure the ecological integrity of river ecosystems (Core
Objective #3);
Core Objective #1: To establish meaningful indicators and thresholds of change in river ecosystems
to support and promote sustainable river management
Key Challenges:
Rivers and estuaries are dynamic systems that change over time and space. However, drawing
conclusions about the drivers of ecosystem change is frustrated by a lack of consistently measured,
appropriate, and reliable data. River monitoring is currently poorly served by a plethora of physical,
chemical and biological observation methods, some of which are redundant or not reflective of key
aspects of river health. Managers generally rely too much on the easy but well-established indices of
status, such as water chemistry, for the purposes of reporting and decision-making. Biological
observations are mostly ignored despite the fact that biology is often a key protection goal, e.g.,
biodiversity, and that they are more integrative of changes over broader spatial scales. Even when
indices from several disciplines are monitored, they are poorly integrated and considered too difficult to
interpret.
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Research Plan 2013 - 2018
The Canadian Rivers Institute
Key Opportunity:
A better understanding of the dynamic and natural spatial and temporal variability of river ecosystems
to develop meaningful indicators and thresholds of change, and to embed the ecosystem concept in the
management of rivers.
Supporting Statements:
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Rivers are highly dynamic systems temporally and spatially.
Robust indicators of change must be linked to an understanding of how ecosystems respond to
diverse stressors.
Indicators of change must be derived from a clear understanding of pathways connecting
human and natural drivers of change to changes of concern.
The Research:
CRI researchers and their partners will generate information needed to develop meaningful indicators
and thresholds of change in river ecosystems by developing:
 Biomonitoring diagnostics that incorporate the function of flow in river ecosystems.
 The understanding of exposure thresholds for fish in flowing water environments.
 Indicators of flowing water ecosystem’s function and status.
 Indicators of river channel change.
Specific Outputs:
 Published manuscripts on thresholds and indices of change for river ecosystems.
 A published compilation of our new findings as “The River Manager’s Toolkit for Assessment
and Monitoring.”
 Graduating the next generation of scientists and training professionals with these leading
science skills.
Core Objective #2: Understanding the links between water flow and biological processes in river
ecosystems
Key Challenge:
A river ecosystem is the slow to fast moving waters flowing through landscapes to the sea, and it has
biological elements and processes (ecosystem goods and services) that vary across spatial and temporal
scales. The dynamic nature of rivers stems from their flowing environments. The notion of river
ecosystems as dynamic, yet predictable and highly connected, is at the heart of river ecology, but absent
from current river management. Flow is often highly altered, with limited consideration given to the
natural flows needed to sustain specific ecosystems. As a result of poor knowledge of flow-ecology
relationships, we are unable to articulate the nature of sustainable flow requirements.
Key Opportunity:
A better understanding of how water flow directly and indirectly affects ecosystem goods and services in
rivers and estuaries to ensure that rivers are managed in a sustainable manner.
Supporting Statements:
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Flows include surface water, groundwater, and tidal fluctuations, and extreme events (floods,
droughts).
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Research Plan 2013 - 2018
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The Canadian Rivers Institute
River and estuarine flow controls ecosystem structure and function.
Flows produce direct and indirect effects on ecosystem goods and services.
The Research:
CRI researchers and their partners will generate information needed to understand how flow influences
river ecosystem goods and services by studying how:
 Winter low flows and ice affect survival of fish and invertebrates.
 Landscapes regulate flow, thermal regimes, and habitats of fish.
 Flow regulates nutrient flux in small agricultural catchments.
 Flow sustains biodiversity in fresh waters and estuaries.
 Flow regulates sediment flux and controls habitats in large rivers.
 Groundwater influences dynamics of river flow and temperature flow and controls habitats for
aquatic life.
 Flow and hydraulics affect the distribution of aquatic habitats.
Specific outputs:
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Reviews of current and future requirements of our priority areas in leading science and
management journals.
Manuscripts on how flow affects the fundamental structure and processes of river, lake,
groundwater, and estuarine ecosystems.
Graduating the next generation of scientists and training professionals with these leading
science skills.
Core Objective #3: Developing innovative management standards and practices, including the
concept of cumulative effects assessment, required to ensure the ecological integrity of river
ecosystems
Key Challenge:
Rivers and estuaries respond to both natural and anthropogenic disturbances, and effects of these
disturbances occur at many scales through alterations in complex processes within the system. While
many human activities occur in watersheds, the effect of the combination of these disturbances
(multiple stressors) is rarely considered in river sciences and management and therefore not well
understood. The implications of these multiple and cumulative effects is essential to understand to
ensure sustainability of river ecosystems.
Key Opportunity:
An improved understanding of how rivers and estuaries respond to multiple stressors, and of how to
identify when human activities start to impair a system’s normal performance.
Supporting Statements:
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River ecosystems are shaped by multiple natural and anthropogenic stressors.
Human activities can reduce the resilience of ecosystems to respond to natural stressors.
Multiple stressors will act together and over time to impair ecosystems.
River and estuarine ecosystems possess some inherent resilience to disturbance.
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Research Plan 2013 - 2018
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The Canadian Rivers Institute
The ecological integrity of these systems is compromised when they can no longer maintain
normal conditions (resilience is exceeded).
We do not yet fully understand how the various interacting physical, chemical, biological, and
social characteristics of river systems contribute to their resilience.
The Research:
CRI researchers and their partners will generate information needed to sustain a river’s health through
leading and paradigm-shifting research:
 To parse individual and linked effects of chemicals in multiple stressor environments of flowing
waters in urban and agricultural settings.
 To understand function of nutrients and thresholds of their additions in flowing waters of urban,
agricultural, and industrial forest landscapes.
 To develop management tools for assessment and prediction of ecosystem health at multiple
spatial and temporal scales of a river’s watershed.
 On social dimensions of river management and governance processes in a watershed context.
Specific outputs:
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Manuscripts advancing river and water management in general beyond the current norm to
incorporate the ecosystem and concept of cumulative effects.
Distribution and application of new tools (e.g. THREATS software) for water managers.
Graduating the next generation of scientists and training professionals with these leading
science skills.
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