Meander restoration has become a commonly advocated solution in flood-prone or ecologically degraded river networks. The long-term impact of such measures on the stability of the landscape at the catchment scale beyond the implementation site itself is critical to project success and for sustainable catchment management and needs to be considered by all stakeholders. It is challenging, however, to predict the overall contribution of meander restoration in stabilising the lower catchment and to make reasoned assumptions about the optimal placement, scale, and interconnected benefits of restoration projects based on an analysis of real-life cases due to the complexity and uniqueness of each catchment’s hydrology and the size and cost of such projects. Meanwhile, digital models can be utilised to test a wide variety of hypothetical futures so that the potential impacts of meander restoration can be understood in advance and limited resources can be better allocated to promote effective kinds of projects. In this study, computational modelling is employed to model the impacts of various upstream meander restoration scenarios on the downstream landscape due to erosion and deposition activities in northern England’s River Don catchment. The results indicate that compared to a baseline scenario, river restoration in tributaries effectively reduces downstream main channel sediment discharge and lateral migration activities. Upstream restoration projects prevent watershed deterioration more effectively than downstream projects. Clustering projects close to one other is more effective in reducing valley lateral erosion and deposition, as well as channel loading, compared to having projects dispersed across multiple tributaries.

中文翻译：

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通过计算建模评估支流上游曲折恢复对下游景观稳定性的影响


蜿蜒的恢复已成为易受洪水侵袭或生态退化的河流网络中普遍倡导的解决方案。这些措施对实施地点本身以外的流域规模景观稳定性的长期影响对于项目的成功和可持续的流域管理至关重要，所有利益相关者都需要考虑。然而，由于每个流域水文的复杂性和独特性以及此类项目的规模和成本，预测蜿蜒恢复对稳定下游流域的总体贡献，并根据对真实案例的分析对恢复项目的最佳位置、规模和相互关联的好处做出合理的假设，这是具有挑战性的。同时，可以利用数字模型来测试各种假设的未来，以便提前了解蜿蜒恢复的潜在影响，并更好地分配有限的资源来促进有效的项目。在这项研究中，采用计算建模来模拟由于英格兰北部顿河集水区的侵蚀和沉积活动而导致的各种上游曲流恢复情景对下游景观的影响。结果表明，与基线情景相比，支流河流的恢复有效地减少了下游主河道沉积物的排放和横向迁移活动。上游恢复项目比下游项目更有效地防止流域恶化。与将项目分散在多个支流上相比，将项目彼此靠近集群在减少山谷横向侵蚀和沉积以及河道载荷方面更有效。