Guidance > Manual of River Restoration Techniques
| The River Restoration Centre (RRC) Manual of River Restoration Techniques aims to help river managers identify potential restoration techniques for use in river restoration and sustainable river management. First issued in 1997, it provides detailed examples of innovative and best-practice river restoration techniques, and now includes 68 case examples from 39 sites across the UK which can be downloaded freely as PDFs. |
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Use the search bar below or the drop down menus to find relevant techniques and case studies.
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Introduction
- 1. The Manual of River Restoration Techniques
- 2. How to use the Manual
- 3. Planning catchment scale river restoration
- 3a. Understanding your river
- 3b. Identifying river restoration options
- 3c. Creating objectives
- 3d. Design and implementation
- 3e. Monitoring
- 4. Decision support pages
Decision Support
- Decision support introduction
- DS1 - Restoring meanders to straightened rivers
- DS2 - Improving channel morphology
- DS3 - Removing or bypassing barriers
- DS4 - Green bank protection
- DS5 - Natural flood management
View Projects by Overall Aim
- Restoring meanders to straightened rivers
- Decision Support - DS1
- New meandering channel through open fields
- New channel meandering either side of existing channel
- New meander in an impounded river channel
- New meanders to one side of existing channel
- New meandering channel replacing concrete weirs
- Opening up a culverted stream
- Reconnecting remnant meanders
- Restoring a meandering course to a high energy river
- Reconnecting a remnant meander
- New meanders replacing a brick lined urban channel
- Returning a woodland stream to its former sinuous course
- Enhancing redundant river features
- Improving sinuosity of current planform
- Decision Support - DS2
- Current deflectors
- Narrowing with aquatic ledges
- Stone riffle
- Radical re-design from uniform, straight channel to a sinuous, multi-channel river
- Narrowing of an over-widened channel using low cost groynes
- Creating a sinuous low-flow channel in an over-widened channel
- Replacing a concrete drain with a 'natural' channel
- Creation of on-line bays
- Introducing gravel to inaccessible reaches
- Sinuous low-flow course in an over-wide urban channel (Somer)
- Sinuous low-flow course in an over-wide urban channel (Wandle)
- Green bank protection
- Decision Support - DS4
- Willow spiling
- Willow mattress revetment
- Log toe and geotextile revetment with willow slips
- Plant roll revetment
- Supporting bank slips and exposed tree roots
- Hurdle and coir matting revetments
- Bank revetment using low steel sheet piling and coir rolls
- Bank protection using root-wads
- Brushwood mattress bank stabilization on a tidal river
- Establishing marginal habitat along a hard engineered bank
- Improving channel morphology
- Decision Support - DS2
- Bifurcation weir and sidespill
- Drop-weir structures
- Restoring and stabilising over-deepened river bed levels
- Simulated bedrock outcrops
- Raising river bed levels
- Fixing whole trees into the river bank for flow diversity
- Felling and placing trees for habitat and flow diversity
- Gravel reworking to restore a low-flow channel
- Replacing an armoured bed with boulder step-pools
- Creating 'natural' features in a heavily engineered flood scheme
- NFM: Managing overland floodwaters
- NFM: Creating floodplain wetland features
- Providing public, private and livestock access
- Enhancing outfalls to rivers
- Utilising spoil excavated from rivers
- River diversions
- Removing or passing barriers
View Projects by River Name
- River Name
- Alt
- Avon - Amesbury
- Avon - Stratford-Sub-Castle
- Babingley Brook
- Braid Burn
- Bure
- Burn of Mosset
- Calder
- Cam
- Chess - Introducing gravel to inaccessible reaches
- Chess - Cost-effective silt removal from an impounded channel
- Cole - New meandering channel through open fields
- Cole - New meandering channel either side of existing
- Cole - New meander in an impounded river channel
- Cole - New backwaters in redundant river channels
- Cole - Narrowing with aquatic ledges
- Cole - Hurdle and coir matting and revetments
- Cole - Bifurcation weir and spillway
- Cole - Drop weir structures
- Cole - Floodplain spillways
- Cole - Profiling of land within meanders
- Cole - Fords and stock watering point
- Cole - Watercourse crossings
- Cole - Reedbed at Raglan Stream
- Cole - New landforms
- Darent
- Dearne
- Dulais
- Great Ouse
- Highland Water
- Inchewan Burn
- Kennet
- Little Ouse
- Lodge Burn
- Long Eau
- Marden - New meandering channel replacing concrete weirs
- Marden - Simulated bedrock outcrops
- Marden - Urban riverside access
- Monnow
- Neb
- Nene
- Nith
- Ogwen - Restoring and stabilising over-deepened river bed levels
- Ogwen - Restoring a ford as a stock and vehicular crossing point
- Ravensbourne
- Rother - Shopham Loop
- Rother - Tidal Rother
- Rottal Burn
- Skerne - New meanders to one side of existing channel
- Skerne - New backwaters
- Skerne - Current deflectors
- Skerne - Narrowing with aquatic ledges
- Skerne - Stone riffle
- Skerne - Willow spiling
- Skerne - Willow mattress revetment
- Skerne - Log toe and geotextile revetment with willow slips
- Skerne - Plant roll revetment
- Skerne - Supporting bank slips and exposed tree roots
- Skerne - Profiling of land within meanders
- Skerne - Floodplain scrapes
- Skerne - Access paths suitable for disabled users
- Skerne - Surface water outfalls
- Skerne - Reedbed at Raglan Stream
- Somer
- Sugar Brook
- Thames - Clifton Lock Cut
- Thames - Pinkhill Meadows
- Tall
- Valency
- Wandle
- Yardley Brook
View Projects by Site Designation
Tabular Overview of Techniques
Print Manual (low resolution version)
- Edition 1, 1999 + 2002 update
- Update 1, 2002 + 2013 update
- Update 2, 2013
- Update, 2021 - Chapters 1&2, Chapters 3&4, Chapters 5-8, Chapters 9-12
