MORPHOLOGICAL AND ECOLOGICAL CHANGE ON A MEANDER BEND - THE ROLE OF HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES AND THE APPLICATION OF GIS

Environmental change induced by hydrological processes can often be qu ite small. This paper illustrates subtle changes in river planform on a single meander bend of the lower River Dee, Wales, and the significa nce of those changes for the ecology of the present riparian zone. Geo graphical information systems (GIS) are shown to provide an excellent framework for integrating historical and contemporary information from different sources, and for quantifying possible transcription errors so that true environmental associations and relatively small changes, in the context of the spatial scales of the sources, can be identified with confidence. As a result, functional units within the riparian zo ne of a regulated river can be defined and mapped. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.