Excerpt
STREAMS have physical, biological, aesthetic, and cultural features that can support human and environmental values (17). In urban areas, streams represent potential wildlife corridors, wetland multipliers of ecosystem integrity, scenic resources, recreational facilities close to home, and greenway links among neighborhoods and parks.
The materials, vegetation, shape, stability, and spatial composition of the stream channel and riparian landscape govern the corridor's effectiveness as a resource. Such characteristics can be managed through landscape design (18).
Programs to implement such values have been undertaken in several areas. California's Urban Stream Restoration Program was begun in 1985 to reduce damages from streambank and watershed instability and floods while restoring streams' aesthetic, recreational, and fish and wildlife values (22). The Boulder Creek Corridor Project in Colorado was adopted in 1985 to provide off-street pedestrian and bicycle transportation, preserve and enhance fish habitat and riparian wetland, expand recreational use, and maintain and improve flood-carrying capacity (28). San Antonio's Riverwalk is an intensely urban pedestrian commercial corridor, constantly being expanded and refined through continuing urban development (10).
Stream equilibrium
A stream is an erosional, transportational, and depositional system where form and process evolve together. When a stream …
Footnotes
Bruce K. Ferguson is an associate professor of landscape architecture in the University of Georgia School of Environmental Design, 609 Caldwell Hall, Athens, 30602.
- Copyright 1991 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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