Setting stream naturalisation goals to achieve ecosystem improvement in urbanising greenfield catchments

Abstract

Expanding cities worldwide are gradually absorbing peripheral greenfield streams that often require some level of improvement to fulfil their role as central public spaces in the urban landscape. Restoration is often impossible due to physical constraints imposed by urban development coupled with fundamental biophysical modification from previous land use. However, it is possible to provide social amenity and improve stream ecosystem condition through the process of naturalisation - an implicitly social undertaking reliant on the well-informed participation of stakeholders. Urbanising greenfield sites present a special case of naturalisation that does not include a local community as it is a..