Managing active landforms

Active geomorphological processes

Geomorphological processes frequently impinge on human activity (e.g. through flooding, coastal erosion and soil erosion), with resultant economic and social costs.

Management responses

Management responses often result in locally engineered solutions such as riverbank and coast protection measures that are unsuccessful or simply transfer the problem elsewhere. Typically, management timeframes are based on human experience and are not informed sufficiently by the longer-term geological perspective. However, it is this perspective which is vital in assessing natural hazards and implementing sustainable management of natural resources.

Sustainable management

Sustainable management of natural systems therefore depends on the effective application of Earth science knowledge as part of the development of more integrated approaches; for example the maintenance of sediment transport at the coast or natural flow regimes in rivers. Various guiding principles have been proposed:

• The inevitability of natural change should be recognised.
• Any management and intervention should work with, rather than against, natural processes.
• Natural systems should be managed within the limits of their capacity to absorb change.
• The sensitivity of natural systems should be recognised, including the potential for irreversible changes if limiting thresholds are crossed.
• Natural systems should be managed to maintain natural rates and magnitudes of change and their capacity to evolve through natural processes;
• Natural systems should be managed in a spatially integrated manner (e.g. at a catchment or coastal zone level).

Application of sustainable management

Many of these sustainable management principles are now being applied through a range of approaches or programmes in different countries, recognising that landscapes are mosaics of geological, natural and cultural features that need to be managed and interpreted in an integrated fashion. The ecosystem approach, in particular, has been adopted as a primary framework for action under the Convention on Biological Diversity and provides a means for closer integration of geodiversity and biodiversity on a wider scale.