Editorial Riparian Ecology and Conservation: The Home of Cutting-edge Research on Riparian Biophysical Processes, Biodiversity, Ecosystem Functions and Services

Abstract

Riparian ecosystems are among the most dynamic and complex systems in nature, which are transitional areas between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems including perennial, intermittent and ephemeral streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, wetlands, and estuaries. Riparian areas are connected with water bodies not only through surface and subsurface geohydrology but also by reciprocal fluxes of energy, nutrients, matter, organisms, and provide many ecosystem functions, such as supporting natural biodiversity, enhancing biological production, water infiltration, nutrient transformation and contaminant removal, flood and erosion control. Riparian areas create ecological corridors to link different ecosystems and form a network across the landscape. Through these biophysical processes, healthy riparian areas provide a variety of ecosystem services to humans, including food, clean water, flood and erosion control, and natural areas for recreation and aesthetics. However, human-nature interactions in riparian areas are challenged by historical, current and upcoming environmental, economic and social problems caused by anthropogenic disturbances across scales from local land use change to global climate change. In past over 100 years, there is a substantial body of literature on riparian topics. Between 1900 and 2011, 11582 publications with the keyword of “riparian” were retrieved from the ISI Web of Knowledge Web of Science through the topic search on “riparian”. The Citation Databases used for the search were SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH (all from 1900 to present), and A&HCI (from 1975 to present). Early literature related to riparian topic mainly focused on riparian law and water law (about 40 publications during 1900-1970). Since 1970, a large body of literature showed the explosion of information covering vegetation, animal, habitat, and hydrologic topics. Over the last two decades, knowledge about riparian ecology, biophysical processes, ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services, conservation and management has significantly increased, and at the present day the substantial numbers of such publications have been growing (Figure 1). Indeed, the numbers of publications per year in different topic terms such as riparian ecosystem, conservation, riparian ecology, and riparian ecosystem functioning, have been steadily increasing from 1990, or for the case of riparian ecosystem services, from