River Ecology and Management : Springer : 9780387952468 : 0387952462 : 01 Mar 2001 : As the vast expanses of natural forests and the great populations of salmonids are harvested to support a rapidly expanding human population, the need to understand streams as ecological systems and to manage them effectively becomes increasingly urgent. The unfortunate legacy of such natural resource exploitation is well documented. For several decades the Pacific coastal ecoregion of North America has served as a natural laboratory for scientific and managerial advancements in stream ecology, and much has been learned about how to better integrate ecological processes and characteristics with a human-dominated environment. These in­ sightful but hard-learned ecological and social lessons are the subject of this book. Integrating land and rivers as interactive components of ecosystems and watersheds has provided the ecological sciences with impor­ tant theoretical foundations. Even though scientific d