Assessing river health : a confluence of human attitudes, ecology and hydrology

In this paper, we review the definition of river health and issues related to assessing river health. We propose a methodology to develop a practical framework and toolkit for river health assessment using the Hawkesbury-Nepean River (HNR) system as a case study. The development of a simple and robust framework proposed here will be useful for a range of policy makers and natural resource managers to make evidence based decisions on river health improvement programs. The framework and toolkit is expected to help reduce the high cost of large-scale routine monitoring (i.e. macrophyte surveys) often conducted to assess river health