Geomorphic templates to guide future investment and management

Melbourne Water has developed of a series of river health ‘templates’ to communicate its vision for the form and function of waterways in the Port Phillip and Westernport region in 2030. These templates are designed to help align approaches to stream rehabilitation, management and maintenance, and improve interaction between Melbourne Water, community groups and developers.

Alluvium was engaged to develop the geomorphology component. The geomorphic templates provide a description of the vision for the physical form at the scale of several hundred metres of waterway at a time. Each geomorphic template comprises an illustration and a written description of the geomorphic features in the vision for that particular stream. Various aspects of geomorphology are illustrated and described in the templates including the relationship between the channel and its floodplain, the degree of windiness of the channel, the shape of the channel cross-section and features in the channel such as pools and riffles.