We know headwater streams don’t fair well under ubanisation, but what can we do, and what tools can we use, to make change?

Headwater streams provide critical ecosystem services to both nature and society; yielding habitat, biodiversity, ecosystem function and services such as clean water and flood control.

Colleagues and I collaborated at SUSE 6 to produce this great paper on elucidating practical pathways to protect headwater streams in rapidly urbanising areas. We developed a framework to guide strategic decision-making and a comprehensive set of structural and nonstructural tools that can be used to facilitate protection. We then applied this framework to four case studies from different physiographic, policy, and legislative settings.

Our evaluation showed that the framework provides a useful generic mechanism (open to localised modification) that can be used by policymakers, planners, and other stakeholders to diagnose the status of headwater stream protection in a variety of urban areas and to support structured stakeholder conversations about what is desirable, practical, and achievable for their context.