The Observatory • RhonEco

RhônEco is an interdisciplinary scientific programme to monitor the restoration of the Rhône. It aims to understand how the hydrosystem functions and to assess the effects that restoration measures may have on the river’s aquatic environments and biodiversity.

RhônEco is interested in restoring the flows in the Rhône that have been short-circuited by hydroelectric schemes, and in restoring the lônes, the former branches of the Rhône that constitute river annexes of particular ecological interest. The restoration of sediment dynamics within the river channel, by remobilising or actively recharging sediments, is also the subject of scientific support as part of the Observatoire des Sédiments du Rhône (OSR). The RhônEco and OSR programmes are complementary and both play a part in the operational monitoring of the reactivation of the alluvial margins of the Rhône.

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RhônEco is a research programme set up at the end of the 1990s to provide interdisciplinary monitoring of the ecological restoration of the Rhône. It is supported by the Rhône-Saône Plan.

It provides an understanding of the ecological functioning of the river and assesses the effects that the various restoration actions may have on aquatic environments and the biological communities that live there (fish, invertebrates, vegetation).

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Nowadays, RhônEco is one of the three structural programmes of the Observatoire Hommes-Milieux (OHM) Vallée du Rhône, a scientific body supported by the CNRS that brings together a number of research teams working on the Rhône River.

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The research teams involved in OHM Vallée du Rhône contribute to the regional scientific dynamic driven by the Zone Atelier Bassin du Rhône (ZABR). As another CNRS initiative, ZABR operates across the Rhône river basin through a network of workshop sites. The OHM Vallée du Rhône is the ZABR workshop site specifically dedicated to the Rhône River.

Find out more about the related research programs

The RhônEco program is supported as part of the Rhône-Saône Plan.

It is financed by the Agence de l’Eau Rhône-Méditerranée, CNR, EDF, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur regions and the Syndicat du Haut-Rhône.