RESEARCH ADVANCE IN RIVER HEALTH

The research of river health is one of the hotspots in the current field of river ecology research.The generation,development and various connotations of river health are introduced firstly and the concepts of river ecosystem health,watershed ecosystem health and river health are distinguished.River health is that river can both keep its integrity and maintain various service functions providing the society.This review focuses on the practical research and the methods of river health assessment based on the analysis of the connotation of river health.The methods of river health assessment are divided into predictive model method and multivariate statistical method based on their principle.Aiming at the main existent problems in this field,the future development trend of river health research is put forward.It is suggested that the further study of river health should be emphasized on aspects of choice of assessment indicators,establishment of assessment standards,choice of assessment scale and the integration of river health assessment and river management.