RILAN is an open working group of teachers and students from the Department of Geography who meet to study river and floodplain ecosystems — their current status, historical evolution , and human‑induced changes. We focus on both fundamental research and applied tasks in geomorphology, hydrology, hydrobiology, and landscape ecology.

Recently, our work has focused mainly on the following topics:

• negative impacts of human activities on rivers and floodplains
• connectivity of material fluxes in river landscapes (water runoff, sediment transport, and large wood dynamics)
• large wood in rivers — its ecological benefits as well as its role in flood risk
• changes in lowland meandering rivers from the 19th century to the present
• susceptibility of small catchments to flash floods
• links between river networks and the surrounding landscape