A historical survey on the evolution of some forest watershed management techniques (part II: stream channel works)

In this paper, a comparison between the forest watershed management works (torrent control and soil conservation) and the so-called soil bioengineering techniques has been carried out. The individuation and the transcription of the original texts which described the selected interventions, allowed the analysis of their evolution and reintroduction over the years. It led us to claim that river and soil bioengineering, sometimes erroneously or speciously regarded as a recent discipline, today represents the renovation and the improvement of building concepts and techniques in use since the remote past in those environments where the only available and usable building materials were those found in situ.