Riparian corridors play an important role for the maintenance of regional biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Riparian forests are even the only semi-natural vegetation strips remaining in many agricultural or urbanised landscapes. In such landscapes, the spatial continuity of riparian vegetation is frequently broken by the construction of stabilisation structures engineered for erosion control. Here, we examined the effects of different riverbank stabilisation structures—fascines (soil bioengineering), ripraps (hard engineering), and mixed-technique (lower-bank ripraps with upper-bank plantings)—on the structural connectivity of their respective riverbanks. We first revisited previously studied stabilisation structures to extend their vegetation sampling to their adjacent riverbanks. Then, for each type of stabilisation structure, we compared community composition, richness and abundance of native and invasive alien species (IAS), and cover of vegetation strata (herbaceous, shrub and tree) between stabilised embankments and their upstream and downstream banks. Results indicated that, although the composition of fascine banks differed from that of their adjacent riverbanks, they fitted nicely in the structural continuity of their riparian surroundings. Differences were likely explained by the proportion of fast-growing woody species (e.g. willows) planted in fascines, which also induced strong reductions in IAS richness and abundances; i.e. propagule “sinks”. Conversely, ripraps broke the structural continuity of riverbanks and were heavily dominated by IAS while mixed-technique banks displayed intermediate characteristics. Consequently, we argued that fascines may be the riverbank stabilisation structures displaying highest ecological benefits in terms of habitat quality and connectivity and should be preferred over the other investigated engineering techniques.

河岸走廊在维护区域生物多样性和生态系统功能方面发挥着重要作用。沿岸森林甚至是许多农业或城市化景观中仅存的半天然植被带。在这样的景观中，河岸植被的空间连续性经常被设计用于侵蚀控制的稳定结构破坏。在这里，我们研究了不同的河岸稳定结构-fascines（土壤生物工程），ripraps（硬工程）和混合技术（低河岸ripraps与上岸种植）对各自河岸的结构连通性的影响。我们首先回顾了先前研究的稳定结构，以将其植被采样扩展到其相邻的河岸。然后，对于每种类型的稳定结构，我们比较了稳定路堤及其上游和下游河岸之间的群落组成，原生和入侵外来物种（IAS）的丰富度和丰富度以及植被地层（草皮，灌木和树木）的覆盖率。结果表明，尽管fascine河岸的构成与其相邻河岸的构成不同，但它们很好地适应了河岸环境的结构连续性。差异可能是由在fascines中种植的快速生长的木本物种（例如柳树）的比例引起的，这也导致IAS丰富度和丰度大大降低。即繁殖“水槽”。相反，翻录破坏了河岸的结构连续性，并被IAS主导，而混合技术河岸表现出中间特征。所以，