Restoration is an essential tool to achieve 'good ecological status' of rivers as required by European legislation. Although the number of restoration projects has increased in recent years, scientific understanding of the underlying principles determining how hydrogeomorphological variability in restored corridors of rivers relates to ecosystem functioning, to biodiversity and to water quality is still limited. Further, the extent to which river restoration increases the resilience of the ecosystem, improves groundwater quality, or even endangers drinking water supply from alluvial aquifers, is not well known. For these reasons river restoration projects are the ideal platform favoring scientists from different disciplines to build a common line of research. This Session's goal is to gather research papers that help to increase the mechanistic understanding and progresses of restoration actions in river corridors. We welcome presentations related to investigation and monitoring strategies at different spatial and temporal scales, uncertainties, and limitations in application. Specifically, contributions on experiments, observation, and modeling of the relationships and feedback effects among river morphodynamics, (ground)water quality, ecosystem functioning and biodiversity should be oriented to help understanding both feasibility and limits of restoration process transferability to other rivers. Papers addressing both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to assess the success of river restoration projects from a comprehensive viewpoint are also welcome.