Integrated Catchment Management (ICM) is an emerging discipline and process within the integrated assessment field, which attempts to address the demands of managers and decision makers for effective water and natural resource management. Among all human induced disturbances, land use changes suppose one of the largest causes of functioning impairment for rivers, estuaries and coastal areas. Reversal of land use cover to a less-developed state is rarely possible, and so improvement of condition largely depends on best management practices and improvements in landscape management and design. For these practices to be effective, they need to acknowledge which are the key mechanisms by which impairment is caused. However mechanisms are still not completely understood due to analytical problems. Environmental hydraulics, eco-hydrology and environmental assessment are key disciplines for increasing the understanding of catchment processes and for the development of methodologies and tools for water and natural resource management. In this regard, RIVERLANDS aims at increasing the understanding of how current and past land uses affect river processes, so as to draw clear solutions for a more effective catchment planning. RIVERLANDS plans to account for different analytical problems when linking land use effects to river processes, such as (1) the existence of land use legacy effects, (2) the importance of land use cover spatial arrangement, (3) the co-variation among land use coverage and natural landscape filters, (4) the existence of thresholds (non-linear relationships) among land use cover effects and river responses (5) collinearity among land use cover classes. To do that, we will use remote sensing techniques in order to construct a land use legacy record and we will develop GIS-base software to account for different spatial arrangements of land use cover when quantifying them for river reaches. Moreover, we will use functional indices based on river metabolism as a way to evaluate river process impairment from land use legacies. RIVERLANDS will develop an integrated method to look at land use legacy effects on all river components (Hydrology, morpho-dynamics, water quality and biological communities). Furthermore, we will follow a control/impacted and a stress gradient design to tease apart the effect of different land use stressors on river functioning. Statistical analysis such as Mantel partial correlation, partial Mantel path models, Random forest or Boosted Regression Trees will be used to solve the main analytical problems when investigating the effects of land uses on river systems and to build a network model for river reach functioning, which could assist on building different catchment management scenarios. RIVERLANDS will also build a conceptual model that will suppose the future development of a simulation model for river reach functioning. The creation of these models will assist the decision making process when planning for catchment strategies.