How research interacts with applications in river management and restoration is a critical question within the Anthropocene era. Improved knowledge regarding the socioecological effects of river management and restoration is therefore needed to establish compromises between water uses and riverine ecosystem requirements. This special issue tackles how river management and restoration activities have recently evolved to target cost-efficient and more integrated measures. Some of the contributions showed monitoring feedbacks provide lessons to improve river status and assess success of restoration activities. The range of success indicators considered is continually widening, including more social factors in addition to existing ecological ones. Moreover, win-win and adaptative strategies are also explored to make restoration projects successful and more appreciated by people. Upscaling approaches are also feeding into a growing research field to provide more robust diagnosis for evaluating river status, targeting improvement actions and considering integrative ecological issues in addition to chemical and morphological factors and even fluvial risk assessment.