Any river describes a trajectory and models its riverine ecosystems. This poetic view undoubtedly underestimates the anthropic management effects. The long term social ecological research describes social and biogeophysical components and their interrelations in qualitative terms, long term observations and dynamical systems offering complementary quantitative information. For a specific territory, this heterogeneous information may be aggregated into a social ecological timeline to provide an overall outlook of the evolution of the Human-Nature interactions. Drawing a timeline remains a painful task, especially when it should be adapted to the introduction or to the reorganization of some piece of information. ZATimeline is a real-time software dedicated to the representation and the analysis of social ecological systems by means of a timeline. The framework relies on formatted spreadsheets manageable with an Office suite and a graphical user interface to facilitate the uptake by students, researchers and stakeholders, notably during workshops. The Upper Rhine river and the Rohrschollen island are chosen as a case study to assess the interest of timelines compared to other conceptual frameworks, and to answer important questions about the adaptive management and the naturalness of both the river and the Rhenan alluvial forests.