Environmental flows for natural, hybrid, and novel riverine ecosystems in a changing world (original) (raw)
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Ecologically sustainable water management: managing river flows for ecological integrity
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Human demands on the world's available freshwater supplies continue to grow as the global population increases. In the endeavor to manage water to meet human needs, the needs of freshwater species and ecosystems have largely been neglected, and the ecological consequences have been tragic. Healthy freshwater ecosystems provide a wealth of goods and services for society, but our appropriation of freshwater flows must be better managed if we hope to sustain these benefits and freshwater biodiversity. We offer a framework for developing an ecologically sustainable water management program, in which human needs for water are met by storing and diverting water in a manner that can sustain or restore the ecological integrity of affected river ecosystems. Our six-step process includes: (1) developing initial numerical estimates of key aspects of river flow necessary to sustain native species and natural ecosystem functions; (2) accounting for human uses of water, both current and future, through development of a computerized hydrologic simulation model that facilitates examination of human-induced alterations to river flow regimes; (3) assessing incompatibilities between human and ecosystem needs with particular attention to their spatial and temporal character; (4) collaboratively searching for solutions to resolve incompatibilities; (5) conducting water management experiments to resolve critical uncertainties that frustrate efforts to integrate human and ecosystem needs; and (6) designing and implementing an adaptive management program to facilitate ecologically sustainable water management for the long term. Drawing from case studies around the world to illustrate our framework, we suggest that ecologically sustainable water management is attainable in the vast majority of the world's river basins. However, this quest will become far less feasible if we wait until water supplies are further over-appropriated.
Freshwater …, 2009
1 models and to quantify the ecological goods and services provided by rivers in contrasting hydro-climatic settings across the globe. A major challenge will be to find acceptable ways to manage rivers for multiple uses. Climate change intensifies the urgency. Environmental flows help to preserve the innate resilience of aquatic ecosystems, and thereby offer the promise of improved sustainability and wellbeing for people as well as for ecosystems.
Meeting Ecological and Societal Needs for Freshwater
Ecological …, 2008
Human society has used freshwater from rivers, lakes, groundwater, and wetlands for many different urban, agricultural, and industrial activities, but in doing so has overlooked its value in supporting ecosystems. Freshwater is vital to human life and societal well-being, and thus its utilization for consumption, irrigation, and transport has long taken precedence over other commodities and services provided by freshwater ecosystems. However, there is growing recognition that functionally intact and biologically complex aquatic ecosystems provide many economically valuable services and long-term benefits to society. The short-term benefits include ecosystem goods and services, such as food supply, flood control, purification of human and industrial wastes, and habitat for plant and animal life-and these are costly, if not impossible, to replace. Long-term benefits include the sustained provision of those goods and services, as well as the adaptive capacity of aquatic ecosystems to respond to future environmental alterations, such as climate change. Thus, maintenance of the processes and properties that support freshwater ecosystem integrity should be included in debates over sustainable water resource allocation.
River conservation: going against the flow to meet global challenges
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Science of The Total Environment, 2016
The development of the Water Framework Directive aimed to establish an integrated framework of water management at European level. This framework revolves around inland surface waters, transitional waters, coastal waters and ground waters. In the process of achieving the environment and ecological objectives set from the Directive, the role of economics is put in the core of the water management. An important feature of the Directive is the recovery of total economic cost of water services by all users. The total cost of water services can be disaggregated into environmental, financial and resource costs. Another important aspect of the directive is the identification of major drivers and pressures in each River Basin District. We describe a methodology that is aiming to achieve sustainable and environmental and socioeconomic management of freshwater ecosystem services. The Ecosystem Services Approach is in the core of the suggested methodology for the implementation of a more sustainable and efficient water management. This approach consists of the following three steps: (i) socioeconomic characterization of the River Basin area, (ii) assessment of the current recovery of water use cost, and (iii) identification and suggestion of appropriate programs of measures for sustainable water management over space and time. This methodology is consistent with a) the economic principles adopted explicitly by the Water Framework Directive (WFD), b) the three-step WFD implementation approach adopted in the WATECO document, c) the Ecosystem Services Approach to valuing freshwater goods and services to humans. Furthermore, we analyze how the effects of multiple stressors and socioeconomic development can be quantified in the context of freshwater resources management. We also attempt to estimate the value of four ecosystem services using the benefit transfer approach for the Anglian River Basin, which showed the significance of such services.
2014
River systems maintain unique biotic resources and provide essential renewable water supplies for humankind. Flood pulses are the key natural drivers of species richness and productivity of the large river-floodplain ecosystems, but traditional water management has sought to reduce the natural variability of river flows to achieve more stable water supplies for socio-economic water needs. The increasing human pressure on river systems directly threatens the biodiversity of fluvial ecosystems across the world. Ecologically sustainable river management is aimed at maintaining the ecological integrity of the affected ecosystems while meeting the intergenerational human needs and sustaining the full array of other goods and services provided by natural river ecosystems. Several criteria of ecologically sustainable water management are outlined, such as the assessment of the reference status, the documentation of the deficiencies of the baseline conditions, the iden- tification of the ca...