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Excessive inflows of nutrients, especially phosphorus in fertilisers, pesticides and sewage, reduce water quality in lakes and reservoirs and can encourage toxic algal blooms, often with serious implications for public health, food security and biodiversity. Increases in nutrient inputs are partly due to increased rainfall associated with climate change. And the availability and residence times […]
December 14, 2021
Comments Off on Gene flow in complex river systems
Understanding how variations in habitat connectivity affect gene flow and possible genetic isolation in river systems is tricky because of the unique structural features of stream ecosystems, which are notoriously difficult to model: unlike terrestrial landscapes, they are linear branching networks, which means that overland distance is often a poor indicator of the correlation between […]
December 14, 2021
Comments Off on Guidelines for conserving groundwater ecosystems
Aquatic groundwater-dependent ecosystems include subsurface aquifers, springs, seepage wetlands and other groundwater-fed surface waters. Their biodiversity is high: for example, in Europe around 13% of all freshwater animal species are found only in groundwater. Many of these species are rare, with limited distributions, and some are “living fossils”. Groundwater species deliver ecosystem services by recycling […]
September 28, 2021
Comments Off on Aquatic insects on the decline
Although there’s growing evidence that species in many animal groups, including insects, amphibians, aquatic invertebrates and birds, are experiencing dramatic and widespread declines in abundance, identifying the factors driving these changes is a major challenge because most ecosystems are affected by several stressors at the same time. In addition, long-term data sets on species abundance […]
March 13, 2021
Comments Off on Restoring overheated rivers
One of the features of the so-called “urban stream syndrome” is thermal pollution caused by warm environments in built-up areas, which can increase stream temperatures above the tolerance threshold for aquatic organisms. The good news is that urban stream temperatures can be reduced by re-naturalisation measures designed to improve flood control, water quality and habitats. […]
June 25, 2020
Comments Off on Groundwater temperatures on the increase
About half of the world’s population relies on groundwater for drinking and/or irrigation. Although the quality of groundwater is temperature-dependent there have been few field-based studies on the effects of temperature on groundwater chemistry. A 16 -year study carried out in southwestern Germany, in an agricultural area with varied geology, drew on data from wells […]
March 31, 2020
Comments Off on Drone-based temperature mapping
River systems contain mosaics of warm and cool water habitat which can be highly variable across space and time. Because temperature has a strong influence on the physiology, behaviour and abundance of freshwater organisms, the mapping of stream temperature patterns can play an important role in freshwater management – for example, by revealing the distribution […]
March 31, 2020
Comments Off on Exposed sediments boost greenhouse emissions
In lowland rivers in continental and Mediterranean climatic zones, temporary islands and bars emerge from the riverbed at times of low flow and are submerged during floods. The period of submersion controls primary production and the decomposition of organic matter, and thus the metabolism of the whole river. Changing river heights affect oxygen levels in […]
March 31, 2020
Comments Off on Climate change: weighing up the pluses and minuses
Because the vulnerability of a species to climate change can vary with life stage, there’s a need to consider the challenges and opportunities presented by climate warming across the whole lifetime. This is particularly important in the case of species with complex life cycles, or where juveniles and adults of the same species inhabit different […]
Freshwater Research News 
March 26, 2022
Comments Off on Lake management gets harder as the climate changes