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Long-term data show that climate change affects ecosystem functioning and the body size distributions of animal species, but more information is needed to understand the mechanisms underlying these changes. There’s a need for experimental studies that take account of linkages between the aquatic and terrestrial environment and that simulate changes in the intensity and frequency […]
July 5, 2018
Comments Off on Worms, midges and the greenhouse effect
Severely impacted aquatic environments such as urban wetlands and wastewater treatment ponds are designed to treat large amounts of carbon and nitrogen, which raises concerns about their potential greenhouse gas emissions. Because pollution-tolerant worms (oligochaetes) and insects (midges) can reach very high densities in such systems, it’s possible that their activities influence the flux of […]
December 21, 2017
Although climate change is warming many lakes around the world, there are big variations in their rate of temperature increase. This variability is thought to be partly due to the fact that lakes differ widely in terms of water clarity, which is affected by factors such as land management, rainfall and changes in dissolved organic […]
September 25, 2017
Comments Off on Recognising uncertainty in hydro modelling
Because climate warming is thought to be a major cause of long-term shifts in storm runoff and the frequency of extreme floods and droughts, reliable projections of future hydrological changes are essential for the informed management of water resources. However, hydrological modelling involves dealing with a wide range of uncertainties, and so far these uncertainties […]
June 19, 2017
Comments Off on Human impacts on ecological connectivity
Ecological connectivity – the exchange of organisms between habitat patches or subpopulations – has an influence on many key processes, including population dynamics, nutrient flux, disease transmission, species invasions, food-web interactions, genetic isolation and the maintenance of biodiversity. A recent study reviewed ways in which graph theory has been used to investigate how human activities […]
March 27, 2017
Comments Off on Unravelling trends in stream nitrogen
Oxides of nitrogen derived from agriculture, industry and emissions from the burning of fossil fuels fall out from the atmosphere and enter terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. Over the last century the deposition of reactive nitrogen has increased three to five times, and this is reflected in a general global increase in stream nitrogen concentrations. However, at […]
October 8, 2018
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