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Many villages in subtropical countries possess ponds that can be used for a variety of purposes, including aquaculture, flood mitigation, groundwater recharge, carbon sequestration, recreation, biodiversity protection and water supply for irrigation and drinking. However, in a large number of cases, these services can’t be supplied because the ponds are polluted. As part of an […]
June 26, 2022
Water fleas (cladocerans) are very common in freshwater plankton and they feed by filtering small particles from currents of water generated by their modified legs. This ability led a team of Spanish researchers to investigate whether the filtration skills of water fleas can be harnessed to treat wastewater to provide an effective alternative to other […]
March 26, 2022
Comments Off on Lake management gets harder as the climate changes
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 Water flow through the beds of streams
The permeability of saturated sediments at the bottom of streams, where surface water and groundwater can mix, has a strong influence on the exchange of mass and energy across the sediment-water interface. Streambed permeability depends mainly on sediment properties such as pore networks and the size and sorting of particles, and can vary greatly, even […]
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 […]
December 14, 2021
Comments Off on How to capture the tiniest animals
Although meiobenthic species are inconspicuous and the smallest animals living in aquatic sediments, they account for up to 80-90% of all animals in streams and lakes. They play an important role in nutrient cycling, contribute up to half of all secondary production in freshwater food webs, and are good indicators of environmental pollution. Meiofauna have […]
September 28, 2021
Comments Off on Land use patterns can aggravate toxic plankton blooms
An understanding of how environmental factors affect the composition of biological communities is a crucial prerequisite for managing challenges due to climate change, land use practices and invasive species. However, establishing the significance of interacting local and regional factors that vary widely across space and time is a challenge in itself. Canadian biologists set out […]
September 28, 2021
Comments Off on Restoration of urban headwaters pays dividends
Because urban streams are often ecologically degraded as a result of channelisation and pollution, restoration work is often attempted to improve ecosystem structure and function. This usually involves remodelling of the stream channel. Knowing that there are predictable shifts in ecosystem processes between headwater streams and the main body of the river, American ecologists investigated […]
September 28, 2021
Comments Off on Key wetland species deliver most ecosystem services
There’s a lot of evidence that in ecosystems such as grasslands and forests, biodiversity is positively related to productivity and to the efficiency of nutrient recycling and decomposition. On this basis it can be argued that the loss of biodiversity is likely to damage the delivery of ecosystem services. However, in the case of wetlands, […]
September 28, 2021
Comments Off on Assessing human impacts on river systems
Because many river systems have been significantly modified as a result of human activities, indicators of changing river structure and function are very helpful in guiding our efforts to manage rivers on a sustainable basis. A number of different indicators based on the hydrology, chemistry or biology of rivers have been developed, but in many […]
Freshwater Research News 
June 26, 2022
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