The elaboration of environmental sustainability indexes (ESI) aims to describe the complexity between social, environmental and ecological health. These indexes play a crucial role by helping stakeholders during the decision-making process and by identifying possible sites that require practical sustainable actions. In this study, we aim to elaborate an ESI for hydrographic basins. We use three factors to build the index: land use; vulnerability to soil degradation and topographic land attributes; and human development. The human development factor includes the dimensions of education, sanitation, longevity and income. These three factors are recommended by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and reflect the pressure–state–impact assessment model. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed ESI, we applied it in a hydrographic basin located in southern Brazil. The sustainability level variation in the basin was classified into five groups: very low (0%), low (17%), intermediate (72%), high (11%) and very high (0%). The predominance of the intermediate sustainability level was found to mainly owe to the extent of agricultural land and the high degree of susceptibility to soil erosion in areas with low environmental conservation. In areas with native vegetation, environmental sustainability was found to be higher than in areas with other land use types. The resulting ESI will help facilitate future studies in environmental, economic or social dimensions in any hydrographic basin.
Environmental characteristics of an invaded environment can predict the invasion success of a species, depending on its habits and life strategies. Cichla kelberi is a visual and voracious predator introduced in the upper Paraná River floodplain, an area that suffers with several upstream dams that caused many environmental changes over the years (e.g. increased water transparency). As this species is a pre-adapted species to environments that presents high water transparency, our main goal was to test the hypothesis that variables related to the underwater visibility would be important drivers of the successful invasion of C. kelberi in the upper Paraná River floodplain. We predict that turbidity (proxy of water transparency) is one of the major limnological determinants of occurrence and abundance of C. kelberi. Individuals of the invasive species and seven limnological variables were sampled quarterly between February 2000 and November 2018. This long-term data is part of the sixth site of the Brazilian Long Term Ecological Program (PELD). We fitted two regression models to all occurrence and abundance data (response variables) against the limnological variables (explanatory variables). For occurrence data, we fitted a Generalized Linear Mixed Model and for abundance data, we fitted a Linear Mixed Effects Model. The occurrence data of C. kelberi showed that turbidity and dissolved oxygen were the variables that most influenced the presence of this species, negatively and positively, respectively. The abundance data showed that dissolved oxygen and concentration of chlorophyll-a were the ones that most influenced the abundance of this species, negatively and positively, respectively. Our findings showed that besides turbidity, other limnological variables were also determinants for the occurrence and abundance of C. kelberi. Therefore, our results provided important
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