Dams contribute to water security, energy supply, and flood protection but also fragment habitats of freshwater species. Yet, a global species-level assessment of dam-induced fragmentation is lacking. Here, we assessed the degree of fragmentation of the occurrence ranges of ∼10,000 lotic fish species worldwide due to ∼40,000 existing large dams and ∼3,700 additional future large hydropower dams. Per river basin, we quantified a connectivity index (CI) for each fish species by combining its occurrence range with a high-resolution hydrography and the locations of the dams. Ranges of nondiadromous fish species were more fragmented (less connected) (CI = 73 ± 28%; mean ± SD) than ranges of diadromous species (CI = 86 ± 19%). Current levels of fragmentation were highest in the United States, Europe, South Africa, India, and China. Increases in fragmentation due to future dams were especially high in the tropics, with declines in CI of ∼20 to 40 percentage points on average across the species in the Amazon, Niger, Congo, Salween, and Mekong basins. Our assessment can guide river management at multiple scales and in various domains, including strategic hydropower planning, identification of species and basins at risk, and prioritization of restoration measures, such as dam removal and construction of fish bypasses. habitat fragmentation | hydropower | river management | migratory fish | biodiversity Barbarossa et al. PNAS | February 18, 2020 | vol. 117 | no. 7 | 3649 ECOLOGY ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Downloaded by guest on July 3, 2020
Climate change poses a significant threat to global biodiversity, but freshwater fishes have been largely ignored in climate change assessments. Here, we assess threats of future flow and water temperature extremes to ~11,500 riverine fish species. In a 3.2 °C warmer world (no further emission cuts after current governments’ pledges for 2030), 36% of the species have over half of their present-day geographic range exposed to climatic extremes beyond current levels. Threats are largest in tropical and sub-arid regions and increases in maximum water temperature are more threatening than changes in flow extremes. In comparison, 9% of the species are projected to have more than half of their present-day geographic range threatened in a 2 °C warmer world, which further reduces to 4% of the species if warming is limited to 1.5 °C. Our results highlight the need to intensify (inter)national commitments to limit global warming if freshwater biodiversity is to be safeguarded.
Streamflow data is highly relevant for a variety of socio-economic as well as ecological analyses or applications, but a high-resolution global streamflow dataset is yet lacking. We created FLO1K, a consistent streamflow dataset at a resolution of 30 arc seconds (~1 km) and global coverage. FLO1K comprises mean, maximum and minimum annual flow for each year in the period 1960–2015, provided as spatially continuous gridded layers. We mapped streamflow by means of artificial neural networks (ANNs) regression. An ensemble of ANNs were fitted on monthly streamflow observations from 6600 monitoring stations worldwide, i.e., minimum and maximum annual flows represent the lowest and highest mean monthly flows for a given year. As covariates we used the upstream-catchment physiography (area, surface slope, elevation) and year-specific climatic variables (precipitation, temperature, potential evapotranspiration, aridity index and seasonality indices). Confronting the maps with independent data indicated good agreement (R2 values up to 91%). FLO1K delivers essential data for freshwater ecology and water resources analyses at a global scale and yet high spatial resolution.
Environmental risk assessment of
pharmaceuticals requires the determination
of their environmental exposure concentrations. Existing exposure
modeling approaches are often computationally demanding, require extensive
data collection and processing efforts, have a limited spatial resolution,
and have undergone limited evaluation against monitoring data. Here,
we present ePiE (exposure to Pharmaceuticals in the Environment),
a spatially explicit model calculating concentrations of active pharmaceutical
ingredients (APIs) in surface waters across Europe at ∼1 km
resolution. ePiE strikes a balance between generating data on exposure
at high spatial resolution while having limited computational and
data requirements. Comparison of model predictions with measured concentrations
of a diverse set of 35 APIs in the river Ouse (UK) and Rhine basins
(North West Europe), showed around 95% were within an order of magnitude.
Improved predictions were obtained for the river Ouse basin (95% within
a factor of 6; 55% within a factor of 2), where reliable consumption
data were available and the monitoring study design was coherent with
the model outputs. Application of ePiE in a prioritisation exercise
for the Ouse basin identified metformin, gabapentin, and acetaminophen
as priority when based on predicted exposure concentrations. After
incorporation of toxic potency, this changed to desvenlafaxine, loratadine,
and hydrocodone.
Clinopyroxenes from the Pico Volcano (Pico Island, Azores Archipelago) have been used as a proxy to define the water content of primitive magmas and the volcanological history of the erupted rocks. This very young volcano (53 ± 5 ka) is at a primordial stage of its evolution in comparison with the other volcanoes of the Azores. Clinopyroxenes from Pico Volcano underwent important dehydration processes and after annealing experiments under H2 gas flux, a pre-eruptive H2O content between 93 and 182 ppm was recovered. A moderately high cooling rate for the cpx-host lavas expressed by the clinopyroxene closure temperature (Tc = 755–928 °C ± 20 °C) correlates with the dehydration, suggesting that this process may have occurred during magma ponding at the Moho Transition Zone (17.3–17.7 km) and/or after the eruption. By applying an IVAl-dependent partition coefficient to the measured H amount in clinopyroxene, the pre-eruptive water content of the parental magma was calculated to vary between 0.71 and 1.20 (average of 1.0) wt%. Clinopyroxene geobarometry performed by combining X-ray diffraction with mineral chemistry points to a general crystallisation from the mantle lithosphere (~ 8–9 kbar) to the oceanic mantle/crust boundary (~ 4–5 kbar). The similar major and trace chemistry, water content and Fe3+/Fetot ratio of clinopyroxene, suggest similar conditions of oxygen fugacity, water content and fractional crystallisation of the magma from which clinopyroxene cores crystallised during the Pico Volcano central eruptions from 40 ka to historical times.
Quantifying mean annual flow of rivers (MAF) at ungauged sites is essential for assessments of global water supply, ecosystem integrity and water footprints. MAF can be quantified with spatially explicit process-based models, which might be overly time-consuming and data-intensive for this purpose, or with empirical regression models that predict MAF based on climate and catchment characteristics. Yet, regression models have mostly been developed at a regional scale and the extent to which they can be extrapolated to other regions is not known. In this study, we developed a global-scale regression model for MAF based on a dataset unprecedented in size, using observations of discharge and catchment
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