Assessing and managing freshwater ecosystems vulnerable to environmental change

Abstract

Freshwater ecosystems are important for global biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services. There is consensus in the scientific literature that freshwater ecosystems are vulnerable to the impacts of environmental change, which may trigger irreversible regime shifts upon which biodiversity and ecosystem services may be lost. There are profound uncertainties regarding the management and assessment of the vulnerability of freshwater ecosystems to environmental change. Quantitative approaches are needed to reduce this uncertainty. We describe available statistical and modeling approaches along with case studies that demonstrate how resilience theory can be applied to aid decision-making in natural resources management. We highlight especially how long-term monitoring efforts combined with ecological theory can provide a novel nexus between ecological impact assessment and management, and the quantification of systemic vulnerability and thus the resilience of ecosystems to environmental change.

Quantifying resilience

“…Several approaches, including discontinuity analysis and time‐series or spatial modelling tools, are available for assessing cross‐scale resilience (Angeler et al . ).…”

“…Assessments of functional diversity and response diversity have been fruitful and have led to recommendations for assessing relative resilience (Angeler et al . ). Finally, discontinuity approaches, often combined with functional assessments, specifically assess scale‐specific and cross‐scale structure (Sundstrom et al .…”

Management applications of discontinuity theory

“…When monitoring data are available, the discontinuity approach can be extended to evaluate scaling patterns in time series and reveal environmental factors that correlate with these scaling patterns (Angeler et al . ). For example, analysis of long‐term data has revealed discrete groups of lake invertebrate species that exhibited distinct temporal frequencies.…”

“…Alternatively, time‐series modelling and spatial modelling allow for the application of discontinuity theory to these groups (Angeler et al . ). Many of these methods can be used to assess discontinuities in the abiotic environment and therefore have research potential in the hydrological, ecotoxicological and geochemical sciences to address management issues related to water quality and pollution.…”

Biodiversity: The Non-natives Species Versus the Natives Species and Ecosystem Functioning

“…Biodiversity is necessary for stabilization of ecosystem, protection of overall environmental quality for understanding intrinsic value of all species on the Earth [1][2][3]. Biodiversity affects the capacity of living systems to respond to changes in the environment, underpins ecosystem function and provides the ecosystem goods and services that support human well-being [4][5][6][7]. Human activities play a robust responsibility in contrast with other natural process in changing the biodiversity and invasions of species [8,9].…”