Managing aquatic ecosystems and water resources under multiple stress — An introduction to the MARS project

An empirical investigation of climate and land-use effects on water quantity and quality in two urbanising catchments in the southern United Kingdom

“…Detection of temporal changes in water quantity and quality provide the scientific basis for providing early warning signs of a potentially deteriorating aquatic environment and attribution of trends in long-term series of observations to concurrent changes in climate and development pressures provides the evidence basis for decision-makers to steer towards more effective policy interventions (Burt et al, 2008). However, the confounding influence of multiple stressors and the general lack of reliable and systematic long-term data makes this a challenging scientific task (Hering et al, 2015).…”

Restoration in Integrated River Basin Management

“…Ongoing challenges to successful restoration are currently demonstrated by the persistence of large-scale impacts, e.g., extensive areas of intensive land use in the catchment or numerous migration barriers (weirs, impoundments, ramps) limiting the recolonization through interrupted longitudinal connectivity. Moreover, current fluvial systems are confronted with multiple pressures that cannot be solved solely by morphological habitat restoration (Schinegger et al 2012;Tockner et al 2010;Hering et al 2015). This calls for further improvements to an integrative and basin-wide approach that goes beyond fluvial morphology to account for all functional aspects of river systems.…”

Land Use

“…But when effects of pressure interaction are not additive but antagonistic or synergistic, the untangling and identification of such specific metrics become very challenging (Schinegger et al 2016). Development of ecological assessment methods that are able to indicate most important pressures and even pressure combinations is still highly desired by water managers (Hering et al 2014).…”