Freshwater biodiversity and conservation planning: introduction to the virtual supplement

The January 2011 Special Issue is the first major compilation of studies on systematic conservation planning in fresh waters (Turak & Linke, 2011). The papers in this Special Issue consolidate freshwater conservation planning as a field within both conservation science and freshwater ecology. This progress is largely a result of key advances in both disciplines (Linke, Turak & Nel, 2011). Many of the previous studies representing the advances in the discipline of freshwater ecology were published in Freshwater Biology as were three previous important papers on freshwater conservation planning. It was our aim to compile this virtual supplement containing all freshwater conservation planning papers published in this journal together with a selection of papers dealing with key concepts and techniques in freshwater ecology that made recent advances in freshwater conservation planning possible.