The upper reaches of the Minjiang River (URMR), located on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau in southwestern China, are an important component of the ecological barrier of the Upper Yangtze River Basin. Climate change and human activities have increased the ecological sensitivity and vulnerability of the region, which may pose a threat to the ecological security of the Yangtze River Basin...

Conservation programs often focus on select species, leading to management plans based on the autecology of the focal species, but multiple ecosystem components can be affected both by the environmental factors impacting, and the management targeting, focal species. These broader effects can have indirect impacts on target species through the web of interactions within ecosystems. For example, ...

1. River management involves satisfying societal preferences alongside environmental needs for a healthy river ecosystem. Environmental flows is a discipline that aims to define streamflow requirements that achieve desired social and ecological conditions in rivers. 2. The ecological limits of hydrologic alteration (ELOHA) framework takes a regional approach towards assessing relationships betw...

To cite this Article Wylie, B. K. , Zhang, L. , Bliss, N. , Ji, L. , Tieszen, L. L. and Jolly, W. M.(2008) 'Integrating modelling and remote sensing to identify ecosystem performance anomalies in the boreal forest, Yukon River Basin, Alaska', International Journal of Digital Earth, 1: 2, 196 — 220 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/17538940802038366 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17538940802...

The 1964 Columbia River Treaty between the United States and Canada is currently under review. Under the treaty, the river is jointly operated by the two countries for hydropower and is the largest producer of hydropower in the western hemisphere. In considering the next phase of international river governance, the degree of uncertainty surrounding the drivers of change complicates efforts to p...

Environmental heterogeneity is a key regulator of ecological processes. Riverine floodplains are particularly heterogeneous and dynamic systems and loss of their natural environmental heterogeneity and dynamism as a consequence of human impacts constitutes their most serious threat. On river floodplains, flow and flood pulses create a shifting mosaic of channels, ponds, bars, islands, and ripar...

The Glaciated Interior Plains historically supported a broad variety of wetland types, but wetland losses, primarily due to agricultural drainage, range from 50% to 90% of presettlement area. Wholesale land use change has created one of the most productive agricultural regions on earth, but wetland conversion has also led to the loss of the ecosystem services they provide, particularly water qu...

[1] A mechanistic explanation for the accumulation of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), observed in coastal seas such as the Northern Adriatic Sea, is proposed here on the basis of numerical simulations of the marine ecosystem dynamics carried out with a coupled biogeochemical-circulation model. The biogeochemical model is based on the European Regional Seas Ecosystem Model (ERSEM) upgraded with ...

Although several frameworks for assessing the resilience of social-ecological systems (SESs) have been developed, some practitioners may not have sufficient time and information to conduct extensive resilience assessments. We have presented a simplified approach to resilience assessment that reviews the scientific, historical, and social literature to rate the resilience of an SES with respect ...

The ecosystem service concept is becoming more and more acknowledged in science and decision-making. Taking an economic valuation approach, we quantified the economic value change of ecosystem services for different land use types in the middle basin of Heihe River, Northwest China. Eight ecosystem services indicators were selected: raw materials production, crop production, gas regulation, hyd...