Freshwater flows have an important influence on the balance of fish species in estuaries. As well as supporting general ecosystem health, these flows are also necessary to comply with Australia-wide legislation aimed at the sustainable management of water resources. The Coastal Zone CRC and Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) instigated the ‘environmental flows for estuaries’ ...

Humans create vast quantities of wastewater through inefficiencies and poor management of water systems. The wasting of water poses sustainability challenges, depletes energy reserves, and undermines human water security and ecosystem health. Here we review emerging approaches for reusing wastewater and minimizing its generation. These complementary options make the most of scarce freshwater re...

Abstract Diatoms, a unique group of algae colonising wide range aquatic habitats and contributing to human well-being in many ways. We list summarise these services using the classification Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), i.e. supporting, regulating, provisioning cultural services. The most relevant supporting are photosynthesis primary production, as well sediment formation. They also p...

—We tested the hypotheses that marine-derived resource subsidies (salmon carcasses) increase the growth rates of stream-resident salmonids in southeastern Alaska and that more carcasses translate into more growth. Five carcass treatments of pink salmon Oncorhynchus gorbuscha (0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 carcasses/m2 or 0, 1.9, 3.7, 5.6, and 7.4 kg wet mass/m2) were replicated six times in once-through ar...

All animals have an effect on the environment, but some key species – called ecosystem engineers – can have a particularly large influence. Their impact can be positive, by creating and maintaining habitats and increasing biodiversity, but they can also be negative, by destroying habitats and reducing biodiversity. Interestingly, the magnitude of the effect that an ecosystem engineer has on the...

Despite mounting evidence of invasive species’ impacts on the environment and society, our ability to predict invasion establishment, spread, and impact are inadequate. Efforts to explain and predict invasion outcomes have been limited primarily to terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. Invasions are also common in coastal marine ecosystems, yet to date predictive marine invasion models are abs...

Insects and flowering plants have rarely invaded the sea. Explanations for this have traditionally centered on the unique shortcomings of these groups in the marine environment. We show, however, that transitions among terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments are infrequent in all major plant and animal clades except tetrapod vertebrates. In general, well-adapted incumbents are at a com...

Current evidence indicates that, compared with loss of biodiversity in freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems, the rate of loss in marine systems is relatively slow (N.K. Dulvy – Recent marine extinctions, this meeting). This is not a cause for complacency, and the rate of loss is probably underestimated, but it challenges us to explain why protection of marine biodiversity is an urgent concern,...

The establishment of exotic game fishes to enhance recreational fisheries through authorized and unauthorized stocking into freshwater systems is a global phenomenon. Stocked fishes are often top predators that either replace native top predators or increase the species richness of top predators. Many direct effects of stocking have been documented, but the ecosystem consequences are seldom qua...