The sustainable management of aquatic ecosystems requires better coordination between policies span-ning freshwater, coastal and marine environments. Ecosystem-based management (EBM) has been promoted as a holistic and integrative approach for the safekeeping and protection of aquatic biodiversity. The paper assesses the degree to which key European environmental policies for the aquatic enviro...

Although understanding the spatial distribution of fish is crucial to effective management of estuaries and coastal wetlands, there has been little systematic study of fish distribution at the cross-sectional scale in tropical estuaries. We tested the generality of a model for the cross-channel distribution of small fish (<200 mm fork length), extrapolated from temperate studies, for tropical a...

Six of New Zealand’s 16 regional councils are trialling collaborative planning as a means of addressing complex challenges in freshwater management. Although some work has been undertaken to evaluate similarities and differences across those processes, the success or failure rests with the public’s acceptance of the processes and their outcomes. This is the first study to evaluate public percep...

1. This case study was prepared as part of an Asian Development Bank (ADB) special evaluation study on small-scale, freshwater, rural aquaculture development. The study used primary and secondary data and published information to document the human, social, natural, physical, and financial capital available to households involved in the production and consumption of freshwater farmed fish and t...

The possibility of using freshwater Ulva (Chlorophyta) as a bioaccumulator of metals (Co, Cr, Cu, Mn and Zn) in lake and river water was examined weekly in the summer of 2010 in three types of samples: the water, the sediment and the thalli of Ulva. Samples of freshwater Ulva were collected from two aqueous ecosystems lie 250 km away from the basin of the Baltic Sea and 53 km from each other. A...

There are pressing concerns about the interplay between agricultural productivity, water demand, and water availability in semi-arid to arid regions of the world. Currently, irrigated agriculture is the dominant water user in these regions and is estimated to consume approximately 80% of the world’s diverted freshwater resources. We develop an improved irrigated land-use mapping algorithm that ...

The condition factor for nine species of tropical freshwater fish of the Characidae family in the upper Paraná River floodplain is described. Fish were caught over a period of 12 months (February 1993 to March 1994). Knowledge of the nine species is important for adequate management and maintenance of the biological equilibrium of the ecosystem.

Conservation planning aims to protect biodiversity by sustainng the natural physical, chemical, and biological processes within representative ecosystems. Often data to measure these components are inadequate or unavailable. The impact of human activities on ecosystem processes complicates integrity assessments and might alter ecosystem organization at multiple spatial scales. Freshwater conser...

River water temperature is a hydrological feature primarily controlled by topographical, meteorological, climatological, and anthropogenic factors. For Britain, the study of freshwater temperatures has focussed mainly on observations made in England and Wales; similar comprehensive data sets for Scotland are currently unavailable. Here we present a model for the whole of mainland Britain over t...

Estimates of regional patterns of global sea level change are obtained from a 1◦ horizontal resolution general circulation model constrained by least-squares to about one hundred million ocean observations and many more meteorological estimates during the period 1993-2004. The data include not only altimetric variability, but most of the modern hydrography, Argo float profiles, sea surface temp...