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"Rivers Regulation."
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Ecosystem services provided by river-floodplain ecosystems
River-floodplain ecosystems (RFEs) provide multiple ecosystem services. However, their importance may be underestimated because they are not summarized yet. In this paper, we review and update the benefits that RFEs provide to society, including supporting, regulating, provisioning, and cultural ecosystem services. Although considered a unique ecosystem service category, we advocate that supporting services, like soil formation, nutrient cycling, primary production, and habitat provisioning can be comprehended as ecosystem processes that generate other services. RFEs provide valuable regulating services, including water regulation, storm protection, erosion control, water purification, waste treatment, and disease control. The society also benefits from provisioning services from RFEs, such as water for drinking and irrigation, food (e.g., fishes and crops), fiber, ornamental and biochemical resources, and energy production. RFEs also provide cultural services including recreation, ecotourism, religiosity, and spirituality. Most ecosystem services from pristine and human-altered RFEs are primarily regulated by the flood pulse because it maintains temporal and spatial habitat variability, high biodiversity, and biotic and abiotic interactions. Despite providing many benefits to society, RFEs are seriously threatened, mainly due to river regulation, land-use changes, pollution and invasive species. Consequently, the multiple demands and uses of RFEs worldwide raise challenges of conservation and restoration.
Journal Article
Seek higher ground : the natural solution to our urgent flooding crisis
\"With Seek Higher Ground, environmental writer and former land-use planner Tim Palmer explores the legacy of flooding in America with a fresh look that addresses the emerging climatic, economic, and ecological realities of our rivers and communities. Global warming is forecast to sharply intensify flooding, and Seek Higher Ground urges that we reduce future damage in the most effective, efficient, and equitable ways possible. Through historical narrative, rigorous reporting, and decades of vivid personal experience, Palmer details how our society's approach to flood control has been infamously inadequate and chronically counterproductive. He builds a compelling case for both the protection of floodplain open space and for programs that help people voluntarily relocate the most threatened homes away from high-water hazards. Only by recognizing the indomitable forces of nature, and adapting to them, can we thrive in the challenging climate to come\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Silenced Rapids and Waterfalls: Habitat Loss and Management of Bypassed Reaches in the Regulated Rivers of Sweden
Habitat destruction is a global driver of biodiversity loss. In rivers, damming and river regulation for hydropower have caused extensive loss of high gradient, riffle, rapid and waterfall habitats. Restoring these habitats, which support unique biodiversity, should be an urgent priority, but inadequate documentation hampers evaluation of different management strategies. Focusing on Sweden, where river regulation affects most catchments, we mapped and quantified characteristics (e.g., slope, length, discharge) of 968 bypassed reaches (BRs), that is, river sections that are dewatered due to diversion of discharge for hydropower production. The extent of habitat loss associated with BRs is substantial, summing to a total length of 1,256 km, 94% of which is predominantly comprised of former riffles, rapids and waterfalls. BRs are typically located in larger rivers at central river network positions, highlighting their potential importance for hydrological and ecological connectivity. These habitat losses are poorly addressed by current management: three quarters of Swedish BRs have no mandated minimum discharge. Of the remainder, 88% have a discharge <2 m3/s, a flow threshold below which, on average, the proportion of rheophilic fish decline rapidly in Swedish BRs. Based on these findings for Sweden, and given the ubiquity of hydropower elsewhere, we suggest that the thousands of kilometers of mostly dry high‐gradient habitat linked to diversion hydropower worldwide likely represent high value restoration targets. Increased, ecologically meaningful, flow releases in these reaches has great potential to rehabilitate essential habitat for threatened rheophilic organisms and ecosystem functioning of regulated rivers.
Journal Article
River systems under peaked stress
The change in the global energy production mix towards variable renewable energy sources requires efficient utilization of regulated rivers to optimise hydropower operations meet the needs of a changing energy market. However, the flexible operation of hydropower plants causes non-natural, sub-daily fluctuating flows in the receiving water bodies, often referred to as ‘hydropeaking’. Drastic changes in sub-daily flow regimes undermine attempts to improve river system health. Environmental decision makers, including permitting authorities and river basin managers facing the intense and increasing pressure on river environments, should consider ecosystem services and biodiversity issues more thoroughly. The need for research innovations in hydropeaking operation design to fulfil both the water and energy security responsibilities of hydropower is highlighted. Our paper outlines optimized hydropeaking design as a future research direction to help researchers, managers, and decision-makers prioritize actions that could enable better integration of river science and energy system planning. The goal of this is to find a balanced hydropower operation strategy.
Journal Article
Rivers lost, rivers regained : rethinking city-river relations
\"Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained discusses how cities have gained control and exerted power over rivers and waterways far upstream and downstream; how rivers and floodplains in cityscapes have been transformed by urbanization and industrialization; how urban rivers have been represented in cultural manifestations, such as novels and songs; and discusses more recent strategies to redefine and recreate the place of the river within the urban setting\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Flow event size influences carbon, nutrient and zooplankton dynamics in a highly regulated lowland river
River regulation and water extraction has significantly altered flow regimes and reduced flood events in many inland river systems. Environmental flows have been adopted in many systems to mitigate the ecological impacts of river regulation, however a lack of knowledge regarding the interrelationship between flow regimes, carbon transport and instream productivity make prioritising water management difficult. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a study on the Namoi River in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia, monitoring changes in dissolved organic carbon (DOC), nutrient dynamics and planktonic food web structure during a period of variable flows. Nutrient and DOC concentrations were positively correlated with river discharge and zooplankton concentrations were highest post flow events. Planktonic chlorophyll-
a
, increased DOC concentration and higher discharge were the most influential drivers of change in zooplankton communities. Further, our results indicated that flow events increased production through both heterotrophic and autotrophic pathways, significantly boosting zooplankton concentration compared to base flow conditions across all measured flow events. We suggest even small in-channel flow events can be important for increasing basal and zooplankton production in rivers, and therefore should be protected or promoted by environmental flow management, particularly during drought conditions.
Journal Article
Increasing resilience to climate variability and change : the roles of infrastructure and governance in the context of adaptation
\"This book highlights the role that both infrastructure and governance play in the context of resilience and adaptation to climate variability and change. Eleven case studies analyze in-depth impacts of extreme events in projects, basins and regions in the Arid Americas (United States and Mexico), Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Nepal, Mexico, Pakistan, Turkey and South Africa. They discuss the importance of infrastructure (mainly reservoirs) in adaptation strategies, how planning and management aspects should improve in response to changing climatic, economic, social and environmental situations and what the management, institutional and financial challenges would be for their implementation. Governance aspects (policies, institutions and decision making) and technical and knowledge limitations are a substantial part of the analyses. The case studies argue that reservoirs are essential to build resilience contributing to adaptation to climate variability and change. However, that for them to be effective, they need to be planned and managed within a governance framework that considers long-term perspectives and multi-sector and multi-level actor needs and perspectives.\"--Page 4 of cover.
Book
Propagule pressure and environmental filters related to non-native species success in river-floodplain ecosystems
The flood pulse is the main driving force influencing river floodplain ecosystems. The dominant role of the flood pulse on the success of non-native species (NNSs) is what differentiates floodplains from other ecosystems, in terms of invasion. In this review, I discuss some patterns related to the performance of NNSs in response to the flood pulse. First, floods connect floodplain habitats and spread propagules of NNSs, causing ‘propagule pulses’ in these ecosystems. After the establishment of NNSs, floodplains may function as steppingstones for future invasions, because propagule pulses enhance invasions in nearby landscapes. Second, the flood pulse changes environmental filters, with consequences for invasion success and for the coexistence of native and NNSs. Flooding represents a disturbance that enhances the success of some NNSs by reducing biotic resistance and changing resource availability, but diminishes the success of others. Drought enhances the invasion success mainly of NNSs that colonize the aquatic-terrestrial transition zone. Third, impacts caused by river regulation and global changes alter the flood pulse, which in turn affects invasion success. There is a great degree of idiosyncrasy in these patterns, but they pose a broad perspective that helps to understand and manage NNSs in floodplains.
Journal Article