December 2, 2016
Published by BC3Research at December 2, 2016
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Dr. Virgilio Hermoso and Dr. Simone Langhans.Integrating ecosystem services (ES) in landscape planning can help identify conservation opportunities by fostering co-benefits between biodiversity conservation and maintenance of regulation and cultural ecosystem services. However, potential trade-offs that arise from accounting for provisioning ES incompatible with biodiversity conservation should be considered. These trade-offs have been, however, overlooked to date, especially in freshwater systems. I will demonstrate how to identify priority areas to enhance co-benefits between conservation of freshwater biodiversity (139 species of freshwater fish, turtles and waterbirds) and two regulation-cultural ES (carbon storage/ flood retention and perennial water availability) while minimising trade-off with two provisioning ES (groundwater provisioning and recreational fisheries) using a catchment in northern Australia as a case study. This novel approach can help address the increasingly complex catchment management challenges arising from increasing demand for provisioning services and diminishing availability of resources, and management and planning challenges in other realms facing similar problems.
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December 2, 2016
Published by BC3Research at December 2, 2016
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Dr. Simone Langhans
Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, GermanyRiver assessment and management are challenges to scientists and practitioners alike. Rivers, being highly complex ecosystems, are difficult to characterize with adequate indicators and predicting outcomes of river management actions are, therefore, sophisticated and affected by large uncertainty. Moreover, many stakeholders with potentially diverging interests are involved or affected by river management decisions. Although different approaches to river assessment and management exist, there is a need for a concept that accounts for these difficulties. Decision analysis theory provides appropriate techniques for developing an integral river management concept. In this talk, I will explain the different elements of such a river management concept, i.e. objectives, results of river state assessment, potential management actions, and predictions of system response to management actions, and illustrate the details with different examples from Switzerland and New Zealand.
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December 2, 2016
Published by BC3Research at December 2, 2016
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Dr. Sami Domisch
Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, GermanySpecies occurrence information consists in general of heterogeneous data, ranging from point records that provide accurate information in geographic and environmental space, to coarse expert range maps accounting for dispersal barriers or historical biogeographic limits. Combining both data types in a species distribution model (SDM) framework using newly-developed (1 km) freshwater-specific environmental variables allows to make fine-grain and improved estimates of species distributions. I will demonstrate how the freshwater-specific variables can be easily created for any given region, and present the modelling framework using the North American freshwater fish fauna as a case study. The predictions highlight diversity patterns and hotspots along the stream network, further contributing to the understanding of the current-day environmental factors that shape the distribution of freshwater fish ranges, with the potential in ultimately aiding conservation and management efforts.
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