Freshwater Researches: Fundamentals, Trends and Perspectives

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DOI :10.26650/B/LSB37LSB23.2024.022.11   IUP :10.26650/B/LSB37LSB23.2024.022.11    Full Text (PDF)

River Ecosystems, Between Change and Conservation

Sergi Sabater

Rivers cover a small part of the planetary surface and contain the smallest water fraction of all aquatic compartment, but regardless of their size and magnitude host a large fraction of biodiversity and sustain some of the most essential global biogeochemical cycles. The human appropriation of the global water cycle is a reality in many parts of the World, and particularly in the arid or semi-arid regions. This has caused that the potential of freshwaters as providers of ecosystem services has pushed rivers towards their resilience limits, with relevant impacts on river biodiversity and functions. Because of their hierarchical organization, river ecosystems are resilient to disturbances, though continued pressures, or multiple occurrences of stressors, can cause a loss of their resilience. Then river systems can become vulnerable to further changes and register losses of diversity and impacts on ecosystem services. It is therefore imperative to enhance our predictive capacity on the effects caused by human disturbances, as a necessary step towards promoting the adaptive resilience of river ecosystems. 


Keywords: Global change, ecosystem services, diversity, water resources, ecological functions

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