1. An index of riparian quality useful for the management of streams and rivers is presented. The purpose of the index is to provide managers with a simple method to evaluate riparian habitat quality. The index is easy to calculate and can be used together with any other index of water quality to assess the ecological status of streams and rivers. It may also be a useful tool for defining ‘high...

Eutrophication increases primary production and changes the relative abundance, taxonomic composition and spatial distribution of primary producers within an aquatic ecosystem. The changes in composition and location of resources alter the distribution and flow of energy and biomass throughout the food web. Changes in productivity also alter the physico-chemical environment, which has further e...

A portion of all herbicides applied to forests, croplands, road sides, and gardens are inevitably lost to water bodies either directly through runoff or indirectly by leaching through groundwater into ephemeral streams and lakes. Once in the aquatic environment, herbicides may cause stress within aquatic communities and radically alter community structure. Atrazine is one of the most effective ...

A wide range of pharmaceuticals and endocrine disrupting compounds enter freshwaters globally. As these contaminants are transported through aquatic food webs, understanding their impacts on both terrestrial ecosystems remains a major challenge. Here, we provide the first direct evidence transfer disruptors aquatic-terrestrial habitat linkage by emerging insects. We also show that type insect m...

Aquatic ecoregions were increasingly used as spatial units for aquatic ecosystem management at the watershed scale. In this paper, the principle of including land area, comprehensiveness and dominance, conjugation and hierarchy were selected as regionalizing principles. Elevation and drainage density were selected as the regionalizing indicators for the delineation of level I aquatic ecoregions...

Reducing the hydrologic effects and pollutant loadings from urban drainage systems and restoring aquatic habitats to improve the health of our aquatic ecosystems presents many unique challenges. These challenges can be categorized as technical, institutional, financial, and cultural. This paper will examine each of the challenges and the tools that have and are being developed to overcome them....

Biodiversity is one of the most important characteristics of the aquatic ecosystem for maintaining its stability and resilience [1]. Aquatic macrophytes are macroscopic forms of aquatic vegetation, including macroalgae, mosses, ferns and angiosperms found in aquatic habitat. They have evolved from many diverse groups and often demonstrate extreme flexibility in structure and morphology in relat...

Aquatic insects contribute significantly to freshwater ecosystems, forming food for many organisms, particularly in the food webs associated with wetland environments. Many fishes, amphibians, shorebirds, waterfowl, and other animals forage heavily on both the aquatic and terrestrial stages of aquatic insects, which are essential to their survival. It is estimated that about 3 % of the total in...

1. Fishing is one of the most widespread anthropogenic impacts on marine ecosystems. In recent times, the development of measurable metrics of the resultant ecosystem effects has become an important aspect of fisheries management. Ecosystem models are often advocated as tools for the evaluation of system effects, but the extent to which models are able to make meaningful predictions has not yet...