Freshwater sponges in the Great Lakes St. Lawrence River system overgrow and kill introduced zebra (Dreissena pulymorpkza) and quagga mussels (DreisLse?aa bugerasis) on solid substrates. Sponges overgrow and smother mussel siphons, thereby interfering with normal feeding and respiration. We tested the significance of sponge-enhanced mussel mortality by repeated sampling at several sites where b...

Although widely detected in marine ecosystems, microplastic pollution has only recently been documented in freshwater environments, almost exclusively in surface waters. Here, we report microplastics (polyethylene microbeads, 0.40– 2.16 mm diameter) in the sediments of the St. Lawrence River. We sampled 10 freshwater sites along a 320 km section from Lake St. Francis to Québec City by passing s...

The daily discharge of the Chang Jiang (the Yangtze River) at Yichang (catchment area about one million square kilometres) is derived by routing the daily discharge of the Jinsha Jiang at Pingshan (catchment area about half a million square kilometres) with modelled runoff based on daily precipitation at 14 rainfall stations in the downstream Sichuan basin. Precipitation at each station is tran...