Biodiversity of Freshwater Ecosystems: Status, Trends,Pressures, and Conservation Priorities

FP7 Collaborative Project, large-scale integrating project

© J. Freyhof, A. Hartl

BioFreshBiodiversity of Freshwater Ecosystems: Status, Trends,Pressures, and Conservation Priorities

Funded by the European Union under the 7th FrameworkProgramme, Theme 6 (Environment including ClimateChange) (contract No. 226874 )

© J. Freyhof

Freshwater Ecosystems

• Cover only 0.8% of Earth surface

• Support the livelihood of billions ofpeople especially in poor countries

• More than 10% of all animal species(about 126,000)

• More than 35% of all vertebratespecies (about 20,000)

© NASA/GSFC/JPL, MISR Team

The Global Freshwater Crisis

Water for PeopleWater for Life

(Nature: Special Feature, 2008)

UNInternational Decade forAction 'Water for Life'

2005-2015

The Global Freshwater Biodiversity Crisis

No other major group of species and ecosystems declinesso fast and massively

Lipotes vexillifer

Incilius periglenes

Recently extinct species:

© Institute of HydrobiologyChinese Academy of Sciences

© M. Franzen

• Freshwater Biodiversity: Essential for the livelihoodof billions

The Global Freshwater Biodiversity Crisis

© J. Freyhof© R. Stawikowski

The Global Freshwater Biodiversity Crisis

“Lets go to the stream, turn some stones, catch a fishand have some fun”

• Freshwater Biodiversity: Source of recreation for allhumans

© J. Freyhof © R. Stawikowski

Marine: Pinguinus impennis

1852

TerrestrialProlagus sardus about 1800

Haematopus meadewaldoiabout 1940

European vertebrates extinct since 1700

Freshwater (12 spp)Romanogobio antipaiAlburnus danubicusGasterosteus crenobiontusCoregonus oxyrinchusCoregonus bezolaCoregonus feraCoregonus hiemalisCoregonus restrictusCoregonus gutturosusSalmo schiefermuelleriSalvelinus neocomensisSalvelinus profundus............................. more © J. Freyhof

© J. Freyhof

© B. Ohm

© B. Ohm

Prolagus sardus

Haematopus meadewaldoi

Coregonus gutturosus

Alburnus danubicus

© Natural History Museum London

• Patterns of freshwater biodiversity and processes thatmaintain freshwater biodiversity are poorly understood

• This poses a severe handicap for effective conservationplanning as well as the human-related services that dependon freshwater biodiversity

• Substantially increased efforts are needed to evaluate,complement, integrate, and analyse the availablequantitative data

Background

How do freshwater biodiversity and related ecosystemservices respond to environmental pressures?

© J. Ohlberger

• Building a Dedicated Freshwater BiodiversityInformation Platform

Improve capacity to protect and manage freshwaterbiodiversity in the face of ongoing changes to globalclimate and socioeconomics, by:

BioFresh general objectives

BioFresh general objectives

Improve the capacity to protect and manage freshwater

biodiversity in the face of ongoing changes of global

climate and socioeconomics, by:

• Integrating tools and models to predict the responses ofmultiple stressors over scales

• Enabling analysis of status and trends of biodiversity andecosystem services

• Developing and integrating spatially-explicit models toquantify pressures and their impact

• Identifying key hotspots and their vulnerabilities

BioFresh general objectives

Improve the capacity to protect and manage freshwater

biodiversity in the face of ongoing changes of global

climate and socioeconomics by:

• Increasing awareness amongst scientists, policy makersand the public, and thereby improving conservationstrategies and support the work of the EU and ofinternational environmental agreements

© J. Freyhof© A. Sediva

Challenges and Prospects

• Open access, open source, open standards

• Integrating, operationalizing diverse, distributedresources (data and tools)

• Avoid duplication – build synergies

• Retain focus – penetrate into the data sphere

• Mainstream data publishing

• Sustainability: archiving, maintaining the portal andnetwork

© E. Schraml

Coverage

• From a global to a local scale

• Focus on Europe

• Detailed case studies in Danube, Ebro and Elbecatchments

© nasaimages.org

Coverage

• Integrating all kinds of freshwater biodiversityfrom ecosystems to genes

• Focus on ecosystem services related tofreshwater biodiversity

© R. Stawikowski

© J. Freyhof

BioFresh implementation

EU-Collaborative Project - Large scale integrating project

Duration: 4.5 years (start: 1 Nov. 2009)

EU contribution: 6.5 M €

Coordinator: Klement Tockner (IGB, Germany)

Partners: 19 Institutes and organisations

Endorsed: FreshwaterBiodiversity (DIVERSITAS)

Stakeholders: GWSP, GBIF, WWF, TNC, PESI, FAO,Wetlands International, LifeWatch

Our Team

© J. Ohlberger, R. Stawikowski, B. Ohm, E. Schraml, J. Freyhof

BioFresh integrates competence and researchof 18 European and one East Asian partnerinstitutes

BioFresh: An International Cooperation

© nasaimages.org

Partners

1. (COOR) Forschungsverbund Berlin, e. V. FVB.IGB, Germany2. Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, RBINS, Belgium3. Universität für Bodenkultur Wien, BOKU, Austria4. WorldFish Center (formerly ICLARM), WorldFish, Malaysia5. Institute de Recherche pour le Développement IRD, France6. Universität Duisburg-Essen, UDE, Germany

7. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, Switzerland8. Oxford University, UOXF.AC, UK9. Universitat de Barcelona, UB, Spain10. Helmholtz Zentrum für Umweltforschung, UFZ, Germany11. University College of London, UCL, UK12. Eidgenössische Anstalt für Wasserversorgung, Abwasserreinigung und

Gewässerschutz, EAWAG, Switzerland13. Université Claude Bernard - Lyon 1, UCBL, France14. Université Paul Sabatier - Toulouse 3, UPS, France15. Ecologic GmbH, Institut für Internationale und Europäische Umweltpolitik, Ecologic,

Germany16. Commission of the European Communities - Directorate General Joint Research

Centre, EC-JRC, Italy17. University of Debrecen, UD, Hungary18. Naturhistoriska riksmuseet, NRM, Sweden19. Center za kartografijo favne in flore, CKFF, Slovenia

• Organise and provide access to the electronic data requiredby the science workpackages

• Identify the critical gaps in data coverage that impede thescientific analysis.

• Address the specific constraints related to freshwaterbiodiversity datasets in a way that ensures optimal utility forusers, while maintaining optimal complementarities withother biodiversity information initiatives

• Integrate in the BioFresh portal those tools (models, indicesdeveloped by the science workpackages) that are mostrelevant to users in conservation, management and policy,in a practical way

Workpackage 1

Building the web-based freshwater biodiversity platform

Lead: RBINS, Belgium

Workpackage 2

Quality control and database preparation

Lead: BOKU, Austria

• Identification of existing biodiversity databases

• Determination and standardization of metadata; storage ofthese metadata in a database

• Review of existing quality control procedures

• Establishment of quality assessment systems andimprovement

• Review of selected biodiversity databases using abovementioned routines, both regarding database content andstructure

• Establishment of property rights and data accessibilityregulations and agreements

Workpackage 3

Gap analysis and remediation

Lead: WorldFish/ABIO, Malaysia

• Analyze the data and information requirements for modelingtools, dissemination, and awareness campaign

• Identify additional partners holding critical data

• Integration and digitization of critical, published data bylinking with existing datasets identified above, and encodingnew data and information from the literature

• Filling the knowledge gaps by making new proposals withrelevant partners to construct new dedicated BiodiversityInformation System (BIS) or encoding and validating dataand information from the literature in existing BIS

Workpackage 4

• Develop a Biodiversity Matrix to identify centres of highfreshwater diversity

• Develop and test spatially-explicit models and tools toquantify how key present contemporary environmentalpressures impact freshwater biodiversity

• Investigate how freshwater biodiversity is organised inresponse to dependence on natural and socio-economicforces in three European catchments

• Investigate how palaeoecological records can identify

changes in freshwater biodiversity over various time scales

Contemporary and past Patterns in Freshwater Biodiversity

Lead: IRD, France

Workpackage 5

• Develop a conceptual model of how biodiversity will

respond to future climate stress

• Predict changes in biodiversity and ecosystem servicesunder future climate conditions

• Develop and test spatially-explicit models howbiodiversity will be modified under future thermal and

hydrological regimes

• Analyse the impact of biodiversity changes on ecosystemfunctioning

• Develop a global atlas of future freshwater habitat typesand species distribution shifts

Climate Change Impact on Freshwater Biodiversity

Lead: IGB, Germany

Workpackage 6

Multiple stressors and freshwater biodiversity

Lead: UDE, Germany

• A conceptual model of how biodiversity respond tomultiple and interacting forces will be developed

• Freshwater species, communities and habitats will beassessed for their contribution to ecosystem services

• Early warning of invasive species spread will be analyzed

• The response of organism groups to stress gradients willbe compared on European and global scales

• Predictive Freshwater Biodiversity Models will bedeveloped at global, European and local scales

Workpackage 7

Informing policy for conservation planning

Lead: IUCN, Switzerland

• Benchmark the status and distribution of freshwaterbiodiversity for long-term monitoring

• Identify important sites (Key Biodiversity Areas) andsuggest improved strategies for conservation

• Support governments and international environmentalagreements by identifying priority ecosystem types andspecies

• Propose potential taxa, or habitat surrogates for speciesdistributions as tools to help fill current information gaps in atime and cost effective manner

Workpackage 8

Capacity building, Awareness raising, Disseminationand Science policy dialogue

Lead: UOXF.AC, UK

• Communicate and disseminate project results to: ThePublic, Policy makers, Managers, Practitioners,Conservation bodies and the Research community

• Support and disseminate results from the BioFresh WPs

• To provide support and policy advice to governments

and international environmental agreements

• To establish a continuous science-policy interface at

EU level; create additional networks of freshwater

biodiversity communities

• Training of Stakeholders, PhD and Postdoctoral

students