A. Melcher

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna | boku · Institute for Development Research

To address ongoing threats from human pressures and climate changes, water managers and users require a visual tool that provides accurate information about the health of waterbodies for decision making. However, there is a lack of less sophisticated methods, such as biotic scoring, to assess the health of rivers in West Africa. To bridge this g...

European rivers are disconnected by more than one million man-made barriers that physically limit aquatic species migration and contribute to modification of freshwater habitats. Here, a Conceptual Habitat Alteration Model for Ponding is developed to aid in evaluating the effects of impoundments on fish habitats. Fish communities present in rivers...

Conserving aquatic resources in the West African Sahel requires water management tools to assess the ecological status of surface water bodies threatened by mounting pressures from agricultural intensification and urbanization. Macroinvertebrate communities of Sahelian rivers were examined to test if a multi-metric index approach could be developed...

Reducing meat consumption in high meat-consuming countries is seen as a key lever for achieving global sustainability agreements. However, little attention has been paid to unravel transition dynamics in the socio-technical protein regime. This study addresses this research gap by shedding light on institutional changes within the Austrian protein...

We estimate over 200,000 km or 10% of previously free-flowing river habitat length has been lost due to impoundments, an amount equivalent to the entire length of rivers in Italy. This loss strongly depends on the biogeographical location and a type of impounding barrier. European rivers are disconnected by more than one million man-made barriers t...

Small-scale inland fisheries are essential for livelihoods and food security in developing countries such as Burkina Faso. However, there is a gap in research on the ongoing transformation of the sector toward sustainability. This article analyzes the transition in inland fisheries and aquaculture in Burkina Faso and its implications in terms of na...

Intercultural, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research interfaces confront researchers with considerable challenges. Towards Shared Research portrays how scholars from different disciplinary and geographical origins and at various academic career stages strive for a more inclusive and better understanding of knowledge about African enviro...

The research projects Sustainable Management of Water and Fish Resources (SUSFISH and SUSFISH+) aim to produce reliable knowledge which can be used to help improve policies, management, research and education so as to make fisheries more sustainable in Burkina Faso. The topics of research include ecology, policies and socioeconomy in fisheries and...

Burkina Faso (BF) has attempted to establish an economically efficient fisheries sector to cope with poverty and food insecurity. However, the fishing sector is still unable to meet the country’s fish demand. The interest in research about fisheries in population’s livelihoods and the actors’ strategies for developing the sector along the value cha...

Water resources are among the fundamental resources that are the most threatened worldwide by various pressures. This study applied the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework as an innovative tool to better understand the dynamic interlinkages between the different sources of multiple stressors on aquatic ecosystems in Burkina Faso...

Human pressures and loss of natural fish habitats led to a decline in fish populations in terms of abundances, biodiversity, and average size in sub-Sahelian Burkina Faso. Little knowledge exists about fish assemblages regarding their composition, their habitat preferences, or their sensitivity to or tolerance of human pressures. This research prov...

Floods and droughts are key driving forces shaping aquatic ecosystems. Climate change may alter key attributes of these events and consequently health and distribution of aquatic species. Improved knowledge of biological responses to different types of floods and droughts in rivers should allow the better prediction of the ecological consequences o...

Transdisciplinary development of indicators to achieve a more sustainable management of socio-ecological systems. To protect, sustain, and restore the health of crucial natural habitats and ecosystems, knowledge of functioning ecosystem services needs to be improved and applied. This work contributes to this knowledge via innovative modelling and e...

Life sciences universities (LSUs) play a specific role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) . A number of SDGs address topics that have been focal points for LSUs throughout their history of research, teaching and societal mission. Furthermore, LSUs traditionally have strong links to stakeholders central to the transformative proce...

Burkina Faso (BF) is a Sahelian country located in West Africa on the arid southern rim of the Sahara. In this region all work and movement revolve around water and its availability, whether in nature or society. The aquatic ecosystems responsible for storing and replenishing the quantity and quality of water are vital for the productivity and food...

The understanding behind managing and conserving the environment, including water resources, has an important role in worldwide development strategy. The high priority given to reestablishing and maintaining good ecological status is reflected in multiple national legislations in Europe as well as in the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). However,...

The unprecedented rates of warming observed during recent decades exceed natural variability to such an extent that it is widely recognized as a major environmental problem not only among scientists. The role of our economy in driving such change has made it an economic and political issue. There is ample evidence that climate characteristics are c...

The academic discourse on sustainability transitions has gained momentum. This discourse, however, has been criticised for underplaying questions of power and politics. The critique seems particularly relevant when applied to agri-food systems. Our review explores how power and politics have been addressed in sustainability transitions research-wit...

Global warming has already affected European rivers and their aquatic biota, and climate models predict an increase of temperature in central Europe over all seasons. We simulated the influence of expected changes in heat wave intensity during the 21st century on water temperatures of a heavily impacted pre-alpine Austrian river and analysed future...

Awareness of sustainable management of water and its biological resources is rising in West Africa, but application of effective tools for biomonitoring and detecting habitats at risk in aquatic ecosystems is limited. In this study, we provide key environmental descriptors to characterize reference sites by applying the following “a priori criteria...

This deliverable gives an overview of the functionality of the Freshwater Information System (FIS) through a number of screenshots and a short explanatory text. FIS is one of the tools that are developed within the MARS project. It is the web-based information system providing access to information and practical tools generated in MARS. FIS contain...

Stream water temperature limits the growth and survival of aquatic organisms; whereby riparian shading plays a key role in inhibiting river warming. This study explains the effects of riparian shading on summer water temperatures at a pre-alpine Austrian river, during heatwave and non-heatwave periods at low flow conditions. A vegetation-shading in...

Accurate and informative methods for evidence synthesis that are also simple and inexpensive to implement would greatly increase our ability to use scientific research results to better manage natural environments. Across the world, pressure to use evidence-based environmental management is increasing, but little guidance exists as to what 'evidenc...

Hydropeaking has negative effects on aquatic biota, but the causal relationships have not been studied extensively, especially when hydropeaking occurs in combination with other environmental pressures. The available evidence comes mainly from case studies demonstrating river-specific effects of hydropeaking that result in modified microhabitat con...

Vorliegende transdisziplinäre Studie untersuchte im Rahmen des ACRP Projektes BIO_CLIC die Wirkung der Ufervegetation auf das Wassertemperaturregime sowie die Interaktionen mit aquatischen Organismen von kleinen und mittelgroßen Flüssen am Beispiel von Lafnitz und Pinka. Ziel ist es, relevante Zusammenhänge zu analysieren und darzustellen, um darau...

The benthic macroinvertebrates communities dynamic were investigated in rivers from Burkina Faso in the purpose to analyze the taxonomic composition, the structure of benthic macroinvertebrates community and the composite environmental variables that correspond to the major distribution patterns of this community. The results showed that a total of...

This book summarises state-of-the art about environmental impacts from hydro-peaking operations in rivers, introducing rapid and frequent changes in discharge and water level. The book is considered relevant also for other types of abrupt changes in the operation of hydropower plants such as fallouts, or other controlled or non-controlled operation...

Conservation of biodiversity is a major concern due to climate change and pressure from human activities. Knowledge of aquatic insects and their ecology particularly in West Africa is still scanty and fragmented. To fill this gap, we investigated the structure of aquatic beetle assemblages from 18 lentic and lotic water bodies (rivers and reservoi...

Efficient monitoring tools for the assessment of stream ecosystem response to urbanization and agricultural land use are urgently needed but still lacking in West Africa. This study investigated taxonomic and functional composition of macroinvertebrate communities at 29 sites, each exhibiting one of four disturbance levels [‘protected’ (P), ‘extens...

The SUSFISH project was designed to strengthen in-country capacities for science, policy and practice to establish the basis for better water quality and sustainable fisheries in Burkina Faso. This means building scientific capacity to monitor and assess the dynamics of reservoir ecological services (fish, water), the educational capacity to train...

Responsible care and management of Earth’s resources requires scientific support, but the pool of underused research is growing rapidly. Environmental science research studies describe associations between variables (e.g. statistical relationships between stressors and responses). We propose open-access and online sharing of such associations. This...

Fish assemblage structures show non-random patterns along the longitudinal gradient of rivers. We analysed the impact of climate change on riverine fish assemblages using the Fish Zone Index—a structural index reflecting these conditions. The dataset contained 92 fish species at 559 sampling sites spread over 14 European countries. We regressed the...

A major issue for water resource management is the assessment of environmental degradation of lotic ecosystems. The overall aim of this study is to develop a multi-metric fish index for the cyprinid streams of the Caspian Sea Basin (MMICS) in Iran. As species diversity and composition as well as population structure in the studied streams are diffe...

Climate change asks for the reduction in the consumption of fossil-based fuels and an increased share of non-regulated renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power. In order to back up a larger share of these intermittent sources, ‘battery services’ are needed, currently provided only in large scale by hydropower, leading to more rapid an...

Hundreds of artificial bodies of water of varied size have been created in Burkina Faso as response to the frequent droughts that are occurring since the year ’50. They offer opportunities for the development of irrigation, livestock breeding, fishing, and other activities. Used as fisheries, they are sources of food, jobs and revenues. However thi...

Résumé La communauté des macro-invertébrés benthiques des rivières semi-arides ont été examinés afin de vérifier si un indice multimétrique pour évaluer la qualité écologique des rivières au Burkina Faso pourrait être développé. Les objectifs étaient 1) d'analyser la structure et les caractéristiques fonctionnelles des communautés des macro-inverté...

Large rivers are worldwide under severe pressure and there is a lack of information on large river restoration. The present paper represents a meta-analysis of available data on river rehabilitation projects performed at the Austrian Danube River consisting of six rehabilitation projects addressing 19 sites. The overall goal was to analyse the resp...

Riverine ecosystems are affected by different pressures. Besides water pollution, hydro-morphological alterations, connectivity disruptions, loss of habitat and other abiotic factors, climate change jeopardizes the fish-ecological integrity of river ecosystems especially downstream of lakes. The rise of temperature is the best known phenomenon of g...

A number of challenges, including climate change and population growth, threaten the fair and sustainable availability of water and fisheries in West Africa. Over the past 40 years, Burkina Faso has built hundreds of reservoir dams to increase the reliable storage and delivery of water, and as a result hundreds of fisheries have become established...

In Central Europe freshwater ecosystems have to deal with a loss of habitat structures due to channelisation and standardisation. Unimpaired streams and rivers are very rare, which leads to a few, remaining populations of sensitive invertebrate species which are severely fragmented. This progress is mainly noticed in lowland rivers in agricultural...

The majority of studies comparing the response of biotic metrics to environmental stress in rivers are based on relatively small, homogeneous datasets resulting from research projects. Here, we used a large dataset from Austrian and German national river monitoring programmes (2,302 sites) to analyse the response of fish, diatom and macroinvertebra...

Setting environmental flows in Norway

Water temperature is amongst other factors a key driver of fish community composition in rivers. In general, fishes occupy the highest trophic levels in riverine ecosystems integrating processes acting at lower trophic levels. Fishes as homoeothermic organisms are dependent on water temperature in all stages of their life history. Thus, fishes are...

The theory of traits (life-history, ecological and biological traits) states that a species’ characteristics might enable its persistence and development in given environmental conditions. If environment is the major factor controlling functional assemblage structure, species with similar attributes are expected to inhabit a similar environment. Th...

Running water ecosystems of Europe are affected by various human pressures. However, little is known about the prevalence, spatial patterns, interactions with natural environment and co-occurrence of pressures. This study represents the first high-resolution data analysis of human pressures at the European scale, where important pressure criteria f...

This report, comprising four studies, attempts to assess the consequences of climate change on the distribution of 23 fish species, as well as the effects of climate change on functional assemblages. The first study aimed to estimate the ecological requirements of these species, by modelling the occurrences of fish species with environmental factor...

This study analyses multidimensional spawning habitat suitability of the fish species “Nase” (latin: Chondrostoma nasus). This is the