Francisca C. Aguiar

School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon · Forest Research Centre

Wetlands make a disproportionately large contribution to global biodiversity and provide critical ecosystem services for humanity. Yet, our understanding of the cultural ecosystem services (CES) provided by wetlands remains limited, with benefits often only recognised at local scales. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a global systematic...

Difficulties have hampered bioassessment in southern European rivers due to limited reference data and the unclear impact of multiple interacting stressors on plant communities. Predictive modelling may help overcome this limitation by aggregating different pressures affecting aquatic organisms and showing the most influential factors. We assembled...

Bioassessment in southern European rivers has been hampered by difficulties in reference data availability and the unknown effect of the interacting multiple stressors on plant communities. Predictive modelling may help to overcome this limitation. This study aims to develop and evaluate macrophyte-based predictive models of the biological status o...

Aquatic ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to the introduction of non-indigenous species (NIS), leading to multi-faceted ecological, economic and health impacts worldwide. The Iberian Peninsula comprises an exceptionally biodiverse Mediterranean region with a high number of threatened and endemic aquatic species, most of them strongly impacted...

The wine sector faces important challenges related to sustainability issues and the impact of climate change. More frequent extreme climate conditions (high temperatures coupled with severe drought periods) have become a matter of concern for the wine sector of typically dry and warm regions, such as the Mediterranean European countries. Soil is a...

Rivers are powerful systems supporting human civilization, but despite the enormous dependence on rivers by humans, this does not stop them to assault rivers in the most varied ways. Such dependency determines the establishment of strong river flow-human relationships, and river degradation the prompting of health and non-tangible complications for...

Riparian zones are the paragon of transitional ecosystems, providing critical habitat and ecosystem services that are especially threatened by global change. Following consultation with experts, 10 key challenges were identified to be addressed for riparian vegetation science and management improvement: (1) Create a distinct scientific community by...

Riparian zones are the paragon of transitional ecosystems, providing critical habitat and ecosystem services that are especially threatened by global change. Following consultation with experts, 10 key challenges were identified to be addressed for riparian vegetation science and management improvement: (1) Create a distinct scientific community by...

The Riparian Ecological Infrastructure is a network of natural and/or semi-natural riparian patches, vital to support biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (ES) in human-dominated landscapes. In this study, we evaluated the habitat quality of REI patches and their potential for the provision of ES. Fieldwork was carried out in the riparian and flood...

Major threats of freshwater systems are river damming and habitat degradation, further amplified by climate change, another major driver of biodiversity loss. This study aims to understand the effects of climate change, and its repercussions on hydropower production, on the instream biota of a regulated river. Particularly, it aims to ascertain how...

Riparian Ecological Infrastructures are networks of natural and semi-natural riparian areas located in human-dominated landscapes, crucial in supporting processes that directly or indirectly benefit humans or enhance social welfare. In this study, we developed a novel multimetric index, termed Habitat Ecological Infrastructure’s Diversity Index (HE...

River hydromorphology has long been subjected to huge anthropogenic pressures with severe negative impacts on related ecosystems’ functioning and water quality. Therefore, improving river hydromorphological conditions represents a priority task in sustainable river management and requires proper assessment tools. It is well known that riparian vege...

The relevance of riparian areas to improve nature condition and human well-being is widely acknowledged. These are also important in intensive agricultural landscapes to mitigate effects caused by farming intensification, negatively affecting nature and “nature´s contributions to people” (NCP). However, current EU agricultural policies (eg, CAP) ne...

Riverine areas are considered large carbon reserves because they support long-term woody communities, which in their natural state are dense and diverse. In this study, we analysed the carbon storage alterations across 20.5 km of riverine Sampling Units (SUs) downstream Touvedo (a run-of-river dam) and Fronhas (a storage reservoir), by adopting a L...

Dams modify geomorphology, water quantity, quality and timing of stream flows affecting ecosystem functioning and aquatic biota. In this study, we addressed the structural and functional macroinvertebrate community alterations in different instream mesohabitats of two Portuguese rivers impaired by dams. We sampled macroinvertebrates in riffles, run...

Se presenta una lista actualizada de las especies exóticas que se encuentran en etapa de establecimiento o de propagación de la invasión en aguas continentales de la península ibérica. La lista está basada en la evaluación sistemática de los datos en colaboración con un amplio equipo de expertos de España y Portugal. Esta lista de actualización es...

An updated list is presented of the alien species in the establishment or spread invasion stage in in-land waters at the Iberian Peninsula. The list is based on a systematic assessment of information in collaboration with a wide expert team from Spain and Portugal. This updated list is an important tool supporting the implementation of the IAS Regu...

An updated list is presented of the alien species in the transport or introduction invasion stage in inland waters of the Iberian Peninsula. The list is based on a systematic assessment of information in collaboration with a wide expert team from Spain and Portugal. This list is an important tool to support the implementation of the IAS Regulation,...

Eighty-six percent of the largest Portuguese public forest, Leiria National Forest (Mata Nacional de Leiria—MNL), central west, was burned in a wildfire in October 2017. Most of the area was covered by maritime pine stands (Pinus pinaster Aiton) crossed by riparian forests along small-sized streams. This work aims to characterize the post-fire vege...

The biological assessment of rivers i.e., their assessment through use of aquatic assemblages, integrates the effects of multiple-stressors on these systems over time and is essential to evaluate ecosystem condition and establish recovery measures. It has been undertaken in many countries since the 1990s, but not globally. And where national or mul...

This work assesses the effects of river regulation on the diversity of different instream and riparian biological communities along a relieve gradient of disturbance in regulated rivers. Two case studies in Portugal were used, with different river regulation typology (downstream of run-of-river and reservoir dams), where regulated and free-flowing...

Dam-induced disruption of the natural continuum of rivers has manifold consequences on fluvial ecosystems, but how distinct plant groups and plant adaptive strategies can mediate the regulation effects is largely unexplored. In this work, we focused on how different plant groups (macrophytes, bryophytes, and riparian woody vegetation) respond to hy...

River regulation may filter out riparian plants often resulting in reduced functional diversity, i.e., in the range of functions that organisms have in communities and ecosystems. There is, however, little empirical evidence about the magnitude of such reductions in different regions. We investigated the functional diversity patterns of riparian wo...

Fluvial riparian vegetation (RV) links fluvial and terrestrial ecosystems. It is under significant pressure from anthropogenic activities, and, therefore, the management and restoration of RV are increasingly important worldwide. RV has been investigated from different perspectives, so knowledge on its structure and function is widely distributed....

Fluvial riparian vegetation (RV) links fluvial and terrestrial ecosystems. It is under significant pressure from anthropogenic activities, and, therefore, the management and restoration of RV are increasingly important worldwide. RV has been investigated from different perspectives, so knowledge on its structure and function is widely distributed....

This study aims to estimate the total biomass aboveground and soil carbon stocks in a Mediterranean riparian forest and identify the contribution of the different species and ecosystem compartments to the overall riparian carbon reservoir. We used a combined field and object-based image analysis (OBIA) approach, based on unmanned aerial vehicle (UA...

Large rivers on the Iberian Peninsula reflect a long-history of human interventions and natural disturbances in the fluvial corridors and on the surrounding valleys. In this study we aim to characterize the river morphology in pre-regulation times and understand the morphological changes of the large river Tagus (Central Portugal), across space and...

Dammed rivers have unnatural stream flows, disrupted sediment dynamics, and rearranged geomorphologic settings. Consequently, fluvial biota experiences disturbed functioning in the novel ecosystems. The case study is the large irrigation reservoir Alqueva in Guadiana River, Southern Iberia. The study area was divided into three zones: upstream and...

Agricultural intensification is currently considered as a major driver of worldwide biodiversity loss. EU-agro-environment policies were introduced to reduce biodiversity loss by subsidizing farmers that promote agricultural practices that are beneficial for climate and environment, by committing a percentage of productive farmland to Ecological Fo...

October 15th, 2017 placed Portugal in the top of number and area of wildfires in Europe, owing 60% of the total EU burnt area and surpassing the already dramatic record of 471 750 ha burnt area on the 2003 wildfires. Fire-prone climate, heat waves, land-use and societal changes along with deficient forest management were regarded as main drivers. N...

Riparian ecosystems have a great potential for long-term carbon storage and sequestration. However, there is a growing demand on accurate estimations for the Mediterranean region and particularly using remote sensing approaches. In this study, we estimated the Above Ground Biomass (AGB) of a Mediterranean riparian forest using high-resolution multi...

Bryophytes are a key group of freshwaters providing multiple ecological functions, especially in headwaters. Worldwide, recent efforts were directed at characterizing the functional composition of vascular aquatic communities, but few studies have addressed bryophyte functional responses to environmental conditions. Our study was conducted in head...

Os sistemas fluviais em Portugal destacam-se na paisagem como corredores verdes e azuis, que penetram no complexo mosaico de usos agrícola, florestal, agro-florestal e urbano. A flora associada a estes sistemas, vulgarmente designada por flora aquática e ribeirinha, estrutura-se em comunidades específicas de acordo com as caracteristicas ambientais...

A Diretiva Quadro da Água veio obrigar todos os estados membros a procederem a uma monitorização ecológica dos seus rios tendo em vista a avaliação da sua qualidade. Esta classificação deve refletir a qualidade de diversos compo-nentes de um ecossistema ribeirinho, tais como os elementos biológicos, físico-químicos e hidromorfológicos. Com base nes...

Riparian vegetation drives flow regime, water quality, habitat and biota in freshwater ecosystems. In this presentation, we summarize ten years of research on image-based methods to characterize riparian ecosystems health, in Mediterranean areas, from spatial, temporal and spectral perspectives. Structural and compositional indicators of riparian v...

1. The first attempts to describe species ecological niches were simple geometric procedures that depict the niche boundaries directly from environmental data. The convex hull was one of such procedures, popular for its simplicity, clear ecological rational and precise definition of the niche. However, it lacked the ability to differentiate areas o...

Europe's climate change vulnerability pushes for initiatives such as the European Adaptation Strategy and the associated Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy. What are the triggers and barriers, for which sectors and for which risks and how is adaptation funded? This paper examines 147 Local Adaptation Strategies in Europe. Key triggers were i...

We developed a pilot study on the potential of aquatic plants as indicators of ecological quality in tropical rivers to provide an index of biotic integrity for monitoring, conservation, and restoration purposes. We used floristic, environmental, and anthropogenic disturbance data from a 950 km2 river basin in the southern littoral area of São Paul...

Macrophytes are important components of superficial water bodies and their diversity and abundance provide steady responses to abiotic factors and especially to nutrient enrichment, sedimentation and stream flow alterations. They have the capability of incorporating the effects of successive anthropic disturbances over long periods of time, which w...

The main objective of this study is to characterize the hydromorphological evolution of Tagus and Minho rivers, using a planform image analysis, and assess the contribution of human disturbance to global change. We performed a temporal analysis by choosing dates representing a pre-regulation period (19th century) and a post-regulation period (21th...

Rivers and humans compete for territory, water and ecological resources. Hydrological alterations and land-use and land cover (LULC) are known to alter riparian ecosystem functions and processes. We studied ecological and hydromorphological alterations by regulation and LULC in three hydropower rivers of north and centre Portugal and in a very larg...

Mediterranean watercourses are among the most threatened ecosystems worldwide, being increasingly important to understand environmental drivers of biotic assemblages. Our aim was to provide a comprehensive picture of bryophyte communities in Mediterranean rivers and to determine the environmental factors that influence their distribution. We used f...

Aquatic plants fulfil a wide range of ecological roles, and make a substantial contribution to the structure, function and service provision of aquatic ecosystems. Given their well-documented importance in aquatic ecosystems, research into aquatic plants continues to blossom. The 14th International Symposium on Aquatic Plants, held in Edinburgh in...

Functional diversity indices are increasingly being used to describe plant community assembly processes and ecosystem functioning. However, their relevance for predicting alterations in ecosystem functioning of riparian plant communities is still largely unknown. We investigated the functional patterns of riparian forests along environmental gradie...

Many riparian ecosystems in Mediterranean Europe are affected by land use and flow alteration by dams. We focused on understanding how these stressors and their components affect riparian forests in the region. We asked the following questions: (1) Are there well‐defined, responsive riparian guilds? (2) Do dam‐induced streamflows determine abundanc...

Long-term changes of fluvial landscapes: evolutionary trajectories of vegetation patterns

In: R. Guarino, G. Bazan, G. Barbera, The 60th IAVS Annual Symposium “vegetation patterns in natural and cultural landscapes” Abstract. Palermo University Press, Palermo, Italy: 47-48.

Functional diversity indices were introduced to describe community assembly processes and as potential indicators of ecosystem functioning. However, few studies have tested their effectiveness and the predictive capability in woody plant communities upon environmental changes. We found that Mediterranean shrublands have a significantly higher FRic...

Contemporary large-scale river ecology is grounded on the existence of patterns in the distribution of aquatic communities, structured by prevailing abiotic conditions. Here, we investigated the existence of functional consistent associations of traits (i.e., traits appearing consistently together at different sites and the same river type) between...

River regulation affects riparian systems world‐wide and conservation and restoration efforts are essential to retain biodiversity, and the functioning and services of riverine ecosystems. Effects of regulation on plant species richness have been widely addressed, but the filtering effect of regulation on guilds has received less attention. We used...

Dams strongly impair the fluvial environment by altering downstream flows. We analysed riverscapes downstream of three dams and hypothesized that different dam types in rivers with diverse history of land-use and land cover (LULC) change have significant riparian cover differences at diverse biogeomorphic units (banks, riverbanks, islands). We perf...

The main goal of this study is to create a database that ultimately serves further studies on riparian vegetation and flow response guilds in the boreal region and on transferability of results across different regions. For this aim we compiled traits for all woody riparian species in northern Sweden that, directly or indirectly, underlie their res...

Biogeomorphologic patterns in large rivers result from interactions between hydrogeomorphology, vegetation dynamics and a long history of human interventions. In this study we analyzed the multi-stressor effects in the biogeomorphological evolution of two distinct river zones (upland valley zone vs floodplain valley zone) in Tagus River, Portugal....

Riparian forests provide a wide range of ecological functions goods and services sustained by two main indicators: 1) high spatial structural dynamics i.e, the lateral and longitudinal continuity and the strata complexity and 2) species diversity. In this presentation we compiled the main findings obtained in recent studies at mainland Portugal, co...

The evaluation of the effects of regulated stream-flows on riparian areas was addressed from the species-based and functional-based approaches. On the one hand, we stressed variations of diversity of species in riparian communities (i.e., species richness and composition) following regulation. Then, we moved away from individual species to function...

Dams are undoubtedly one of the major driving forces of change in fluvial systems. They alter the aquatic and riparian ecology by affecting river hydrology in quality, quantity and timing of downstream flows. On the other hand, riparian landscapes are usually constrained by land-use. The main goal of this study is to quantify and understand the cha...