Laurence Carvalho

Norsk Instiutt for Vannforskning (NIVA) · Freshwater Ecology

Recommended Citation: WWQA Ecosystems, 2023. White Paper – Embedding Lakes into the Global Sustainability Agenda. Published by UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology on behalf of the United Nations Environment Programme coordinated World Water Quality Alliance Ecosystems Workstream. 22nd March 2023. ISBN: 978-1-906698-82-9. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7752982....

Robust demonstration case-studies are needed to evaluate whether improvements in ecosystem condition are translated into improvements in ecosystem services. This research is essential for effectively scaling-up nature-based solutions across Europe and providing the evidence to support transformation agendas in society and industries, and ultimately...

Demonstrating best-practice restoration: For 17 flagship restoration projects across Europe, the EU-funded project MERLIN* explores social, economic and environmental success factors, generating a blueprint for the proficient implementation of Nature-based Solutions suited for immediate replication. With investing more than 10 million € in further...

Project objectives and research questions The overall aim of this project was to compile and assess the key evidence required to improve our understanding of climate change impacts on the water quality of Scottish standing waters at national, regional and local scales. The project focussed on the interactions between climate change, the drivers...

The global increase in dominance of toxic blooms of cyanobacteria has severely impacted aquatic ecosystems and threatened human health for decades. Although it has been shown that high levels of rainfall may inhibit the growth of bloom-forming cyanobacteria, it is still unclear how cyanobacteria respond to short-term rainfall events. Based on five-...

Satellite remote sensing data are important to the study of environment problems at a global scale. The GloboLakes project aimed to use satellite remote sensing data to investigate the response of the major lakes on Earth to environmental conditions and change. The main challenge to statistical modelling is the identification of the spatial structu...

Land use and climate change are anticipated to affect phytoplankton of lakes worldwide. The effects will depend on the magnitude of projected land use and climate changes and lake sensitivity to these factors. We used random forests (RF) fit with long‐term (1971‐2016) phytoplankton and cyanobacteria abundance time series, climate observations (1971...

Water quality measures for inland and coastal waters are available as discrete samples from professional and volunteer water quality monitoring programs and higher-frequency, near-continuous data from automated in situ sensors. Water quality parameters also are estimated from model outputs and remote sensing. The integration of these data, via data...

Inland waters are important sources of greenhouse gases and emissions from polluted subtropical systems may be contributing to the observed global increase in atmospheric methane concentrations. Here we detail a scoping study where dissolved concentrations of greenhouse gases methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) were measured...

Interactions between stressors in freshwater ecosystems, including those associated with climate change and nutrient enrichment, are currently difficult to detect and manage. Our understanding of the forms and frequency of occurrence of such interactions is limited; assessments using field data have been constrained as a result of varying data form...

Despite advances in conceptual understanding, single-stressor abatement approaches remain common in the management of fresh waters, even though they can produce unexpected ecological responses when multiple stressors interact. Here we identify limitations restricting the development of multiple-stressor management strategies and address these, brid...

Ponds are a typical feature of many villages in the subtropics, and have been widely used as important sources of water for agriculture, aquaculture and groundwater recharge, as well as enhancing village resilience to floods and drought. Currently many village ponds are in a very poor state and in dire need of rejuvenation. This paper assesses the...

Over-exploitation of tropical lakes and reservoirs ('lakes') causes water quality problems that occur as a result of competing socioeconomic demands and the presence of feedback loops within the system that exacerbate the situation. We review well documented case studies from Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia and Mexico to examine the effec...

Climate and land-use change drive a suite of stressors that shape ecosystems and interact to yield complex ecological responses, i.e. additive, antagonistic and synergistic effects. Currently we know little about the spatial scale relevant for the outcome of such interactions and about effect sizes. This knowledge gap needs to be filled to underpin...

The Ganga River is facing mounting environmental pressures due to rapidly increasing human population, urbanisation, industrialisation and agricultural intensification, resulting in worsening water quality, ecological status and impacts on human health. A combined inorganic chemical, algal and bacterial survey (using flow cytometry and 16S rRNA gen...

This Special Issue of Inland Waters (featuring 2 Special Sections spread across 2 issues) celebrates the contribution of Brian Moss to the science and management of freshwater ecosystems. Brian passed away in 2016, and since then much has been written about his life and achievements (Carvalho and Johnes 2016, Irvine and Barker 2016, Jeppesen and Jo...

Monitoring the qualitative status of freshwaters is an important goal of the international community, as stated in the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) indicator 6.3.2 on good ambient water quality. Monitoring data are, however, lacking in many countries, allegedly because of capacity challenges of less-developed countries. So far, however, the...

Many inland waters are enriched with nutrients, causing deleterious effects to their ecology and the benefits they provide for society, but their effective management first requires identification of the nutrient(s) that limit algal production. Concentrations of nutrients and chlorophyll a (Chl-a) were used to assess nutrient limitation seasonally...

In many regions across the globe, extreme weather events such as storms have increased in frequency, intensity, and duration due to climate change. Ecological theory predicts that such extreme events should have large impacts on ecosystem structure and function. High winds and precipitation associated with storms can affect lakes via short-term run...

Hotspots of human activity are focal points for ecosystem disturbance and non‐native introduction, from which invading populations disperse and spread. As such, connectivity to locations used by humans may influence the likelihood of invasion. Moreover, connectivity in freshwater ecosystems may follow the hydrological network. Here we tested whethe...

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6438/eaav5570/tab-e-letters Letter submitted in response to Perino, A., Pereira, H.M., Navarro, L.M., Fernández, N., Bullock, J.M., Ceaușu, S., Cortés-Avizanda, A., van Klink, R., Kuemmerle, T., Lomba, A., Pe’er, G., Plieninger, T., Benayas, J.M.R., Sandom, C.J., Svenning, J.C., Wheeler, H.C., Rewilding C...

Cyanobacterial blooms are an increasing threat to water quality and global water security caused by the nutrient enrichment of freshwaters. There is also a broad consensus that blooms are increasing with global warming, but the impacts of other concomitant environmental changes, such as an increase in extreme rainfall events, may affect this respon...

Abstract The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is a pioneering piece of legislation that aims to protect and enhance aquatic ecosystems and promote sustainable water use across Europe. There is growing concern that the objective of good status, or higher, in all EU waters by 2027 is a long way from being achieved in many countries. Through questionn...

Blooms of cyanobacteria are a current threat to global water security that is expected to increase in the future because of increasing nutrient enrichment, increasing temperature and extreme precipitation in combination with prolonged drought. However, the responses to multiple stressors, such as those above, are often complex and there is contradi...

This report summarises work undertaken by Natural England and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, in collaboration with the Environment Agency, to develop proposals for a framework to monitor and assess the status of priority freshwater habitats in England. It forms part of a series of actions arising from Biodiversity 2020 to refine the strategy...

Water resources globally are affected by a complex mixture of stressors resulting from a range of drivers, including urban and agricultural land use, hydropower generation and climate change. Understanding how stressors interfere and impact upon ecological status and ecosystem services is essential for developing effective River Basin Management Pl...

Executive summary The consequences of eutrophication in lakes are many, including the potential degradation of important ecosystem services such as the provision of food, the supply of clean water for drinking and industrial use, the support of tourism and recreation, and the maintenance of species and habitats of high conservation value. Phospho...

The ecosystem service (ES) concept is becoming mainstream in policy and planning, but operational influence on practice is seldom reported. Here, we report the practitioners' perspectives on the practical implementation of the ES concept in 27 case studies. A standardised anonymous survey (n=246), was used, focusing on the science-practice interact...

As environmental challenges and their management are increasingly recognised as complex and uncertain, the concept of ecosystem services has emerged from within scientific communities and is gaining influence within policy communities. To better understand how this concept can be turned into practice we examine knowledge needs from the perspective...

The Ecosystem Services (ES) concept highlights the varied contributions the environment provides to humans and there are a wide range of methods/tools available to assess ES. However, in real-world decision contexts a single tool is rarely sufficient and methods must be combined to meet practitioner needs. Here, results from the OpenNESS project ar...

The operational challenges of integrated ecosystem service (ES) appraisals are determined by study purpose, system complexity and uncertainty, decision-makers' requirements for reliability and accuracy of methods, and approaches to stakeholder-science interaction in different decision contexts. To explore these factors we defined an information gap...

As the ecosystem service concept has become more widely recognised, so the number of biophysical, socio-cultural and monetary methods available to assess ecosystem services has increased. There is relatively little guidance on how to select and combine these methods into hybrid approaches that address policy purposes. Based on experiences from 27 c...

Nine Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) were developed within the OpenNESS project specifically for modelling ecosystem services for case study applications. The novelty of the method, its ability to explore problems, to address uncertainty, and to facilitate stakeholder interaction in the process were all reasons for choosing BBNs. Most case studies...

Ecosystem service (ES) spatial modelling is a key component of the integrated assessments designed to support policies and management practices aiming at environmental sustainability. ESTIMAP ("Ecosystem Service Mapping Tool") is a collection of spatially explicit models, originally developed to support policies at a European scale. We based our an...

Nature Ecology & Evolution - online Abstract There is a pressing need to apply stability and resilience theory to environmental management to restore degraded ecosystems effectively and to mitigate the effects of impending environmental change. Lakes represent excellent model case studies in this respect and have been used widely to demonstrate th...

The promise that ecosystem service assessments will contribute to better decision-making is not yet proven. We analyse how knowledge on ecosystem services is actually used to inform land and water management in 22 case studies covering different social-ecological systems in European and Latin American countries. None of the case studies reported in...

The MARS Project aims to understand the effects of multiple stressors on the status of surface waters and groundwaters, their constituent organisms, and the ecosystem services they provide. It examines the impacts of multiple stressors through a series of multifactorial experiments, analysis of long-term monitoring datasets, sixteen case studies at...

In the previous report (D4.1, September 2016) we have developed predictive linkages between indicators of environmental quality and ecosystem services, and different types of pressures, single or multiple, across river basins from all over Europe, in a latitudinal and a west-east gradient, and having very different conditions of climate and land us...

D6.1-1 Summary: Currently, practical management of water bodies focuses on the control of single stressors which are assumed to be dominant. Work by the MARS project and others using ecosystem scale and experimental observations has demonstrated that the relationships between primary stressors and ecological response indicators can be confounded th...

Summary D5.1-1 Part 1: Multi-stressors on surface water and effects on ecological statusHumans have increased the discharge of pollution, altered water flow regime and modified the morphology of rivers. All these actions have resulted in multiple pressures on freshwater ecosystems, undermining their biodiversity and ecological functioning. The Euro...

Summary D6.1-1: Currently, practical management of water bodies focuses on the control of single stressors which are assumed to be dominant. Work by the MARS project and others using ecosystem scale and experimental observations has demonstrated that the relationships between primary stressors and ecological response indicators can be confounded th...

In this research we explored how the concepts and approaches of ecosystem services are currently used in water management in Europe, in the application of River Basin Management Plans (RBMP) developed for the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). Five case studies have been considered, located in the River Basin Districts of the Po river (Italy), Sco...

River phytoplankton blooms can pose a serious risk to water quality and the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems. Developing a greater understanding of the physical and chemical controls on the timing, magnitude and duration of blooms is essential for the effective management of phytoplankton development. Five years of weekly water quality...

Differences in phenological responses to climate change among species can desynchronise ecological interactions and thereby threaten ecosystem function. To assess these threats, we must quantify the relative impact of climate change on species at different trophic levels. Here, we apply a Climate Sensitivity Profile approach to 10,003 terrestrial a...

River networks act as a link between components of the terrestrial landscape with the atmosphere and oceans, and are believed to contribute significantly to global budgets of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). However, knowledge of flux magnitudes and drivers of seasonal and spatial variability required to understand their...

Spears, B.M., Carvalho, L., Futter, M.N., May, L., Thackeray, S.J., Adrian, R., Angeler, D.G., Burthe, S.J., Davidson, T.A., Daunt, F., Gsell, A.S., Hessen, D.O., Moorhouse, H., Huser, B., Ives, S.C., Janssen, A.B.G., Mackay, E.B., Søndergaard, M., Jeppesen, E. Ecological instability in lakes: a predictable condition? Environmental Science & Techno...

Highlights Reduced cyanobacterial blooms after treatment but initial response not sustained. Shift from cyanobacteria dominance towards a diverse phytoplankton community. Ecological status improved but failed to meet the proxy WFD water quality target. Need in-lake and catchment-based measures to effectively control internal P loading BACI analysi...

1. Ecological resilience is developing into a credible paradigm for policy development and environmental management for preserving natural capital in a rapidly changing world. However , resilience emerges from complex interactions, limiting the translation of theory into practice. 2. Main limitations include the following: (i) difficulty in quantif...

1. Anthropogenic pressures, including climate change, are causing nonlinear changes in ecosystems globally. The development of reliable early warning indicators (EWIs) to predict these changes is vital for the adaptive management of ecosystems and the protection of biodiversity , natural capital and ecosystem services. Increased variance and autoco...

The first river flow management for ecosystems focused on the concept of a minimum flow for diluting polluted discharges, based on the notion that as long as the flow is maintained at or above a critical minimum, the river ecosystem will be conserved. CEH have made major contributions to this research in ecohydrology particularly in river, wetland...

Report on phytoplankton bloom metric. Deliverable D3-1-2. The enrichment of ecosystems with plant nutrients, or eutrophication, is one of the most widespread pressures affecting European freshwaters. There are numerous socio-economic problems associated with eutrophication, particularly with increasing frequency and intensity of harmful algal bloom...

The Water Framework Directive is the first international legislation to require European countries to establish comparable ecological assessment schemes for their freshwaters. A key element in harmonising quality classification within and between Europe's river basins is an " Intercalibration " exercise, stipulated by the WFD, to ensure that the go...

Water resources globally are affected by a complexmixture of stressors resulting from a range of drivers, including urban and agricultural land use, hydropower generation and climate change. Understanding how stressors interfere and impact upon ecological status and ecosystem services is essential for developing effective River Basin Management Pla...

This is a dataset obtained from analysis of lake sediment and overlying water from six sites along a depth gradient, in Loch Leven, Scotland, over a period of one year. Parameters measured from the water and included in the dataset are dissolved oxygen concentration, conductivity, pH, temperature, concentrations of three forms of phosphorus, and am...

The implementation of the Water Framework Directive requires EU member states to establish and harmonize ecological status class boundaries for biological quality elements. In this paper, we describe an approach for defining ecological class boundaries that delineates shifts in lake ecosystem functioning and, therefore, provides ecologically meanin...

Water resources globally are affected by a complex mixture of stressors resulting from a range of drivers, including urban and agricultural land use, hydropower generation and climate change. Understanding how stressors interfere and impact upon ecological status and ecosystem services is essential for developing effective River Basin Management Pl...

Lake phytoplankton are adopted world-wide as a sensitive indicator of water quality. European environmental legislation, the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), formalises this, requiring the use of phytoplankton to assess the ecological status of lakes and coastal waters. Here we provide a rigorous assessment of a number of proposed phytoplankton...