Thomas Hein

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• Full Professor
• head of institute at BOKU University

Understanding the relationships between provisioning and regulating ecosystem services (ESS) in papyrus wetlands of the Lake Victoria basin is crucial for livelihoods. However, the relationships between the ESS remain unexplored despite the steady conversion of wetlands to agriculture. This study identified the relationships between provisioning (c...

Mining activities cause severe nitrogen pollution in watersheds, yet our understanding of the transport pathways, transformation processes, and control mechanisms of nitrate (NO3–) in these areas is limited. Based on nearly 4-year observations of groundwater and river in China’s largest ion-adsorption rare earth mining watershed, we revealed the dy...

Context In efforts to mitigate anthropogenic impacts on floodplain biodiversity, restoration measures that enhance habitat connectivity have been applied. However, these approaches have either neglected the spatial position of water bodies or the dynamic nature of the floodplain ecosystem. Objectives This study focuses on the novel application of...

Obwohl die Biodiversitätskrise immer stärker ins öffentliche Bewusstsein tritt, wird der Artenverlust unter der Wasseroberfläche meist kaum wahrgenommen und dies trotz der Tatsache, dass aquatische Ökosysteme wesentlich stärker als terrestrische bedroht sind. Die im Rahmen vorliegender Arbeit ausgewählten Artengruppen spiegeln die Gesamt-heit der w...

This study provides a new perspective on understanding the intricacies of water‐mediated connectivity in ecosystems, bridging landscape ecology and geomorphology through network science. We highlight dryland and river‐floodplain ecosystems as distinct examples of contrasting water‐controlled systems. We (1) discuss central considerations in develop...

Most of the world’s rivers are shaped by interacting social and natural processes. As Industrialised Riverine Landscapes (IRLs), they have become part of our critical infrastructure, vital for the water-energy-food nexus, but also subject to extreme events and vulnerable to biodiversity loss in the wake of global change. This situation poses major...

In this study, we explored how barriers such as dams have affected the longitudinal connectivity of riverine habitats from the perspective of potamodromous fish. For this purpose, connectivity changes are investigated in the central part of the Austrian Danube system, where the national reporting for the EU Water Framework Directive provides detail...

Floodplains provide an extraordinary quantity and quality of ecosystem services (ES) but are among the most threatened ecosystems worldwide. The uses and transformations of floodplains differ widely within and between regions. In recent decades, the diverse pressures and requirements for flood protection, drinking water resource protection, biodive...

The EU Nature Restoration Law represents an important opportunity for freshwater habitat restoration and, consequently, freshwater biodiversity protection. However, a number of challenges must be anticipated in its implementation, which may compromise its success. Some aspects, particularly those relating to freshwater ecosystems, require more clar...

Aim Rivers belong to the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. Historical anthropogenic alterations have, and future climate change will further affect rivers and the species therein. While many studies have projected climate change effects on species, little is known about the severity of these changes compared to historical alterations. Here, we u...

Information is scarce on how environmental and dispersal processes interact with biological features of the organisms, such as their habitat affinity, to influence patterns in biodiversity. We examined the role of habitat specialist vs. generalist species, and the spatial configuration, connectivity, and different environmental characteristics of r...

Context. In efforts to mitigate anthropogenic impacts on floodplain biodiversity, restoration measures that enhance habitat connectivity have been applied. However, these approaches have either neglected the spatial position of water bodies or the dynamic nature of the floodplain ecosystem. Objectives. This study applies the novel multilayer netwo...

The International Association for Danube Research (IAD) was founded in 1956 to promote transboundary exchange in limnology and river management across the ‘Iron Curtain’. This was a necessity to tackle environmental problems, focusing first on pollution. After the political and socio-economic changes in 1989/1990, the IAD concentrated gradually on...

The phytoplankton functional group (FG) classification system sensu Reynolds enables evaluating the ecological status of rivers using the Q (r) compositional index. Here, we apply the Q (r) index to analyze the ecological conditions of the Southern Bug River, at the entire river length, in the early 20th century, testing it first on historic river...

Connectivity is a crucial property of the river-floodplain ecosystem. Reduction of connectivity, fragmentation and isolation effects, impacting ecological functions and biodiversity, is one of the most critical threats to floodplain systems. We use a graph theoretical approach for analyzing possible transport pathways in the system (directed, undir...

The loss of longitudinal connectivity affects river systems globally, being one of the leading causes of the freshwater biodiversity crisis. Barriers alter the dispersal of aquatic organisms and limit the exchange of species between local communities, disrupting metacommunity dynamics. However, the interplay between connectivity losses due to dams...

The access to an adequate quantity and quality of water is vital to sustain healthy ecosystems and human socioeconomic development. However, the shift from an agrarian, solar energy based to an industrialized, fossil fuel‐based socio‐metabolic regime has put natural water resources under stress and led to dramatic transformations of riverine landsc...

This study provides a new perspective on understanding the intricacies of water-mediated connectivity in ecosystems, bridging landscape ecology and geomorphology through network science. We highlight dryland and river floodplain ecosystems as distinct examples of contrasting water-controlled systems. We (1) discuss central considerations in develop...

In the context of anthropogenic impacts on riverine ecosystems globally, understanding the response of bacterioplankton to anthropogenic stress is important for human and environmental health. Bacterioplankton communities are critical for maintaining ecosystem stability, but little is known about their co-occurrence networks and assembly processes...

Excess nitrogen (N) from agricultural sources is a major contributor to the water pollution of rivers in Europe. Floodplains are of tremendous importance as they can permanently remove nitrate (NO3) from the environment by releasing reactive N to the atmosphere in its gaseous forms (N2O, N2) during denitrification. However, the quantitative assessm...

In riverine floodplains, the hydrological connectivity of the aquatic habitats with the main channel is paramount for aquatic metacommunities, as it influences organism dispersal and the local environmental conditions. We assessed phytoplankton, rotifer and microcrustacean metacommunity structures and species richness along an empirical gradient of...

The Special Issue “ Wetland Management” presents a selection of articles from the “9th International Symposium on Wetland Pollutant Dynamics and Control (WETPOL 2021)” that was organized by the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) and held as a virtual event from 13 to 17 September 2021. WETPOL is an international sympos...

The commonly observed inverse relationship between dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and nitrate (NO3-) concentrations in aquatic systems can be explained by stoichiometric and thermodynamic principles regulating microbial assimilation and dissimilation processes. However, the interactive effects of human activities and dissolved oxygen (DO) on the DO...

This study investigated, using the closed chamber method, the impact of (1) vegetation community type (Typha latifolia, Cyperus papyrus and Phragmites mauritianus) in a natural tropical freshwater marsh wetland (marsh) and (2) conversion of a natural tropical freshwater marsh into a rice paddy wetland (rice paddy), on nitrous oxide (N2O) emission....

Intense efforts have focused on ecosystem conservation and restoration (ECR) over the past decades, promoting considerable advances in science and practice in this field. However, the applications of the ecosystem services (ESs) concept are rarely considered in the literature when assessing the success and targets of ECR. The ECR literature was sys...

This book gives positive examples how humans and rivers have been, and are still in some places, living in harmony. It analyses how this knowledge can be transferred into modern river management schemes and thereby it attempts to mitigate the deplorable trend of the decline of biological and cultural heritages and diversities in and along rivers. A...

Der Beitrag thematisiert, wie wir zwei Auslandsexkursionen i. S. v. „Forschendem Lernen in der Natur“ konzipiert haben, bei denen Masterstudierende verschiedene Kompetenzen kombinieren und anwenden sollen. In diesen Lehrveranstaltungen sollen die Studierenden einen vollständigen Forschungszyklus durchlaufen (eigenständige Wissens- und Erkenntnisbil...

Looking for cheaper and more transportable alternative magnesium(Mg 2+) sources to envisage the full-scale application of downstream transfer of P recovery through struvite precipitation, sisal fibres were impregnated with bittern:water (B:W) ratio solutions 1:4; 1:5; 1:7 and 1:10. Two methods were attempted: the one-step method with a simultaneous...

River regulation has significantly changed the river landscape of the Danube. The former habitat and species diversity have been lost to a large extent as a result. Although ecological improvement projects are continuously being implemented on the Danube, there is still a great lack of knowledge about the overall effect of these individual measures...

Sturgeon populations are declining worldwide and are the target of extensive conservation efforts. Addressed in several pieces of legislation, sturgeons have received considerable attention as flagship or umbrella species. Despite the need for a better understanding of the distribution and population status, the use of traditional sampling methods...

Fragmentation affects river ecosystems worldwide by dampening the movement and dispersal of aquatic organisms and material (such as sediment, water, nutrients) across the river network. In this paper, we develop river connectivity indices to explain biodiversity patterns, prioritize reaches that need habitat restoration and barriers that need impro...

Floodplains remove nitrate from rivers through denitrification and thus improve water quality. The Danube River Basin (DRB) has been affected by elevated nitrate concentrations and a massive loss of intact floodplains and the ecosystem services they provide. Restoration measures intend to secure and improve these valuable ecosystem services, includ...

With climate change, streams and rivers are at increased risk of droughts and flow intermittency. The full implications of these conditions for fluvial carbon (C) processing and stream-atmosphere CO 2 emissions are not well understood. We performed a controlled drought experiment in outdoor hyporheic flumes. We simulated small rain events that incr...

Aquatic-terrestrial interfaces may act as biogeochemical hotspots for greenhouse gas emissions, especially when exposed to frequent transitions between wet and dry phases. The study aimed to analyze the dynamics of nitrogen (N) processing along an inundation gradient from floodplain soils to river sediments and identify environmental factors affect...

Floodplain assessment systems that conform to the Water Framework Directive hardly exist in Europe at present. Currently available methods are limited to the main channel and thus contradict a holistic view of a river ecosystem approach. Especially the large central European rivers such as the Danube, Rhine or Elbe have undergone massive changes in...

We present the development of novel ion‐selective electrodes for tropane as a general model for tropane alkaloids. These potentiometric sensors rely on metallocarborane or tetraphenylborate complexes as recognition element and led to systems that showed a near‐Nernstian behavior in the range of 10‐5 to 10‐2 mol/L and a detection limits around 2 • 1...

Excess heavy metal concentrations caused by severe anthropogenic activities are among the major threats of aquatic pollution in developing countries like Ethiopia. So far, there is limited information regarding concentrations of selected toxic heavy metals in the freshwater bodies of northern Ethiopian highlands. Therefore, this study aimed to asse...

Sturgeon populations are declining worldwide and are the target of extensive conservation efforts. Addressed in several pieces of legislation, sturgeons have received considerable attention as flagship or umbrella species. Despite the need for a better understanding of the distribution and population status, the use of traditional sampling methods...

Over the last 40 years, a growing number of restoration projects have been implemented to improve the ecological conditions of highly degraded rivers and their floodplains. Despite considerable investment in these projects, information is still limited about the effectiveness and the success of such river restoration measures, mainly due to a lack...

Rivers of Europe, Second Edition, presents the latest update on the only primary source of complete and comparative baseline data on the biological and hydrological characteristics of more than 180 of the highest profile rivers in Europe. With even more full-color photographs and maps, the book includes conservation information on current patterns...

Fragmentation affects river ecosystems worldwide by dampening movement and dispersal of organisms across the river network. Fragmentation indices were developed to explain biodiversity patterns, prioritize reaches that need habitat restoration and barriers that need improvement. This paper provides a general framework for calculating fragmentation...

Phosphorus (P) recovery in source-separated decentralised wastewater treatment processes is an eco-efficient strategy in accordance with a circular economy perspective. Struvite (MgNH4PO4.6H2O) capture allows a reduction of P discharged to surface waters and generates a product known for its slow-release fertiliser properties. However, the cost and...

Sediment and nutrient retention are essential ecosystem functions that floodplains provide and that improve river water quality. During floods, the floodplain vegetation retains sediment, which settles on plant surfaces and the soil underneath plants. Both sedimentation processes require that flow velocity is reduced, which may be caused by the top...

The relationship between network structure and dynamics is one of the most extensively investigated problems in the theory of complex systems of recent years. Understanding this relationship is of relevance to a range of disciplines—from neuroscience to geomorphology. A major strategy of investigating this relationship is the quantitative compariso...

Nitrate (NO3⁻) removal from aquatic ecosystems involves several microbially mediated processes, including denitrification, dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA), and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox), controlled by slight changes in environmental gradients. In addition, some of these processes (i.e. denitrification) may involve th...

Populations of large wildlife have declined in many landscapes around the world, and have been replaced or displaced by livestock. The consequences of these changes on the transfer of organic matter (OM) and nutrients from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems are not well understood. We used behavioural data, excretion and egestion rates and C: N: P s...

Whereas wetland ecosystems are among the most vital natural carbon sinks, they are also important sources of nitrous oxide (N 2 O), a highly potent greenhouse gas. However, due to differences in wetland characteristics, N 2 O emission is likely to vary across wetland types. We investigated the: 1) influence of vegetation community ( Typha latifolia...

Successfully managing heavily visited protected riverscapes requires information about visitor preferences for the social, biophysical and infrastructural attributes of river landscapes. This study analyzed the landscape preferences of 520 on-site visitors to the peri-urban Danube Floodplains National Park using an image-based discrete choice exper...

River systems have undergone a massive transformation since the Anthropocene. The natural properties of river systems have been drastically altered and reshaped, limiting the use of management frameworks, their scientific knowledge base and their ability to provide adequate solutions for current problems and those of the future, such as climate cha...

The two-stage ditch is a river restoration technique that aims at improving the sediment regime and lateral channel connectivity by recreating a small floodplain alongside a stream reach. This study aimed to analyze the efficiency of a two-stage ditch in improving the stream sediment structure and functions under different hydrological conditions (...

Nitrate pollution in aquatic ecosystems is still a major problem in Germany. There is a great potential to permanently remove nitrate from aquatic systems through denitrification as a relevant ecosystem function. However, the controlling factors and the dimension of the denitrification potential are still not fully understood due to the high comple...

This paper presents estimates of loading rates of organic matter, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus by livestock (cattle) into aquatic ecosystems. These estimates have been compared with existing rates for the common hippopotamus in a river system where the distribution of the two (livestock and hippos) overlap.

The freshwater pearl mussel Margaritifera margaritifera is a benthic organism sensitive to hydrological regime alterations and habitat degradation driven by excessive fine bed material deposit (FBMD). Both issues are potentially exacerbated by climate change. Understanding how climate change affects future mussel habitats and the dispersal among th...

Droughts are expected to become more common with climate change resulting in more frequent occurrences of flow intermittency in temperate streams. As intermittency has deleterious effects on fluvial microbial biofilms, there is a need to better understand how droughts affect the microbial functioning and thereby nutrient and organic matter processi...

River ecosystems belong to the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. Historical anthropogenic alterations have, and future climate change will further affect river ecosystems and the species therein. While many studies assess the potential effects of expected future changes on species, little is known about the severity of these changes compared to...

The relationship of network structure and dynamics is one of most extensively investigated problems in the theory of complex systems of the last years. Understanding this relationship is of relevance to a range of disciplines -- from Neuroscience to Geomorphology. A major strategy of investigating this relationship is the quantitative comparison of...

Emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) is of interest in tropical wetland studies because the high and relatively stable temperatures year-round enhance both primary productivity and organic matter decomposition. Nonetheless, there is scarcity of data on emission of these carbon-based greenhouse gases from tropical wetlands. We investig...

Uptake and release patterns of dissolved organic matter (DOM) compounds and co-transported nutrients are entangled, and the current literature does not provide a consistent picture of the interactions between the retention processes of DOM fractions. We performed plateau addition experiments with five different complex DOM leachates in a small expe...

Sediment and nutrient retention are essential ecosystem functions that floodplains provide and that improve river water quality. During floods, the floodplain vegetation retains sediment, which settles on plant surfaces and the soil underneath plants. Both sedimentation processes require that flow velocity is reduced, which may be caused by the top...

Freshwater ecosystems are among the most threatened in the world, while providing numerous essential ecosystem services (ES) to humans. Despite their importance, research on freshwater ecosystem services is limited. Here, we examine how freshwater studies could help to advance ES research and vice versa. We summarize major knowledge gaps and sugges...

Tropical wetlands are important climate regulators. However, their climate regulating function is at risk by land-use conversion for agricultural purposes. In sub-Saharan Africa, studies investigating the effect of land-use change in wetlands and associated soil greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions remain limited. Moreover, the influence of season in GHG...

We investigated the impact of converting a natural tropical freshwater wetland in Uganda into a rice paddy wetland on climate change mitigation, by comparing carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) fluxes from the natural section (under different vegetation communities dominated by Cyperus papyrus, Typha latifolia and Phragmites mauritianus) and fro...

In complement to the JDS4 traditional fish survey (TFS, mainly by electrofishing), a fish eDNA metabarcoding-based survey has been implemented within the framework of the monitoring program organized by DNAqua-Net and in collaboration with the INTERREG "MEASURES" program. Water samples were collected at 29 sites from the source to the mouth of the...

Background Sediments frequently exposed to dry-wet cycles are potential biogeochemical hotspots for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during dry, wet and transitional phases. While the effects of drying and rewetting on carbon fluxes have been studied extensively in terrestrial and aquatic systems, less is known about the effects of dry-wet cycles on...

The articles within the special issue demonstrate the importance of integrative approaches in river management, which equally consider ecosystem functioning, ecosystem services, and human society to find ecologically relevant, socially acceptable, and sustainable solutions for the conservation and restoration of riverine landscapes. Long-term traje...

Sudden instream releases of water from hydropower plants (hydropeaking [HP]) can cause abrupt temperature variations (thermopeaking [TP]), typically on a daily/sub-daily basis. In alpine rivers, hydropeaking and thermopeaking waves usually overlap, which leads to a multiple stressor of flow velocity pulses and temperature alteration. Periphytic com...

In dynamic systems, many species use dormancy as a strategy to survive harsh periods and disperse through time, a fundamental aspect scarcely explored in metacommunities studies. We compared spatial patterns of resting egg bank and active zooplankton diversity across scales (rotifers and cladocerans), explored relationships between diversity and en...

River floodplains are among the most threatened ecosystems of the world and their protection and restoration is of key importance for river managers. In Europe, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Habitats and Birds Directives (HBDs) provide a guideline for decision processes in floodplain restoration projects. While the WFD, however, repre...

Natural water retention measures (NWRMs) belong to the broad range of nature-based solutions and are receiving increased attention for targeting environmental problems of river catchments as they effectively support the restoration of natural processes and cycles. Challenges involved in NWRMs planning include the development of tools able to projec...

Uptake and release patterns of dissolved organic matter (DOM) compounds and nutrients are entangled, and the current literature does not provide a consistent picture of the link between DOM composition, nutrient concentrations, and effects on their cycling. We performed two plateau addition experiments for each of five different, realistic, complex...

Denitrification in floodplain soils is one key process that determines the buffering capacity of riparian zones in terms of diffuse nitrate pollution. One widely used approach to measure the denitrification potential is the acetylene inhibition technique that requires fresh soil samples. We conducted experiments with air-dried soils using a time se...

The impact of different vegetation communities on soil organic carbon (SOC) in a tropical freshwater wetland in Uganda was investigated. SOC content, density and storage potential were determined under three different dominant vegetation communities: Cyperus papyrus L., Typha latifolia L. and Phragmites mauritianus Kunth. SOC content (123.7 ± 2.6 S...

Macrophytes are important organisms in running water systems, having a decisive role in ecological processes and interactions. Their temporal and spatial distribution in streams can be highly variable, and this is often determined by flow velocity. In this study, macrophyte growth, morphology and nutrient stoichiometry were studied monthly during o...

It is expected that climate change will cause more frequent extreme events of heavy precipitation and drought, changing hydrological conditions in riverine ecosystems, such as flow velocity, evapotranspiration (drought) or runoff (heavy precipitation). This can lead to an increased input of terrestrial organic matter and elevated levels of dissolve...