© J. Freyhof, A. Hartl
Biodiversity of Freshwater Ecosystems: Status, Trends,
Pressures, and Conservation Priorities
FP7 Collaborative Project, large-scale integrating project
BioFresh
Biodiversity of Freshwater Ecosystems: Status, Trends,
Pressures, and Conservation Priorities
Funded by the European Union under the 7th Framework
Programme, Theme 6 (Environment including Climate
Change) (contract No. 226874 )
© J. Freyhof
Freshwater Ecosystems
• Cover only 0.8% of Earth surface
• Support the livelihood of billions of
people especially in poor countries
• More than 10% of all animal species
(about 126,000)
• More than 35% of all vertebrate
species (about 20,000)
© NASA/GSFC/JPL, MISR Team
The Global Freshwater Crisis
Water for People
Water for Life
(Nature: Special Feature, 2008)
UN
International Decade for
Action 'Water for Life'
2005-2015
The Global Freshwater Biodiversity Crisis
No other major group of species and ecosystems declines
so fast and massively
Recently extinct species:
Lipotes vexillifer
© Institute of Hydrobiology
Chinese Academy of Sciences
© M. Franzen
Incilius periglenes
The Global Freshwater Biodiversity Crisis
• Freshwater Biodiversity: Essential for the livelihood
of billions
© R. Stawikowski
© J. Freyhof
The Global Freshwater Biodiversity Crisis
“Lets go to the stream, turn some stones, catch a fish
and have some fun”
• Freshwater Biodiversity: Source of recreation for all
humans
© J. Freyhof
© R. Stawikowski
European vertebrates extinct since 1700
Prolagus sardus
Terrestrial
Prolagus sardus about 1800
Haematopus meadewaldoi
about 1940
© B. Ohm
Freshwater (12 spp)
© Natural History Museum London
Marine: Pinguinus impennis
1852
Romanogobio antipai
Alburnus danubicus
Gasterosteus crenobiontus
Coregonus oxyrinchus
Coregonus bezola
Coregonus fera
Coregonus hiemalis
Coregonus restrictus
Coregonus gutturosus
Salmo schiefermuelleri
Salvelinus neocomensis
Salvelinus profundus
............................. more
Haematopus meadewaldoi
© B. Ohm
Coregonus gutturosus
© J. Freyhof
Alburnus danubicus
© J. Freyhof
Background
How do freshwater biodiversity and related ecosystem
services respond to environmental pressures?
• Patterns of freshwater biodiversity and processes that
maintain freshwater biodiversity are poorly understood
• This poses a severe handicap for effective conservation
planning as well as the human-related services that depend
on freshwater biodiversity
• Substantially increased efforts are needed to evaluate,
complement, integrate, and analyse the available
quantitative data
© J. Ohlberger
BioFresh general objectives
Improve capacity to protect and manage freshwater
biodiversity in the face of ongoing changes to global
climate and socioeconomics, by:
• Building a Dedicated Freshwater Biodiversity
Information Platform
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 of
multiple stressors over scales
• Enabling analysis of status and trends of biodiversity and
ecosystem services
• Developing and integrating spatially-explicit models to
quantify 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 makers
and the public, and thereby improving conservation
strategies and support the work of the EU and of
international environmental agreements
© A. Sediva
© J. Freyhof
Challenges and Prospects
• Open access, open source, open standards
• Integrating, operationalizing diverse, distributed
resources (data and tools)
• Avoid duplication – build synergies
• Retain focus – penetrate into the data sphere
• Mainstream data publishing
• Sustainability: archiving, maintaining the portal and
network
© E. Schraml
Coverage
• From a global to a local scale
• Focus on Europe
• Detailed case studies in Danube, Ebro and Elbe
catchments
© nasaimages.org
Coverage
• Integrating all kinds of freshwater biodiversity
from ecosystems to genes
• Focus on ecosystem services related to
freshwater biodiversity
© J. Freyhof
© R. Stawikowski
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
© J. Ohlberger, R. Stawikowski, B. Ohm, E. Schraml, J. Freyhof
Our Team
BioFresh: An International Cooperation
BioFresh integrates competence and research
of 18 European and one East Asian partner
institutes
© nasaimages.org
Partners
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
(COOR) Forschungsverbund Berlin, e. V. FVB.IGB, Germany
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, RBINS, Belgium
Universität für Bodenkultur Wien, BOKU, Austria
WorldFish Center (formerly ICLARM), WorldFish, Malaysia
Institute de Recherche pour le Développement IRD, France
Universität Duisburg-Essen, UDE, Germany
The International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, Switzerland
Oxford University, UOXF.AC, UK
Universitat de Barcelona, UB, Spain
Helmholtz Zentrum für Umweltforschung, UFZ, Germany
University College of London, UCL, UK
Eidgenössische Anstalt für Wasserversorgung, Abwasserreinigung und
Gewässerschutz, EAWAG, Switzerland
Université Claude Bernard - Lyon 1, UCBL, France
Université Paul Sabatier - Toulouse 3, UPS, France
Ecologic GmbH, Institut für Internationale und Europäische Umweltpolitik, Ecologic,
Germany
Commission of the European Communities - Directorate General Joint Research
Centre, EC-JRC, Italy
University of Debrecen, UD, Hungary
Naturhistoriska riksmuseet, NRM, Sweden
Center za kartografijo favne in flore, CKFF, Slovenia
Workpackage 1
Building the web-based freshwater biodiversity platform
• Organise and provide access to the electronic data required
by the science workpackages
• Identify the critical gaps in data coverage that impede the
scientific analysis.
• Address the specific constraints related to freshwater
biodiversity datasets in a way that ensures optimal utility for
users, while maintaining optimal complementarities with
other biodiversity information initiatives
• Integrate in the BioFresh portal those tools (models, indices
developed by the science workpackages) that are most
relevant to users in conservation, management and policy,
in a practical way
Lead: RBINS, Belgium
Workpackage 2
Quality control and database preparation
• Identification of existing biodiversity databases
• Determination and standardization of metadata; storage of
these metadata in a database
• Review of existing quality control procedures
• Establishment of quality assessment systems and
improvement
• Review of selected biodiversity databases using above
mentioned routines, both regarding database content and
structure
• Establishment of property rights and data accessibility
regulations and agreements
Lead: BOKU, Austria
Workpackage 3
Gap analysis and remediation
• Analyze the data and information requirements for modeling
tools, dissemination, and awareness campaign
• Identify additional partners holding critical data
• Integration and digitization of critical, published data by
linking with existing datasets identified above, and encoding
new data and information from the literature
• Filling the knowledge gaps by making new proposals with
relevant partners to construct new dedicated Biodiversity
Information System (BIS) or encoding and validating data
and information from the literature in existing BIS
Lead: WorldFish/ABIO, Malaysia
Workpackage 4
Contemporary and past Patterns in Freshwater Biodiversity
• Develop a Biodiversity Matrix to identify centres of high
freshwater diversity
• Develop and test spatially-explicit models and tools to
quantify how key present contemporary environmental
pressures impact freshwater biodiversity
• Investigate how freshwater biodiversity is organised in
response to dependence on natural and socio-economic
forces in three European catchments
• Investigate how palaeoecological records can identify
changes in freshwater biodiversity over various time scales
Lead: IRD, France
Workpackage 5
Climate Change Impact on Freshwater Biodiversity
• Develop a conceptual model of how biodiversity will
respond to future climate stress
• Predict changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services
under future climate conditions
• Develop and test spatially-explicit models how
biodiversity will be modified under future thermal and
hydrological regimes
• Analyse the impact of biodiversity changes on ecosystem
functioning
• Develop a global atlas of future freshwater habitat types
and species distribution shifts
Lead: IGB, Germany
Workpackage 6
Multiple stressors and freshwater biodiversity
• A conceptual model of how biodiversity respond to
multiple and interacting forces will be developed
• Freshwater species, communities and habitats will be
assessed for their contribution to ecosystem services
• Early warning of invasive species spread will be analyzed
• The response of organism groups to stress gradients will
be compared on European and global scales
• Predictive Freshwater Biodiversity Models will be
developed at global, European and local scales
Lead: UDE, Germany
Workpackage 7
Informing policy for conservation planning
• Benchmark the status and distribution of freshwater
biodiversity for long-term monitoring
• Identify important sites (Key Biodiversity Areas) and
suggest improved strategies for conservation
• Support governments and international environmental
agreements by identifying priority ecosystem types and
species
• Propose potential taxa, or habitat surrogates for species
distributions as tools to help fill current information gaps in a
time and cost effective manner
Lead: IUCN, Switzerland
Workpackage 8
Capacity building, Awareness raising, Dissemination
and Science policy dialogue
• Communicate and disseminate project results to: The
Public, 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
Lead: UOXF.AC, UK