Protected areas are a cornerstone strategy for terrestrial and increasingly marine biodiversity conservation, but their use for conserving inland waters has received comparatively scant attention. In 2010, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) included a target of 17% protection for inland waters, yet there has been no meaningful way of measuring progress toward that target. Defining and evaluating “protection” is especially complicated for rivers because their integrity is intimately linked to impacts in their upstream catchments.

Urban waters remain widely impaired by excess nutrients, despite substantial management efforts. We present a comparison of urban watershed nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) budgets. Household actions of lawn fertilization and pet ownership were responsible for the majority of watershed N and P inputs, respectively. N and P exhibited contrasting dynamics within watersheds. Watersheds exported most or all P inputs via stormwater runoff, likely contributing to surface water degradation.

Worldwide riverine thermal pollution patterns were investigated by combining mean annual heat rejection rates from power plants with once-through cooling systems with the global hydrological-water temperature model variable infiltration capacity (VIC)-RBM. The model simulates both streamflow and water temperature on 0.5° × 0.5° spatial resolution worldwide and by capturing their effect, identifies multiple thermal pollution hotspots.

Original Source

CO2 emissions from inland waters are commonly determined by indirect methods that are based on the product of a gas transfer coefficient and the concentration gradient at the air water interface (e.g., wind-based gas transfer models). The measurements of concentration gradient are typically collected during the day in fair weather throughout the course of a year. Direct measurements of eddy covariance CO2 fluxes from a large inland water body (Ross Barnett reservoir, Mississippi, USA) show that CO2 effluxes at night are approximately 70% greater than those during the day.

As India stares at the mammoth task of cleaning the Ganga and looks for inspiration outside the country , it is the Rhine river of western Europe which has caught the attention of policy-makers her

Massive floods in the Mississippi River valley may have wiped out an ancient civilization, according to a new study.

About 420 gallons of oil spilled into the Mississippi River, forcing authorities to close part of the waterway after a ship collided with vessel offloading crude in southern Louisiana on Monday, th

In this aerial photo, river traffic is halted along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Vacherie, La., due to a barge leaking oil in St. James Parish on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2014.

Climate change is likely to worsen floods on rivers such as the Ganges, the Nile and the Amazon this century while a few, including the now-inundated Danube, may become less prone, a Japanese-led s

One person was reported killed and several others injured after severe weather on Thursday caused power outages and damaged buildings in Kemper County, Mississippi, emergency management officials s

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