Impact of Environmental Changes on Freshwater Ecosystems

Dear Colleagues,

Over half of the Earth’s land surface has been transformed—primarily through agriculture, urbanisation, and forestry—to meet the demands of human consumption. This rapid change, occurring within a geological instant, has profoundly altered ecosystems and their capacity to deliver provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services. This Special Issue examines the disturbances to freshwater ecosystems caused by human activities and natural processes.

Freshwater ecosystems naturally evolve over time; however, these unique environments face increasing pressure from anthropogenic disturbances, including climate change, habitat degradation, land management practices, the introduction of invasive species, and overexploitation. In this Special Issue, we invite manuscripts addressing—but which are not limited to—the following topics:

• Impacts of extreme events (e.g., cyclones, wildfires) on freshwater ecosystem structure and function.
• Responses to emergent contaminants, including pharmaceuticals, endocrine disruptors, and microplastics.
• Biodiversity change under pressure, studied through field surveys and palaeoecological records.
• Alterations in carbon dynamics and nutrient cycling across catchments.
• Biogeographic shifts and altered phenologies driven by climate change, invasive species, and emerging diseases.
• Community responses to stress, such as harmful algal blooms and disrupted trophic interactions.
• Anthropogenic barriers to flow, including dams, stream burial, and sensory pollution (e.g., light, noise).
• Detection of early warning signals and resilience traits in response to pulse and press disturbances.
• Integration of ecosystem models with empirical data for predictive and diagnostic insights.
• Evidence-based restoration, sharing lessons from successes and failures.

Dr. Andrew B.H. Rees
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Hydrobiology is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• freshwater ecosystems
• anthropogenic disturbances
• climate change impacts
• biodiversity loss