Special Issue "Aquatic Ecosystems and Sustainable Water Resources Management"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Resources and Sustainable Utilization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Chris Dickens
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
International Water Management Institute, 0127 Pretoria, South Africa
Interests: aquatic ecosystems; environmental flows; water resource management
Dr. Gordon O’Brien
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Biology and Environmental Sciences, University of Mpumalanga, 1200 Nelspruit, South Africa
Interests: ecological risk assessments; ichthyology; environmental flow assessments; ecotoxicology and water resource management
Prof. Dr. Kenneth Irvine
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Aquatic Ecosystems Group, IHE Delft Institute of Water Education, POB 3015, NL-2601 DA Delft, The Netherlands
Interests: aquatic ecosystems; wetland; ecology; freshwaters; policy; development
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Dr. Ian Harrison
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Conservation International and IUCN Biodiversity Assessment Unit, Arlington, VA 22202, USA
Interests: conservation; freshwater biodiversity; inland fisheries; Integrated Water Resource Management; international policy; protected areas; Sustainable Development Goals
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Victor Wepener
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Water Research Group, School of Biological Sciences, North-West University, 31750 Potchestroom, South Africa
Interests: platinum group elements and other metals; bioaccumulation and toxicity studies with aquatic organisms; biomarker responses; trace metal analyses; (bio)monitoring of aquatic ecosystems; ecological risk assessment
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Dr. Rebecca Elizabeth Tharme
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Riverfutures Ltd, Buxton SK17 8SX, UK
Interests: integrated water resources management and environmental flow implementation; practitioner capacity building; women in leadership; agriculture-wetlands interactions; implications of infrastructure development for socioecological systems; water security, science diplomacy and peacebuilding; integrated development and conservation planning; climate change and disaster risk reduction; state-of-the-environment monitoring and assessment

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Aquatic ecosystems have increasingly been recognised as central to sustainable water resource management.  Already considered by many countries in national policies, they now form a key part of SDG6 in recognition of their role in water security (Indictor 6.6.1, “Change in extent of water-related ecosystems over time”).  Aquatic ecosystems were also adopted by the UN Environment Assembly in 2018, where a series of guidelines were published to assist countries in incorporating them into management (Framework for Freshwater Ecosystem Management). Clearly, aquatic ecosystems are also central to the Convention on Biological Diversity, with the new post-2020 targets set to give them greater emphasis.

There are key aspects of aquatic ecosystems that need consideration during management: the influence of quantities of water and where that water comes from, the quality of water, the habitats that make up the ecosystems, and the biodiversity of the species that make use of these habitats.  The management of aquatic ecosystems as part of water resource management involves specialist areas of study such as e-flow (environmental flow) assessments, target setting, pollution control, water treatment, biodiversity management and many other fields. 

However, all is not well. Despite the rapid elevation of aquatic ecosystems into management realms, especially at the country level, and the prominence given to them by global programmes, they tend to be overlooked in favour of socioeconomic development.  While the SDG list of indicators in support of natural resources is moderately comprehensive, it lacks holistic monitoring in relation to the evaluation of ecosystems and biodiversity to the extent that these missing-but-vital measures of sustainability threaten the entire SDG Agenda. In addition, an emerging issue is that even where there are indicators, the number of country-level data remain inadequate for evaluating sustainability, a reality that confronted the UN team trying to draft the SDG 6 synthesis report.

The key problem with the above is that there is no globally consistent understanding of the role of aquatic ecosystems in resource management, let alone methods that could be applied at a global level to collect these types of data. 

This Special Issue will focus on collecting research, at whatever scale, that documents the role of aquatic ecosystems in resource management, with the emphasis being on sustainability and the means to generate the data required to monitor this. 

Dr. Chris Dickens
Dr. Gordon O’Brien
Prof. Dr. Kenneth Irvine
Dr. Ian Harrison
Prof. Dr. Victor Wepener
Dr. Rebecca Elizabeth Tharme
Guest Editors

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 papers will be 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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 1900 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.

Keywords

  • aquatic ecosystem health
  • water resources
  • water resource management
  • ecosystem management
  • river health
  • SDGs
  • ecosystem monitoring

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission, see below for planned papers.

Planned Papers

The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.

Title: The Role of Conservation Areas in Ensuring Ecosystem Structure of the Lower Phongolo Floodplain
Author: Wepener, Victor

Title: Aquatic Ecosystem Health Monitoring at a Global Scale
Authors: Dickens, C., Eriyagama, E., Dickens, J. and Xie H.

Title: Global Scale Environmental Flows for Rivers
Authors: Dickens, C., Tharme, R. and M. McClain

Title: Management challenges to Multiple Pollutant Stressors in a Tropical Montane Watershed: the Case of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala
Author: von Hippel, Frank

Title: Inappropriate Reporting Scale and Lack of Harmonisation between SDG6 Indicators Leading to Global Inaction
Author: Stuart Warner

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