Publications by authors named "Fritz Kleinschroth"
Article Synopsis
- Ecosystem restoration plays a critical role in tackling global sustainability issues, yet discussions often miss the social dynamics that impact the fairness and success of these efforts.
- By analyzing case studies, the article reveals that restoration projects are more effective when they align with local communities’ needs and incorporate inclusive governance strategies.
- The research highlights that around 1.4 billion people, primarily from lower Human Development Index backgrounds, reside in high-priority restoration areas, leading to five recommended actions for better integrating social equity into restoration science and policy.
Anthropogenic influences on Zambian water quality: hydropower and land-use change.
Environ Sci Process Impacts
July 2021
The Zambezi River Basin in Southern Africa is undergoing rapid development and population growth. Agricultural intensification, urbanization and future development of hydropower dams will likely lead to a degradation of surface water quality, but there have been few formal assessments of where, how and why these changes impact specific water quality parameters based on in situ data spanning a large region. We sampled a large suite of biogeochemical water quality parameters at 14 locations in four field campaigns in central and southern Zambia in 2018 and 2019 to characterize seasonal changes in water quality in response to large hydropower dams and human landscape transformations.
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- Nutrient pollution in surface waters often leads to the invasion of floating plants, which block waterways and lead to costly control efforts, yet they may play a crucial role in nutrient cycling.
- Floating plants have long been recognized for their ability to absorb excess nutrients in constructed wetlands, but their impact in natural environments, particularly in the Zambezi River, has not been fully quantified.
- Research shows that in more urbanized areas of the Zambezi, these plants can account for significant portions of digestible phosphorus and nitrogen, highlighting their potential as natural nutrient sinks and the importance of managing their growth through hydrological practices.
Invasions of water bodies by floating vegetation, including water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes), are a huge global problem for fisheries, hydropower generation, and transportation. We analyzed floating plant coverage on 20 reservoirs across the world's tropics and subtropics, using > 30 year time-series of LANDSAT remote-sensing imagery. Despite decades of costly weed control, floating invasion severity is increasing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn 2014, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) added a new criterion to its principles that requires protection of intact forest landscapes (IFLs). An IFL is an extensive area of forest that lacks roads and other signs of human activity as detected through remote sensing. In the Congo basin, our analysis of road networks in formally approved concessionary logging areas revealed greater loss of IFL in certified than in noncertified concessions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFForest degradation in the tropics is often associated with roads built for selective logging. The protection of intact forest landscapes (IFL) that are not accessible by roads is high on the biodiversity conservation agenda and a challenge for logging concessions certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). A frequently advocated conservation objective is to maximize the retention of roadless space, a concept that is based on distance to the nearest road from any point.
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