Multi-decadal improvements in the ecological quality of European rivers are not consistently reflected in biodiversity metrics.

Humans impact terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems, yet many broad-scale studies have found no systematic, negative biodiversity changes (for example, decreasing abundance or taxon richness). Here we show that mixed biodiversity responses may arise because community metrics show variable responses to anthropogenic impacts across broad spatial scales. We first quantified temporal trends in anthropogenic impacts for 1,365 riverine invertebrate communities from 23 European countries, based on similarity to least-impacted reference communities.

The recovery of European freshwater biodiversity has come to a halt.

Owing to a long history of anthropogenic pressures, freshwater ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to biodiversity loss. Mitigation measures, including wastewater treatment and hydromorphological restoration, have aimed to improve environmental quality and foster the recovery of freshwater biodiversity. Here, using 1,816 time series of freshwater invertebrate communities collected across 22 European countries between 1968 and 2020, we quantified temporal trends in taxonomic and functional diversity and their responses to environmental pressures and gradients.

Too much, too soon? Two Swedish case studies of short-term deadwood recruitment in riparian buffers.

Forested riparian buffers are retained along streams during forest harvest to maintain a number of ecological functions. In this paper, we examine how recently established riparian buffers along northern Swedish streams provide deadwood, a key objective for riparian buffer management in Sweden. We used observational and experimental data to show that the investigated buffers provided large volumes of deadwood to streams and riparian zones shortly after their establishment, likely jeopardizing continued recruitment over the long term.

How does a wetland plant respond to increasing temperature along a latitudinal gradient?

Global warming affects plant fitness through changes in functional traits and thereby ecosystem function. Wetlands are declining worldwide, and hence, ecosystem functions linked to wetlands are threatened. We use "a common wetland plant" to study whether warming affects growth and reproduction differently depending on origin of source population, potentially affecting phenotypic response to local climate.

Multiple stressors in small streams in the forestry context of Fennoscandia: The effects in time and space.

In this paper we describe how forest management practices in Fennoscandian countries, namely Sweden and Finland, expose streams to multiple stressors over space and time. In this region, forestry includes several different management actions and we explore how these may successively disturb the same location over 60-100 year long rotation periods. Of these actions, final harvest and associated road construction, soil scarification, and/or ditch network maintenance are the most obvious sources of stressors to aquatic ecosystems.

The role of biogeochemical hotspots, landscape heterogeneity, and hydrological connectivity for minimizing forestry effects on water quality.

Protecting water quality in forested regions is increasingly important as pressures from land-use, long-range transport of air pollutants, and climate change intensify. Maintaining forest industry without jeopardizing sustainability of surface water quality therefore requires new tools and approaches. Here, we show how forest management can be optimized by incorporating landscape sensitivity and hydrological connectivity into a framework that promotes the protection of water quality.

Local and regional processes determine plant species richness in a river-network metacommunity.

River systems form dendritic ecological networks that influence the spatial structure of riverine communities. Few empirical studies have evaluated how regional, dispersal-related processes and local habitat factors interact to govern network patterns of species composition. We explore such interactions in a boreal watershed and show that riparian plant species richness increases strongly with drainage size, i.

Groundwater discharge creates hotspots of riparian plant species richness in a boreal forest stream network.

Riparian vegetation research has traditionally focused on channel-related processes because riparian areas are situated on the edge of aquatic ecosystems and are therefore greatly affected by the flow regime of streams and rivers. However, due to their low topographic position in the landscape, riparian areas receive significant inputs of water and nutrients from uplands. These inputs may be important for riparian vegetation, but their role for riparian plant diversity is poorly known.