Assessing soil erosion risk in a peri-urban catchment of the Lake Victoria basin.

Soil erosion and sedimentation contribute to deteriorating water quality, adverse alterations in basin hydrology and overall ecosystem biogeochemistry. Thus, understanding soil erosion patterns in catchments is critical for conservation planning. This study was conducted in a peri-urban Inner Murchison Bay (IMB) catchment on the northern shores of Lake Victoria since most soil erosion studies in Sub-Saharan Africa have been focused on rural landscapes.

Supporting proactive planning for climate change adaptation and conservation using an attributed road-river structure dataset.

Freshwater species and their habitats, and transportation networks are at heightened risk from changing climate and are priorities for adaptation, with the sheer abundance and individuality of road-river structures complicating mitigation efforts. We present a new spatial dataset of road-river structures attributed as culverts, bridges, or fords, and use this along with data on gradient and stream order to estimate structure sensitivity and exposure in and out of special areas of conservation (SAC) and built-up areas to determine vulnerability to damage across river catchments in Wales, UK. We then assess hazard of flooding likelihood at the most vulnerable structures to determine those posing high risk of impact on roads and river-obligate species (fishes and mussels) whose persistence depends on aquatic habitat connectivity.

Future land cover change scenarios in South African grasslands - implications of altered biophysical drivers on land management.

Future land cover changes may result in adjustments to biophysical drivers impacting on net ecosystem carbon exchange (NEE), catchment water use through evapotranspiration (ET), and the surface energy balance through a change in albedo. The Land Change Modeller (Idrisi Terrset 18.08) and land cover for 2000 and 2014 are used to create a future scenario of land cover for two catchment with different land management systems in the Eastern Cape Province for the year 2030.

Review of toxicological effects caused by episodic stressor exposure.

Water quality monitoring tools that rely on data from stress-response tests with continuous exposure at constant concentrations are not always appropriately protective when stressor exposure in the field is episodic in nature. The present study identifies various approaches that have attempted to account for episodic stressor exposure, describes the development of a toxicological effects database of episodic stressor exposure collated from published scientific literature, and discusses whether any discernible trends are evident when these data are reviewed. The episodic stressor exposure literature indicated that few generalizations can be made regarding associated biological responses.