Appropriate post for the celebration of the 40th birthday of the Endangered Species Act, signed into law on 28 December 1973 by President Richard M. Nixon.
'Environmental flows' - that's fine, but what is this 'Anthropocene' stuff?
Lest you've been living in a cave for the past few years, you know that 'Anthropocene' is a common informal term denoting a certain period ('epoch') of geological time during which humans have had a profound effect on Earth and its various processes and environments. It is informal because its use has not been formally approved by the International Commission on Stratigraphy; as far as the ICS is concerned, we are still in the Holocene Epoch, which began 11,700 years ago. But regardless of what the ICS decides (2014 or 2015, I believe), the term is not going away anytime soon. What really needs to be determined is when the Holocene ended and the Anthropocene began. 1950? 1800? 10,000 BCE? Stay tuned.
But I have digressed too much.
Thanks to Michael van der Valk here is the description of LeRoy Poff's and John Matthews' paper from the Dutch Portal to International Hydrology:
LeRoy Poff and John Matthews have just published an interesting paper on 'Environmental flows in the Anthropocene: past progress and future prospects'. Human modification of the global hydrologic cycle through the building and operation of hundreds of thousands of dams and diversions has significantly altered fluvial processes, leading to impairment of river ecosystem function and biodiversity loss worldwide. The concept of environmental flows (e-flows) emerged to mitigate the undesirable hydrological impacts of dams and water diversions, in order to strengthen ecologically informed water management. In their paper, the authors outline the scientific foundations and progressive development of the current e-flows framework over the last 25 years, identifying three discrete periods in its history: emergence and synthesis, consolidation and expansion, and globalization.
They further highlight the evolving challenges and audiences that e-flows engages, and discuss the challenges facing the framework during the current period of rapid global change. For e-flows to contribute most effectively to sustainable freshwater management on a global scale, it must, first, move from a focus on restoration to one of adaptation to climate and other environmental change stressors, second, expand its scale from single sites to whole river basins, and third, broaden its audience to embrace social-ecological sustainability that balances freshwater conservation needs with human well-being in both developing and developed economies alike.
Here is the paper's abstract:
Human modification of the global hydrologic cycle through the building and operation of hundreds of thousands of dams and diversions has significantly altered fluvial processes, leading to impairment of river ecosystem function and biodiversity loss worldwide. The concept of environmental flows (e-flows) emerged to mitigate the undesirable hydrological impacts of dams and water diversions, in order to strengthen ecologically informed water management. In this paper, we outline the scientific foundations and progressive development of the current e-flows framework over the last 25 years, identifying three discrete periods in its history: emergence and synthesis, consolidation and expansion, and globalization. We highlight the evolving challenges and audiences that e-flows engages, and discuss the challenges facing the framework during the current period of rapid global change. For e-flows to contribute most effectively to sustainable freshwater management on a global scale, it must, first, move from a focus on restoration to one of adaptation to climate and other environmental change stressors, second, expand its scale from single sites to whole river basins, and third, broaden its audience to embrace social- ecological sustainability that balances freshwater conservation needs with human well-being in both developing and developed economies alike.
(click to enlarge)
Very good reading - enjoy!
Download Environmental_Flows_Anthropocene
"All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today." - Chinese proverb
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