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Advances in Biomonitoring for the Sustainability of Vulnerable African Riverine Ecosystems, Volume IAfrica is a continent of immense natural heritage and a broad diversity of freshwater ecosystems that include iconic rivers that fostered the earliest civilizations, the Great Lakes that hold 25% of the world's unfrozen fresh water, and extensive wetlands, floodplains, and deltas and estuaries that support unique species. Fisheries, irrigation, and livestock production from these freshwater ecosystems feed millions of people. Due to rapid population growth, land use change, urbanization, energy consumption, and water harvesting are threatening freshwater ecosystems in Africa. Studies have expressed serious concerns about the continent's freshwater fauna and ecological processes. Freshwater impacts are reducing the continent's ecological services and human welfare. There is a growing need to investigate the condition of freshwater ecosystems to document their conservation status, and the threats they face, and to devise management and conservation measures, including decision-support tools for biomonitoring ecological changes.
Most countries and regions in Africa lack indigenous tools or indices as lines of evidence (LoEs) on the impact of human activities on the status of water quality and the overall ecological integrity of aquatic ecosystems. Thus, there is a need to determine the impact of human activities on the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems. Further, there is a need to understand how to develop and use biomonitoring tools or indices to assess, monitor and manage the current and future threats to water resources, such as increasing water abstractions, pollution, land use and climate change.
While there is clear evidence of the impacts of human activities o the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems, including impacts on the diversity and distribution of species, the development of ecological indices and other models to assess and monitor the changes in ecological conditions have not been adequate and widespread. There is also a need to move beyond the development of these indices and vouch for their use in management for sustainability. The aim of this new Research Topic is:
- Provide novel insights into the influence of human activities (e.g., land use change, pollution, excessive water withdrawals) on the structure (including physical, chemical, and biological [e.g., species occurrence and distributions] characteristics) and functioning (nutrient cycling, organic matter processing, ecosystem metabolism, primary production, functional ecology [biological traits, ecosystem function rates]) of aquatic ecosystems (streams rivers, lakes, reservoirs, wetlands and estuaries) in Africa.
- Contribute to the development of biomonitoring tools, (e.g., biotic indices, multimeric indices, models, etc.) for enhanced understanding of the impacts of human activities on aquatic ecosystems at different levels of organization (species, communities, and ecosystems) from across the African Continent and surrounding islands.
- Determine key topics and methodological challenges related to the use of developed and existing biomonitoring tools (indices, models) for the conservation and management of aquatic ecosystems in Africa.
- Explore the influence of emergent stressors such as invasive species, microplastics, cage fish culture, harmful algal blooms and novel contaminants on African inland waters. This to include the use of novel technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), eDNA and other molecular biology-based approaches, satellite remote sensing, airborne surveys and/or drones, bio-acoustics and camera traps in the study of inland waters.
- To contribute to the sustainable management of African inland waters through sharing successful case studies on the participation and role of citizen science, co-management, improved governance and policy development.
We seek contributions from a broad base that demonstrate how to develop decision support tools for enhanced understanding of the threats posed by human activities on the integrity of riverine ecosystems (including associated wetlands), and their use in conservation and management of water resources. We specifically solicit submissions on the following themes:
-Assessment of the status of water quality and the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems in Africa. This includes the status of physical, chemical, and biological of characters of aquatic ecosystems, the rates of ecosystem processes (e.g., nutrient cycling, organic matter processing, primary production) and energy sources and flow in aquatic food webs.
-Biomonitoring of aquatic ecosystems using existing biological indicators and indices (e.g., diversity, biotic, multimeric indices) and similar tools and models (e.g., environmental flows methodology). This to span all levels of organization (species, communities, ecosystems) from across the continent, including transboundary ecosystems and regions.
-Development of decision support tools. New tools (indices, models), etc) for assessment and monitoring the ecological status of aquatic ecosystems across the continent or broad biogeographic regions, i.e., across country borders, allowing for standardized assessments or new bioassessment methods for management.
-Novel assessment methods for citizen science. Advances in monitoring and assessment technologies that are more accessible and easier to use (e.g., more affordable, rapid, and require less expertise) in an African context other than traditional approaches (e.g., remote sensing, modelling, artificial intelligence, etc);
- Application of existing tools for management. The use of biomonitoring indices as decision support tools for the conservation and management of water resources. These to include environmental flows assessment tools and their applications in riverine ecosystems.