A roadmap for sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem services through joint conservation and restoration of northern drainage basins

Abstract

1. Freshwater ecosystems and their biota are more seriously threatened than their marine and terrestrial counterparts. A solution to halt increasing negative impacts of anthropogenic development would be to reconsider the basics of nature conservation (i.e. protection of pristine and near-pristine areas) and restoration (i.e. returning an impacted site to as natural condition as possible) through inclusion of the knowledge on abiotic and biotic dynamics of rivers draining pristine catchments. In boreal and Arctic regions, such comparisons are still possible because in addition to harbouring strongly modified drainage basins, some of the most natural drainage basins are also situated in these high-latitude areas.2. A suitable approach for simultaneous planning of joint river conservation and restoration would be to (i) examine how well different kinds of rivers are covered by existing protected area networks and (ii) to restore parts of degraded rivers to facilitate colonization by aquatic and riparian organisms that have found havens in existing protected areas. This joint approach is a two-way road, as conservation and restoration benefit from each other by allowing river networks to facilitate movements of organisms and matter, thereby mimicking natural riverine meta-systems in anthropogenically modified drainage basins, with restored sites acting as stepping-stones between protected areas.3. We argue that existing policy instruments should consider the fact that river ecosystems are spatially and temporally dynamic meta-systems. These characteristics should be given due attention in conservation and restoration rather than relying on a static approach where a snap-shot classification of river reaches is thought to be enough without considering underlying ecological dynamics. Taking ecological dynamics into account would contribute to sustainable management and maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Boosting freshwater fish conservation with high‐resolution distribution mapping across a large territory

“…Therefore, PAs for freshwater ecosystems should be more diverse in form (e.g., designing based on objectives, catchment zoning, classifying PAs into different protection levels, and OECMs) and integrated with each other to optimize multiobjective achievements (Hermoso et al., 2018; IUCN–WCPA, 2019; Higgins et al., 2021). Alternatively, strengthening the effectiveness of existing PAs through multiple measures (e.g., funding, staffing, and equipping) and restorations (e.g., river habitat rehabilitation, and connectivity restoration) is also important (Coad et al., 2019; Heino & Koljonen, 2022) in cases where expanding PAs is difficult or where it is not possible to meet the expected PA coverage requirements.…”

“…Identifying areas where anthropogenic activity affects biodiversity is also important for conservation planning, including the identification of areas requiring strict protection and restoration (Heino & Koljonen, 2022). Therefore, we assessed the spatial overlap between anthropogenic disturbances and fish occurrence by correlating biodiversity facets with the human footprint index (HFI), which is the best available index for indicating the intensity of anthropogenic disturbances at the same spatial resolution as our fish data (i.e., 1‐km 2 cell).…”

Local environmental and spatial factors are associated with multiple facets of riverine fish β‐diversity across spatial scales and seasons

“…Furthermore, variations in turnover and nestedness of both TD β and FD β were structured by environmental variables and spatial factors, respectively. Therefore, improving regional diversity might be feasible by maintaining environmental heterogeneity in terms of water chemistry and river morphology (Heino & Koljonen, 2022), along with adequate habitat connectivity (López‐Delgado et al, 2020). Overall, our results emphasise the need to consider multiple facets of β ‐diversity partitioning when developing suitable conservation plans.…”

Hydropowering sustainability transformation: policy frames on river use and restoration in Finland

“…According to our findings, more emphasis should be placed on water governance that recognises the variety of local social-ecological systems. Similarly, Heino and Koljonen (2022) argue that the policy instruments should recognise that river ecosystems are spatially and temporally dynamic metasystems. This requires further thinking based squarely on the hydro-social cycle (Swyngedouw 2002;Linton & Budds 2014), as this makes it possible to steer the socio-ecological system towards better recognition of biodiversity, societal and cultural values and adaptation needs.…”