“…: Environmental flows describe the quantity, timing, and quality of freshwater flows and water levels necessary to sustain aquatic ecosystems which, in turn, support human cultures, economies, sustainable livelihoods, and well‐being. In this definition, “Aquatic ecosystems include rivers, streams, springs, riparian, floodplain and other wetlands, lakes, ponds, coastal waterbodies, including lagoons and estuaries, and groundwater‐dependent ecosystems.” - Expand measurement of ecological responses to flow to reflect system dynamics: There is a need to move away from static hydrologic metrics and ecological endpoints (ecosystem states) towards a new suite of indicators (process rates, dynamic population models, state‐and‐transition models and species traits) that can help measure the success of environmental flows and broader water management (Bond et al., ; Chen & Olden, ; Monk et al., ; Poff, ; Wheeler et al., ). A complete understanding of biotic response to flow alteration, or to an environmental flow regime, requires information on how species (or trait guilds) respond over the short‐ to long‐term temporal spectrum, measured at the spatial scales needed for species to recruit, disperse and form meta‐population and assemblage structures (Poff, ).
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