Problems of dependable water use in the transboundary Ural River basin

Сивохип, Ж. Т.; Pavleychik, V. M.; Чибилев, А. А.; Padalko, Yu. A.

doi:10.1134/s0097807817040169

Cited by 17 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 3 publications

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“…Other sites had become silted and sandy or dominated by vegetation. These detrimental changes are associated with declining annual flows and shifts in peak seasonal flows from spring to winter; both are conditioned by warming temperatures, which accelerate the rate of early season snow melt and increase evaporation during the warmer months [72,[84][85][86][87][88].…”

Section: Habitatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-Establishing Naturally Reproducing Sturgeon Populations in the Caspian Basin: A Wicked Problem in the Ural River

Pueppke,

Nurtazin,

Murzashev

et al. 2023

Water

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Although Eurasia’s Caspian basin once supported the world’s richest and most diverse complex of sturgeon species, recent human activities have decimated populations of these ecologically and economically important fish. All five anadromous Caspian sturgeon species are critically endangered, and the potamodromous sterlet is also threatened. The precipitous decline of these species is due to a combination of factors that includes illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing; destruction of feeding and spawning habitat; water pollution; and the environmental consequences of climate change. International efforts are currently underway to re-establish sustained naturally reproducing sturgeon populations in the basin. Here, we update and review the status of sturgeon in the Caspian Sea with emphasis on the northern basin and the inflowing Volga and Ural rivers. We then focus on efforts to restore sturgeon in the Ural, which originates in Russia and flows through Kazakhstan before entering the Caspian Sea. With nearly ideal hydrological conditions for sturgeon, the Ural is the basin’s sole remaining river that allows migrating sturgeon unimpeded access to potentially productive spawning grounds. The challenge of re-establishing sturgeon in the Ural River exhibits the classical characteristics of wicked problems: ambiguous definitions, changing assumptions and unanticipated consequences, tradeoffs and economic dependencies, an incomplete and contradictory knowledge base, and no straightforward pathway toward a final solution. This challenge is examined here for the first time from the perspective of its wicked dynamics, with consideration given to approaches that have proven effective elsewhere in resolving wicked environmental problems.

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