Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tehs20
Ecosystem Health and Sustainability
ISSN: 2096-4129 (Print) 2332-8878 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tehs20
Water sustainability and watershed ecosystem
health
Chansheng He & Frank Winde
To cite this article: Chansheng He & Frank Winde (2018) Water sustainability and watershed ecosystem health, Ecosystem Health and Sustainability, 4:10, 241-242, DOI: 10.1080/20964129.2018.1538666
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/20964129.2018.1538666
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Published online: 06 Nov 2018.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 296
View related articles
EDITORIAL
Water sustainability and watershed ecosystem health
Climate change and human activities have unprecedent-edly altered the hydrological processes and ecosystem services of watersheds all over the world, causing or exacerbating local and regional water crises, threatening ecosystem integrity, and compromising water sustain-ability. Understanding the effects of interactions and dynamics of such coupled human and natural systems on eco-hydrological processes at the watershed scale is essential for addressing and adapting to global environ-mental change.
The special issue on Water Sustainability and Watershed Ecosystem Health contains four articles from diverse geographic regions of Asia, Europe, and North America. The articles address the impacts of cli-mate change, urbanization and water works, human settlement and expansion, and phosphorous (P) con-sumption and scarcity on watershed processes and eco-system health at multiple spatial and temporal scales, respectively.
In“Climate change and water-related ecosystem ser-vices: impacts of drought in California, USA,” Heejun and Bonnette (2015) use the 2015 California drought to investigate the potential impacts of climate change on water-related ecosystem services (WES), and report that climate change will have substantial effects on provision-ing, regulatprovision-ing, and cultural WES via spatial and tem-poral changes in the distribution and value of water.
In“Urbanization effects on the river systems in the Bucharest City region (Romania),” Zaharia et al. (2016) analyze the effects of human pressures on the river systems, landscape, flow regime, and water quality in the Bucharest region, the largest urbanized area in Romania. Their findings indicate that although the stream system and its associated urban landscapes have considerably changed after the collapse of the socialist system following engineering interventions such as con-struction of reservoirs, dams, channels, diversion canals, and water intakes, etc. there are still significant spatial imbalances in the water supply system.
In“Human settlement and changes in the distribution of river systems in the Minqin Basin over the past 2000 years in Northwest China,” Xie et al. (2017), through a case study of the Minqin Basin, a microcosm of the artificial oases in the arid northwest China, use the multi-types of data to recover the spatial distribution of human settlement and drainage patterns during historical period and analyze the relationship between them over the past 2000 years. They report that prior to 1400s, human
set-tlement mainly concentrated along the river systems and the natural shape of the river systems was largely main-tained despite the human expansion. In the following 500 years, however, rapid human reclamations and expansion significantly changed the drainage patterns. This further intensified over the last century, when arti-ficial water networks completely replaced the natural system and exacerbated the ecological problems in the basin.
In “Phosphorus recovery: a need for an integrated approach,” Sarvajayakesavalu et al. (2018) propose an integrated approach to combine successful business models with socioeconomic and institutional changes to address phosphorous (P) scarcity issue. They suggest a number of options to accelerate the recovery and reuse of phosphorus (P) along the open P cycle from mining to households, to waste treatments, to oceans to achieve P sustainability.
We hope this special issue serves“food for thought” to stimulate discussion and debates on water sustainability and watershed ecosystem health. Particularly, we invite research and submissions on, but not limited to, the following subjects: (1) understanding of the processes, patterns, and interactions of coupled human and natural systems over multiple spatial and temporal scales; (2) quantification of the impacts and feedbacks of such coupled systems on eco-hydrological processes; (3) valua-tion of water resources and related ecosystem services; (4) assessment of water sustainability and ecosystem health; and (5) development and implementation of adaptation, mitigation, and management strategies to achieve water sustainability and ecosystem health over multiple spatial and temporal scales (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.2018).
Reference
Heejun, C., & M. R. Bonnette. 2016. “Climate change and water–related ecosystem services: impacts of drought in California, USA.” Ecosystem Health and Sustainability 2 (12): e01254, doi:10.1002/ehs2.1254.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine. 2018. Future Water Priorities for the Nation: Directions for the U.S. Geological Survey Water Mission Area. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/25134.
Sarvajayakesavalu, Suriyanarayanan, Lu Yonglong, J. A. Paul, Paulo Withers, Sergio Pavinato, Gang Pan, and Pisit Chareonsudjai. 2018. “Phosphorus Recovery: a Need for an Integrated Approach.” Ecosystem Health
ECOSYSTEM HEALTH AND SUSTAINABILITY 2018, VOL. 4, NO. 10, 241–242
https://doi.org/10.1080/20964129.2018.1538666
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
and Sustainability 4 (2): 48-57. doi: 10.1080/ 20964129.2018.1460122v.
Xie, Yaowen, Qiang Bie, and He Chansheng. 2017.
“Human Settlement and Changes in The Distribution Of River Systems in The Minqin Basin over The past 2000 Years in Northwest China.” Ecosystem Health and
Sustainability 3 (11): 1401011. doi: 10.1080/
20964129.2017.1401011.
Zaharia, Liliana, Gabriela Ioana-toroimac, Octavian Cocoş,
Florin Adrian Ghiţă, and Emanuel Mailat. 2016.
“Urbanization Effects on The River Systems in The
Bucharest City Region (Romania).” Ecosystem Health
and Sustainability 2 (11): e01247. doi: 10.1002/
ehs2.1247.
Chansheng He Western Michigan University
chansheng.he@wmich.edu
Frank Winde North-West University, Republic of South Africa
