Assessing Current and Future Freshwater Ecosystem Service Risks in SocioEnvironmental Systems: Examining the SAFER Network Coverage

THOMAS C. HARMON; RAMESH DHUNGEL; DANIEL CONDE; JAMES RUSAK; BRIAN REID; ANNA ASTORGA; GERARDO M. E. PERILLO; M. CINTIA PICCOLO; FACUNDO SCORDO; MARIANA I. ZILIO; MARÍA I. VELEZ; NATALIA HOYOS; JAIME H. ESCOBAR; SANDRA R. VILLAMIZAR; HENRY PAI; BEVERLEY WEMPLE; STEPHANIE PINCETL; SUDEEP CHANDRA; ROBYN SMITH

Lunz

Workshop; GLEON 18 Lunz & Gaming, Austria; 2016

Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network - WasserCluster Lunz Biologische Station GmbH, Austria - University of Vienna - University of Innsbruck - U.S. National Science Foundation

We examined lakes, rivers and their watersheds throughout the western hemisphere in the context of the Sensing the Americas? Freshwater Ecosystem Risk (SAFER) project. Our intent is to search for socio-environmental patterns across a broad array of Western Hemisphere aquatic ecosystems. Given these patterns a secondary objective is to devise a rationale for adding to new study sites to the SAFER project. As a benchmark for aquatic ecosystem risks, we employed the watershed-based Riverthreat.net indices for adjusted Human Water Security (aHWS) and river Biodiversity (BD) threats. We then tested an array of indices as potential proxies for these threats using uni- and multivariate regression, including the World Bank?s World Governance Indices (WGI) and Yale Environmental Performance Index (EPI), the Water Resources Institute (WRI) overall water stress. We examined 32 sites in 22 nations in N, C and S America for which data are currently available. The results here suggest that the aHWS index correlated well governance effectiveness (GE) and similar indicators. BD indicators failed to exhibit significant correlation with any of the indicators, and appear to be less well developed than water security-related indicators. We proposed rough projections for ecosystems in various nations. Using near-term (2020-2040) projections for GE and WRI predictions for water stress, we project future aHWS values for the sites. Results from our analysis suggest that the current SAFER sampling domain adequately covers medium to high GE nations, and that project outcomes would likely be improved by the addition of several sites in several lower GE nations