Eco-hydrology and eco-toxicology in a mega-river: The Paraná River (Argentina).

BLETTLER MARTIN

Loughborough

Conferencia; Loughborough University: Open conference; 2018

Loughborough University

Mega rivers are characterized by a mean annual discharge greater than ~17,000 m3s-1, anabranching channel forms and include the nine largest rivers on Earth: Amazon, Congo, Orinoco, Yangtze, Madeira, Negro, Brahmaputra, Japura and Paraná. A number of interdisciplinary fields or research such as eco-geomorphology and eco-hydrology are rapidly evolving, focusing on the relationship between biological communities and geomorphological and hydrological processes. This interdisciplinary collaboration has resulted in the development of several river ecosystem concepts and hypotheses centered on the linkages and interaction between ecology, hydrology, sediment dynamics, hydraulic stresses and geomorphological features. However, thus far the majority of empirical evidence to support and advance these concepts has been obtained from relatively small river networks and the majority of the mega-rivers have not been considered and remain poorly studied to date. Mega-rivers have been significantly degraded due to increasing anthropogenic impacts from growing populations and societies consuming natural resources (including those from rivers (including drinking water, energy and fisheries) in an increasingly globalized world. As a result, there is a growing need to undertake research on the contamination of river including the global emergency around plastic pollution. This lecture focuses on the Paraná Mega-River and the main eco-hydrological and eco-toxicological studies curried out by The Hydro-ecology Department (HD) at The National Institute of Limnology (CONICET-UNL) in Argentina.