Freshwater ecosystem services resilience in a changing world

Resumen

Healthy freshwater ecosystems provide essential ecosystem services to society such as clean water. However, freshwater ecosystems are degraded, and freshwater biodiversity is severely threatened due to anthropogenic impacts and stressors. Climate change interacts with existing stressors and may compromise the resilience of freshwater ecosystems and their services in the future. Here the aim is to review advances in assessing freshwater ecosystem services and their resilience to environmental change. This work reviews the ecosystem services provided by freshwaters, the conceptual background on ecological resilience, and examples on the resilience of freshwater ecosystems and their services. Examples from African lakes, the Pantanal wetland in Brazil and the Murray-Darling Basin riparian forests in Australia are used to understand the resilience of freshwater ecosystem services to recent and ongoing climate changes and disturbances. This work illustrates the diverse responses of freshwater socio-ecological systems to environmental change and highlights examples of declining resilience of freshwater ecosystems and their services due to climate change and extreme events. However, a high degree of uncertainty still surrounds the identification of regime shifts and future ecosystem trajectories. Research is needed to understand the dynamics of freshwater socio-ecological systems and ensure resilient ecosystems and societies.