Defining freshwater as a natural resource: a framework linking water use to the area of protection natural resources

© 2019, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. Purpose: While many examples have shown unsustainable use of freshwater resources, existing LCIA methods for water use do not comprehensively address impacts to natural resources for future generations. This framework aims to (1) define freshwater resource as an item to protect within the Area of Protection (AoP) natural resources, (2) identify relevant impact pathways affecting freshwater resources, and (3) outline methodological choices for impact characterization model development. Methods: Considering the current scope of the AoP natural resources, the complex nature of freshwater resources and its important dimensions to safeguard safe future supply, a definition of freshwater resource is proposed, including water quality aspects. In order to clearly define what is to be protected, the freshwater resource is put in perspective through the lens of the three main safeguard subjects defined by Dewulf et al. (2015). In addition, an extensive literature review identifies a wide range of possible impact pathways to freshwater resources, establishing the link between different inventory elementary flows (water consumption, emissions, and land use) and their potential to cause long-term freshwater depletion or degradation. Results and discussion: Freshwater as a resource has a particular status in LCA resource assessment. First, it exists in the form of three types of resources: flow, fund, or stock. Then, in addition to being a resource for human economic activities (e.g., hydropower), it is above all a non-substitutable support for life that can be affected by both consumption (source function) and pollution (sink function). Therefore, both types of elementary flows (water consumption and emissions) should be linked to a damage indicator for freshwater as a resource. Land use is also identified as a potential stressor to freshwater resources by altering runoff, infiltration, and erosion processes as well as evapotranspiration. It is suggested to use the concept of recovery period to operationalize this framework: when the recovery period lasts longer than a given period of time, impacts are considered to be irreversible and fall into the concern of freshwater resources protection (i.e., affecting future generations), while short-term impacts effect the AoP ecosystem quality and human health directly. It is shown that it is relevant to include this concept in the impact assessment stage in order to discriminate the long-term from the short-term impacts, as some dynamic fate models already do. Conclusions: This framework provides a solid basis for the consistent development of future LCIA methods for freshwater resources, thereby capturing the potential long-term impacts that could warn decision makers about potential safe water supply issues in the future

Effects of conversion of native cerrado vegetation to pasture on soil hydro-physical properties, evapotranspiration and streamflow on the Amazonian agricultural frontier

Understanding the impacts of land-use change on landscape-hydrological dynamics is one of the main challenges in the Northern Brazilian Cerrado biome, where the Amazon agricultural frontier is located. Motivated by the gap in literature assessing these impacts, we characterized the soil hydro-physical properties and quantified surface water fluxes from catchments under contrasting land-use in this region. We used data from field measurements in two headwater micro-catchments with similar physical characteristics and different land use, i.e. cerrado sensu stricto vegetation and pasture for extensive cattle ranching. We determined hydraulic and physical properties of the soils, applied ground-based remote sensing techniques to estimate evapotranspiration, and monitored streamflow from October 2012 to September 2014. Our results show significant differences in soil hydro-physical properties between the catchments, with greater bulk density and smaller total porosity in the pasture catchment. We found that evapotranspiration is smaller in the pasture (639 ± 31% mm yr-1) than in the cerrado catchment (1,004 ± 24% mm yr-1), and that streamflow from the pasture catchment is greater with runoff coefficients of 0.40 for the pasture and 0.27 for the cerrado catchment. Overall, our results confirm that conversion of cerrado vegetation to pasture causes soil hydro-physical properties deterioration, reduction in evapotranspiration reduction, and increased streamflow

The influence of evolutionary distance between cross-species microsatellites and primer base-pair composition on allelic dropout rates

Allelic dropouts (ADO) are an important source of genotyping error and because of their negative impact on non-invasive sampling techniques, have become the focus of considerable attention. Previous studies have noted that ADO rates are greater with increasing allele size and in tetranucleotides. It has also been suggested, but not tested, that ADO rates may be higher in studies using crossspecies microsatellites and that mutations may play a role in ADO rates. Here we examine the relationship between ADO rates and the relationship between evolutionary distance since divergence time between species for which the microsatellite was designed for and species on which it was used (divergence times), and how this may interact with median allele size. In addition, as the adenosine (A) and thymine (T) content of the primer may increase mutation rates, we also included total % AT content of the primer in the analyses. Finally, we examined whether other commonly associated causes of ADO (i.e. repeat motif length, median allele size and allele number) co-varied. We found that ADO rates were positively associated to divergence time and median allele size. Repeat motif length, median allele size and allele number positively covaried suggesting a link between mutability and these parameters. Results from previous studies that did not correct for co-variation among these parameters may have been confounded. AT content of the primer was positively associated with ADO rates. The best linear regression model contained divergence time, median allele size and total % AT content, explaining 21% of the variation in ADO rates. The available evidence suggests that mutations partly cause ADO and that studies using cross-species microsatellites may be at higher risk of ADO. Based on our results we highlight some important considerations in the selection of microsatellites for all conservation genetic studies

Non invasive conservation genetics of the critically endangered golden-crowned sifaka (Propithecus tattersalli) : high diversity and significant genetic differentiation over a small range

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