The ASLO 2017 Aquatic Sciences Meeting will be held from 26 February to 3 March 2017 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
This is an important meeting to address water issues and promote scientific exchange across the freshwater to marine continuum. The meeting will also embrace the Hawaiian cultural perspective linking land, water, and peoples.
PAGES-related session
Session 100 - Aquatic Transitions: evidence for human impact on the world’s waterways over multiple spatial and temporal scales.
Conveners: Peter Gell, Martin Thoms.
Humans have impacted aquatic ecosystems across the globe for many millennia. Much of the evidence for the onset of human impact is only detectable using a combination of paleoenvironmental approaches. The timing of this impact varies spatially as humans colonised different parts of the world at different times, often with contrasting levels of technological sophistication. The level of impact increased after the industrial revolution under the great acceleration, particularly since the 1950s. Waterways responded in contrasting ways either in response to continual human pressures, or through non-linear changes in internal dynamics leading to new states. Remediative measures have lead to ecological recovery in some locations however the identification of the appropriate target condition remains challenging. This session explores the timing of human impact across the world’s rivers, lakes, wetlands and estuaries, and the nature of the transition in the world’s aquatic ecosystems on account of human activities.
Contact
Peter Gell, Water Research Network, Federation University Australia, Mt Helen, Australia: p.gell@federation.edu.au
Martin Thoms, Riverine Landscapes Research Laboratory, University of New England, Armidale, Australia: mthoms2@une.edu.au