BREATHE - Monitoring river metabolism to assess ecosystem services

Current indicators used in national river health assessment systems do not reflect well the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems and are difficult to translate into ecosystem services.

Yet, over the last 20-years, progress in aquatic sensor technology, river metabolism methods, and data-handling capacity now allows us to monitor river ecosystem functions at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales.

BREATHE’s main objective is to co-design an international, sensor-based River Observation System (RIOS) with an emphasis on using dissolved oxygen and river metabolism to quantify aquatic ecosystem services linked to climate regulation, water purification, and provisioning fisheries.

BREATHE will reach this goal by engaging with stakeholders to 1) co-design a workflow from data collection to storage and modelling, and 2) co-construct case studies that test how this workflow can be applied locally and internationally.

Our case studies span a broad climatic, geographic and cultural range from the tropics (Brazil), to southern (Spain), central (Switzerland), western (UK) and northern (Norway, Sweden) Europe and each takes on a regionally critical challenge to freshwater ecosystems.

This design will allow BREATHE to not only identify commonalities among regions, sharing solutions to barriers of implementation, but also focus on region-specific needs in aquatic ecosystem services and policies.