Preventing biodiversity loss in waterbodies despite climate change
Preventing biodiversity loss in waterbodies despite climate change
Our Objective
The project aims to enhance knowledge of aquatic biodiversity and stakeholders’ practices and perspectives to identify priority areas for conservation or restoration. Building on this knowledge, evidence-based and practicable conservation strategies are co-developed and incubated through stakeholder engagement processes to protect and restore aquatic biodiversity in Switzerland and strengthen its resilience to climate change.
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The project was launched on December 1, 2020 and is currently in progress.
Summary
Swiss waters harbor exceptionally high biological diversity. However, increasing societal pressure on the climate and natural ecosystems is driving an unprecedented loss of biodiversity, particularly in lakes and rivers. The ecological consequences of this decline continue to be underestimated while the implementation of conservation measures faces diverse challenges such as a lack of knowledge and resources, conflicting objectives and limited collaboration between relevant actors. The project responds to these challenges by focusing on the following four key priorities described here.
In collaboration with: The Office for Landscape and Nature (LANAT) of the canton of Bern, The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, The Institute of Ecology & Evolution (IEE) at the University of Bern / Eawag Department of Fish Ecology and Evolution, The Institute of Political Science (IPW) at the University of Bern / Eawag Department of Environmental Social Sciences, The Swiss Competence Centre for Fisheries (SKF)
Project Connections
Timeline
We are in the media!
Project Update January 28, 2025
Media releaseshttps://www.uniaktuell.unibe.ch/2025/zwei_neue_fischarten_in_schweizer_gewaessern_entdeckt/index_ger.htmlhttps://www.eawag.ch/de/info/portal/aktuelles/news/zwei-neue-fischarten-in-schweizer-gewaessern-entdeckt/https://www.uniaktuell.unibe.ch/2025/hier_lohnt_es_sich_den_fluss_zu_beleben/index_ger.htmlTVhttps://www.uniaktuell.unibe.ch/2025/hier_lohnt_es_sich_den_fluss_zu_beleben/index_ger.htmlhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q69-LKDrjN8&t=650sRadiohttps://www.rtn.ch/rtn/Actualite/Region/20250227-Deux-nouvelles-especes-de-poissons-decouvertes-en-Suisse.html
Learn more about the project
Project Update January 27, 2024
1. Assessing and documenting fish diversity, mapping species distribution, and describing new species The ability to halt biodiversity loss and effectively protect habitats fundamentally depends on correctly identifying species and comprehensively describing biological diversity. Taxonomy plays a crucial role in this effort, as it focuses on the recognition, classification, and understanding of biodiversity. Until now, approximately one-fifth of the more than 120 fish species known to occur in Switzerland are still awaiting formal description. Understanding fish diversity, defining their geographical boundaries and habitat requirements, and assessing current threats are essential for their protection. As part of the LANAT-3 project, target fish groups such as stone loaches (Barbatula spp.), minnows (Phoxinus spp.), sculpins (Cottus spp.), gudgeons (Gobio spp.) and others are being studied, their identification resolved, and new species described (Calegari et al. accepted). Accurate identification and classification of these species are key to legal protection and enable appropriate conservation planning and efforts (Josi et al. 2024a). 2. Identifying environmental constraints that drive species distribution Both natural factors, like climate and food availability, and human activities affect the distribution of species. Here, ecological niche models are used to predict where species are likely to be found, but these models don’t explain why certain areas are suitable or not (Josi et al. 2024b). Therefore, a new approach has been developed in this project using Explainable AI to help identify which environmental factors make a habitat good or bad for a species at a given location. This makes it possible to quantify the extent of human activity on a species’ natural habitat and identify the key factors driving loss of species in a given area (Waldock et al. 2024). These insights help designing targeted conservation measures to protect aquatic biodiversity (Wegscheider et al. 2024). 3. Identifying priority areas for conservation or restoration, considering climate change Building on the above insights, a systematic conservation planning approach is being developed to identify priority areas for protection, future climate refugia, and regions requiring urgent restoration. Based on this evidence-based planning and prioritization, the Saane-Sense catchment has been identified as one of many key regions in Switzerland with high conservation needs. Within this pilot region the project aims to bridge science and practice to develop evidence-based effective and efficient recommendations. 4. Analysing stakeholders’ practices and perspectives There are diverse laws and regulations, related enforcement areas and stakeholders directly or indirectly linked to aquatic biodiversity and climate change in Switzerland. To be able to provide targeted and meaningful contributions to the conservation and restoration of aquatic biodiversity, it is important to know what is already going on, what are the perspectives of stakeholders, how they interact and where there might be deficits and opportunities. To this end, the project conducts a context analysis and a social-ecological network analysis in the test region Lower Emme (Zinn et al. 2024) and in the pilot region Saane-Sense. 5. Co-developing and incubating evidence-based, practicable strategies Although Switzerland has legal and strategic frameworks for aquatic biodiversity conservation, their implementation faces numerous challenges, including limited resources, opportunistic rather than evidence-based approaches, conflicting objectives, and limited collaboration among key stakeholders. To overcome these issues, close cooperation between science and practice is essential, along with the implementation of adaptive and integrated management. Participatory processes bring together relevant stakeholders to jointly identify evidence-based, practicable strategies and measures for the effective and efficient conservation and restoration of aquatic biodiversity in Switzerland. Initial insights were gained in the test region (Aeschlimann et al. 2024a; Aeschlimann et al. 2024b) and are further elaborated in the pilot region, where conservation and restoration needs are particularly high, to ultimately generate learning for entire Switzerland. Talkshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGFEZF-GbOYMedia releases:https://www.eawag.ch/de/info/portal/aktuelles/news/eine-prioritaetenliste-fuer-den-schutz-der-artenvielfalt/https://mediarelations.unibe.ch/media_releases/2024/media_releases_2024/human_impact_on_fish_habitats_detected_with_ai/index_eng.html
