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Groundwater and Surface Water Ecosystem Modeling: Current Status and Future Perspectives

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Biodiversity and Functionality of Aquatic Ecosystems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 September 2022) | Viewed by 9130

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
CENSE (Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research) and Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, NOVA School of Science and Technology, NOVA University Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: chemical stress ecology; ecological risk assessment; ecotoxicology; model ecosystems; pesticides; tropics

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Guest Editor
CNR—National Research Council of Italy, Via Madonna del Piano, 10, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino (FI), Italy
Interests: ecological risk assessment; functional ecology; groundwater ecology; compounds of emerging concern
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As Guest Editors of the Special Issue “Groundwater and Surface Water Ecosystem Modeling: Current Status and Future Perspectives” for the journal Water (Impact factor 3.1), we cordially invite you to submit a manuscript for this Special Issue based on your expertise in the area.

Ecosystem modeling is fundamental for understanding i) the relationships among ecosystem components; ii) the relationships between ecosystem processes and the supply of ecosystem services; iii) (bio)chemical processes and fate; and iv) the consequences of human-driven changes on biodiversity, ecosystem structure and functioning, and the goods and services that they provide. They also support the forecasting of ecological responses to future climate and land use changes, thus sustaining relevant decision-making processes.

This Special Issue of Water is calling for manuscripts dealing with conceptual (e.g., roadmaps) and/or quantitative models in groundwater and/or surface water ecosystems. There are no restrictions on the type of manuscript (original research, short communication, commentary/opinion, review, etc.) so long as they provide a significant contribution to the research field. We welcome ecological studies as well as those concerning ecotoxicology (e.g. TK/TD models) and risk assessment in groundwater and surface water habitats. Approaches and tools to model ecosystem services quantitatively, using explicit modeling tools such as InVEST, SolVES, etc., are also encouraged. The deadline for manuscript submission is 1 September 2022.

Please feel free to forward this email to colleagues that you consider to have potential valid contributions to this SI, as well as to contact us for any specific query regarding the SI.

Best regards,

Dr. Michiel Daam
Dr. Tiziana Di Lorenzo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • ecology
  • ecotoxicology
  • conceptual models
  • freshwater
  • quantitative models
  • risk assessment
  • roadmaps

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 868 KiB  
Communication
Effectiveness of Biomass/Abundance Comparison (ABC) Models in Assessing the Response of Hyporheic Assemblages to Ammonium Contamination
by Tiziana Di Lorenzo, Barbara Fiasca, Mattia Di Cicco, Ilaria Vaccarelli, Agostina Tabilio Di Camillo, Simone Crisante and Diana Maria Paola Galassi
Water 2022, 14(18), 2934; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14182934 - 19 Sep 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2426
Abstract
Abundance–Biomass Comparison (ABC) models, first described for marine benthic macrofauna, have been applied successfully to other marine and terrestrial/freshwater fauna but never to ecotonal communities. In particular, to our knowledge, ABC models have not been applied to hyporheic communities. This study represents the [...] Read more.
Abundance–Biomass Comparison (ABC) models, first described for marine benthic macrofauna, have been applied successfully to other marine and terrestrial/freshwater fauna but never to ecotonal communities. In particular, to our knowledge, ABC models have not been applied to hyporheic communities. This study represents the first application of ABC models to hyporheic assemblages. We aimed at testing the effectiveness of ABC models in describing the perturbation of hyporheic communities subjected to an existing/known disturbance. To this end, we applied the models to the hyporheic community of an Apennine creek, where the hyporheic waters of the upstream stretch were uncontaminated, whereas those of the downstream stretch were contaminated by ammonium. We also tested separated models for the summer and winter periods to account for potential variability due to season. ABC models provided a satisfactory description of the hyporheic community changes due to ammonium by showing the abundance dominance curve overlying that of the biomass in the downstream stretch contrarily to what was observed in the upstream stretch. However, ABC models did not highlight any significant seasonal effects. Our results showed that ABC models have the potential to be used as assessment tools for ecological quality of hyporheic zones in temperate regions. Full article
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15 pages, 3103 KiB  
Article
Modeling Stygofauna Resilience to the Impact of the Climate Change in the Karstic Groundwaters of South Italy
by Agostina Tabilio Di Camillo and Costantino Masciopinto
Water 2022, 14(17), 2715; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14172715 - 31 Aug 2022
Viewed by 2033
Abstract
We predicted the global warming effects on the stygofauna of Murgia–Salento karstic groundwaters in Italy for 2050, which contribute to a biodiversity loss assessment in the climate change context. For quantitative impact estimations, we defined a local resilience score (LRS) for sampled species [...] Read more.
We predicted the global warming effects on the stygofauna of Murgia–Salento karstic groundwaters in Italy for 2050, which contribute to a biodiversity loss assessment in the climate change context. For quantitative impact estimations, we defined a local resilience score (LRS) for sampled species between 2018 and 2021. A resilience model equation of the stygobiont species conservation was obtained from a surface best-fit of the assigned LRS and the corresponding values of independent variables describing the environmental quality of monitored habitats and LRS. The principal components of the correlation between the monitored variables and LRS were obtained via factor analysis. Three-dimensional surface maps of stygofauna species resilience (SSR) were constructed to visualize and quantitatively compare the biodiversity loss of species assemblages owing to environmental and habitat quality modifications. The proposed SSR model was applied to the sampled stygofauna, and the decrease in local species resilience for 2050 was predicted. Independent variable factors were updated for 2050 to consider increases of up to 2 °C and 0.04 mS/cm in groundwater temperature and electric conductance observed for 2021. The SSR model results predicted a high impact on the resilience of Parastenocaris cf. orcina (80%), newly retrieved Crustacea Copepod Cyclopidae gen 1 sp 1, and three other stygobites (~50%). The resilience of Metacyclops stammeri had minor impacts. Full article
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13 pages, 1215 KiB  
Article
The Influence of the Recording Time in Modelling the Swimming Behaviour of the Freshwater Inbenthic Copepod Bryocamptus pygmaeus
by Mattia Di Cicco, Marco Uttieri, Tiziana Di Lorenzo, Barbara Fiasca, Ilaria Vaccarelli, Agostina Tabilio Di Camillo and Diana Maria Paola Galassi
Water 2022, 14(13), 1996; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14131996 - 22 Jun 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1807
Abstract
The analysis of copepod behaviour gained an increasing impetus over the past decade thanks to the advent of computer-assisted video analysis tools. Since the automated tracking consists in detecting the animal’s position frame by frame and improving signals corrupted by strong background noise, [...] Read more.
The analysis of copepod behaviour gained an increasing impetus over the past decade thanks to the advent of computer-assisted video analysis tools. Since the automated tracking consists in detecting the animal’s position frame by frame and improving signals corrupted by strong background noise, a crucial role is played by the length of the video recording. The aim of this study is to: (i) assess whether the recording time influences the analysis of a suite of movement descriptive parameters; (ii) understand if the recording time influences the outcome of the statistical analyses when hypotheses on the effect of toxicants/chemicals on the freshwater invertebrate behaviour are tested. We investigated trajectory parameters commonly used in behavioural studies—swimming speed, percentage of activity and trajectory convex hull—derived from the trajectories described by the inbenthic–interstitial freshwater copepod Bryocamptus pygmaeus exposed to a sub-lethal concentration of diclofenac. The analyses presented in this work indicate that the recording time did not influence the outcome of the results for the swimming speed and the percentage of activity. For the trajectory convex hull area, our results showed that a recording session lasting at least 3 min provided robust results. However, further investigations are needed to disentangle the role of concurrent factors, such as the behavioural analysis of multiple individuals simultaneously, whether they are of the same or opposite sex and the implications on sexual behaviour, competition for resources and predation. Full article
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6 pages, 860 KiB  
Communication
A Plea for Considering Processes That Take Place on the Micrometer Scale in Modelling the Groundwater Ecosystems’ Functions
by Susanne I. Schmidt
Water 2022, 14(12), 1850; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14121850 - 9 Jun 2022
Viewed by 1691
Abstract
The largest freshwater ecosystem on earth is in the subsurface: the groundwater. It is populated by animals of almost all phyla and by bacteria, archaea, and fungi. Processes on the macro-, meso-, and micro-scale shape this ecosystem. Bioremediation, i.e., the degradation of contaminants, [...] Read more.
The largest freshwater ecosystem on earth is in the subsurface: the groundwater. It is populated by animals of almost all phyla and by bacteria, archaea, and fungi. Processes on the macro-, meso-, and micro-scale shape this ecosystem. Bioremediation, i.e., the degradation of contaminants, is steered on the scale of micrometers. However, processes that take place on the micrometer scale are still poorly understood and have not been studied extensively. They are usually lacking from models. In this communication, the plea for studying and making models for the processes that take place on the micrometer scale is based on the conceptual model of bottom-up effects of the pore scale environment. Such conceptual models may influence how quantitative models are built by structuring them. Full article
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