Professor Geta Rîșnoveanu, PhD, member of the teaching staff at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Bucharest invites us, in a new episode of the UB Science Dose, to a discussion on the importance of preserving and reconstructing riverside areas, given the limited resources and the pronounced climate changes that we have seen in the last few years.
What are riverside areas? How do trophic networks in these areas look like? Why are riverside areas important for the balance of natural ecosystems? What are the main regulation mechanisms which riverside areas provide? What are the benefits of reconstructing these areas? Professor Geta Rîșnoveanu will answer these questions and many more in the present edition of the series UB Science Dose.
Episode no. 16 of the UB Science Dose can be accessed by clicking below.
As professor Geta Rîșnoveanu shows, aquatic ecosystems are under the influence of a multitude of anthropic factors which affect their functioning, with severe consequences on the resources and services that these ecosystems provide.
As such, especially considering the increasingly more limited resources at our disposal and the acceleration of climate change in recent years, we ask the legitimate question: where should we concentrate our financial, research and management efforts in order to deal with these challenges with maximum efficiency?
One of the solutions to these problems, explains the UB Science Dose guest, aims to protect and reconstruct riverside areas, meaning those areas located at the transition between aquatic systems, represented by running waters and terrestrial areas. These areas, rocky, with or without tree vegetation, situated particularly next to springs and brooks, provide a large array of essential ecosystemic services.
First, they shelter a very rich array of habitats and species, including pollinating agents and species considered natural “enemies” in agriculture. At the same time, they represent dispersion and migration corridors for these species all year long, thus having an essential contribution to increasing biodiversity at regional level.
In addition, the nature of the vegetation in riverside areas provides other regulating services among which stabilizing slopes, the decrement of floods and their effects, retention of sediments, of excess nutrients, of pollutants such as heavy metals or pesticides, fact which determines the reduction of pollution of surface water systems and maintains their integrity.
Unfortunately, as professor Geta Rîșnoveanu underlines, all these ecosystemic regulating services are generally ignored by landowners, who clear even riverside areas, transforming them in agrarian areas or grazing land in order to maximize production. This practice has extremely serious consequences on the structure and functioning of terrestrial and water ecosystems, changing the composition of the nutrients used by invertebrates and, finally, of the entire trophic network in these areas. As consequence, regulating services are annulled, which leads to disastrous effects for the environment.
In conclusion, our guest highlights that the reconstruction of riverside areas brings major benefits, by re-establishing regulating services mentioned earlier, and involves relatively reduced areas along running waters, generating minimum costs in contrast with the advantages obtained.
You can find out more on the complexity of riverside areas, about the heterogeneous of the habitats and species in riverside areas, about the change in the composition of the entire trophic network in these regions by clearing the vegetation and other dangers that come with their destruction, as well as on the advantages and the reduced costs of reconstructing transition areas between aquatic and terrestrial areas, in the 16th episode of UB Science Dose, with Geta Rîșnoveanu.
Geta Rîșnoveanu is professor at the Department for Systemic Ecology and Sustainability of the Faculty of Biology and Director of the Doctoral School in the field of Ecology of the University of Bucharest.
Her main interests focus on subjects such as biodiversity, ecosystemic services, the ecology of freshwaters, urban ecology, bio-monitoring, monitoring water quality, functional ecology, ecologic indicators, applied ecology, the ecology of populations and riverside areas.
She is the author of a multitude of books and scientific articles.
More details on Geta Rîșnoveanu are available here, here and here.
Initiated as a part of the Science Communication program launched by the University of Bucharest in 2018, UB Science Dose addresses the large audience and encourages the connection between the academic and non-academic settings, based on current interest subjects.
The guests of this series, meant to represent, in a synthetic and captivating communication manner, the various areas of science, are mainly professors and researchers within the academic community of the University of Bucharest.
The material presented in the UB Science Dose include short and dynamic presentations of subjects relevant for contemporary society: pollution, climate change, education, digitalization, significant contributions to research, and others. Next to the fundamental need to communicate scientifically proven information, the Dose proposes an important component of social responsibility, confirming the role and mission of the University of Bucharest in society and contributing to increasing awareness on acute contemporary problems and finding and promoting possible solutions for them.