Disentangling the ecosystem service 'flood regulation': Mechanisms and relevant ecosystem condition characteristics

Riverine floods cause increasingly severe damages to human settlements and infrastructure. Ecosystems have a natural capacity to decrease both severity and frequency of floods. Natural flood regulation processes along freshwaters can be attributed to two different mechanisms: flood prevention that takes place in the whole catchment and flood mitigation once the water has accumulated in the stream. These flood regulating mechanisms are not consistently recognized in major ecosystem service (ES) classifications. For a balanced landscape management, it is important to assess the ES flood regulation so that it can account for the different processes at the relevant sites. We reviewed literature, classified them according to these mechanisms, and analysed the influencing ecosystem characteristics. For prevention, vegetation biomass and forest extent were predominant, while for mitigation, the available space for water was decisive. We add some aspects on assessing flood regulation as ES, and suggest also to include flood hazard into calculations.

Freshwater systems and ecosystem services: Challenges and chances for cross-fertilization of disciplines

Freshwater ecosystems are among the most threatened in the world, while providing numerous essential ecosystem services (ES) to humans. Despite their importance, research on freshwater ecosystem services is limited. Here, we examine how freshwater studies could help to advance ES research and vice versa. We summarize major knowledge gaps and suggest solutions focusing on science and policy in Europe. We found several features that are unique to freshwater ecosystems, but often disregarded in ES assessments. Insufficient transfer of knowledge towards stakeholders is also problematic. Knowledge transfer and implementation seems to be less effective towards South-east Europe. Focusing on the strengths of freshwater research regarding connectivity, across borders, involving multiple actors can help to improve ES research towards a more dynamic, landscape-level approach, which we believe can boost the implementation of the ES concept in freshwater policies. Bridging these gaps can contribute to achieve the ambitious targets of the EU's Green Deal.

Nutrient emissions from diffuse and point sources into the River Danube and its main tributaries for the period of 1998-2000--results and problems

Nutrient emissions by point and diffuse sources were estimated for 388 sub-catchments of the Danube river basin for the period 1998-2000 by means of the Model MONERIS. For nitrogen total emissions of 684 kt/a N were estimated for the Danube basin. 80% of these emissions were caused by diffuse sources (mainly groundwater, urban areas and tile drainage). For phosphorus the emission was 57 kt/a P, with a contribution of diffuse sources to this sum of 58%. The comparison of calculated and observed loads shows that the mean deviation for the investigated sub-catchments of the Danube river basin is 20% for dissolved inorganic nitrogen and 34% for phosphorus. The spatial resolution of the emission calculations allows the identification of regional hot spots and the derivation of specific regional measures to reduce the emissions into the Danube and consequently into the Western Black Sea.

Intelligent medical instruments

The authors introduce system design methods that can contribute to the resolution of the rather complex requirements in the field of medical instrumentation, drawing on their own experiences in the development of intelligence EEG recorders and analyzers. They focus on the integration of the knowledge base with the numerical database and the algorithms within the unified real-time control structure of the measuring system. Possible alternatives are presented for the implementation of both conventional data processing and knowledge-based data processing. The authors discuss the problem-oriented user interface and conclude with a short presentation of an intelligent EEG recorder development.