Earth’s Imperiled Rivers and Streams

Earth’s rivers are at risk. Across the globe, rivers have been dammed, diverted, straightened, and polluted. Increasing human population, growing economic productivity, and climate change have caused a drastic increase in altered rivers during the Anthropocene. Rivers provide a host of societal benefits such as energy production, food production, irrigation, and transportation. As a result, many rivers are over-exploited and no longer flow freely from their headwaters to their ocean deltas. An estimated half of all river reaches across the world show some sign of flow alteration. Major hotspots for widespread river alteration occur in Asia, Africa, and North America. As water stress continues to put compounding pressure on countries, more rivers will lose their wild and intact nature. Freshwater ecosystems are now some of the most at-risk ecosystems in the world, with freshwater fish populations down by 83% globally. Only with sound policy, water management programs, and research can countries develop strategies to better manage human and ecosystem requirements for freshwater. The recent advancement of Big Data science techniques gives countries and regional water managers a new hope in finding the balance between humans and healthy rivers.