Freshwater salinisation: a research agenda for a saltier world

2022-05-01
Cunillera-Montcusí, David
Beklioğlu, Meryem
Cañedo-Argüelles, Miguel
Jeppesen, Erik
Ptacnik, Robert
Amorim, Cihelio A.
Arnott, Shelley E.
Berger, Stella A.
Brucet, Sandra
Dugan, Hilary A.
Gerhard, Miriam
Horváth, Zsófia
Langenheder, Silke
Nejstgaard, Jens C.
Reinikainen, Marko
Striebel, Maren
Urrutia-Cordero, Pablo
Vad, Csaba F.
Zadereev, Egor
Matias, Miguel
© 2021 The AuthorsThe widespread salinisation of freshwater ecosystems poses a major threat to the biodiversity, functioning, and services that they provide. Human activities promote freshwater salinisation through multiple drivers (e.g., agriculture, resource extraction, urbanisation) that are amplified by climate change. Due to its complexity, we are still far from fully understanding the ecological and evolutionary consequences of freshwater salinisation. Here, we assess current research gaps and present a research agenda to guide future studies. We identified different gaps in taxonomic groups, levels of biological organisation, and geographic regions. We suggest focusing on global- and landscape-scale processes, functional approaches, genetic and molecular levels, and eco-evolutionary dynamics as key future avenues to predict the consequences of freshwater salinisation for ecosystems and human societies.
Trends in Ecology and Evolution

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Citation Formats
D. Cunillera-Montcusí et al., “Freshwater salinisation: a research agenda for a saltier world,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution, vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 440–453, 2022, Accessed: 00, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85122923273&origin=inward.