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Inland navigation and land use interact to impact European freshwater biodiversity

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 8, pages 1098–1108 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Inland navigation in Europe is proposed to increase in the coming years, being promoted as a low-carbon form of transport. However, we currently lack knowledge on how this would impact biodiversity at large scales and interact with existing stressors. Here we addressed this knowledge gap by analysing fish and macroinvertebrate community time series across large European rivers comprising 19,592 observations from 4,049 sampling sites spanning the past 32 years. We found ship traffic to be associated with biodiversity declines, that is, loss of fish and macroinvertebrate taxonomic richness, diversity and trait richness. Ship traffic was also associated with increases in taxonomic evenness, which, in concert with richness decreases, was attributed to losses in rare taxa. Ship traffic was especially harmful for benthic taxa and those preferring slow flows. These effects often depended on local land use and riparian degradation. In fish, negative impacts of shipping were highest in urban and agricultural landscapes. Regarding navigation infrastructure, the negative impact of channelization on macroinvertebrates was evident only when riparian degradation was also high. Our results demonstrate the risk of increasing inland navigation on freshwater biodiversity. Integrative waterway management accounting for riparian habitats and landscape characteristics could help to mitigate these impacts.

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Fig. 1: Fish and macroinvertebrate communities across Europe.
Fig. 2: Inland navigation and other stressor effects on freshwater fish and macroinvertebrate biodiversity.
Fig. 3: Context-dependent effect of ship traffic.
Fig. 4: Fish trait responses to navigation.
Fig. 5: Macroinvertebrate trait responses to navigation.

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Data availability

All data and R code used in this study are available in an open-source repository (https://github.com/aaronsexton/Sextonetal_Navigation_Biodiversity_Supplementals).

Code availability

R code used in this study are also available in the same open-source repository as the data (https://github.com/aaronsexton/Sextonetal_Navigation_Biodiversity_Supplementals).

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Acknowledgements

We thank N. Casajus for providing continued assistance and recommendations on analyses and data representation. Additionally, we thank the UNECE for providing locations of inland ports locks and canals. This research is a product of the NAVIDIV group funded by the synthesis centre CESAB of the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB; www.fondationbiodiversite.fr) and by the French National Research Program on Transport Infrastructure, Territories, Ecosystems and Landscapes (ITTECOP; https://www.ittecop.fr/en/) of the French Ministry of Ecological Transition (MTE). S.C.J acknowledges funding through the Leibniz Competition project ‘Freshwater Megafauna Futures’. P.H. received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 project eLTER PLUS (grant agreement no. 871128). A.L. received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (project PID2020-115830GB-100). A.D.B. received funding from EU Horizon 2020 MERLIN project (grant agreement no. 101036337).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fondation pour la Recherche sur la Biodiversité, Centre de Synthèse et d’Analyse sur la Biodiversité, Montpellier, France

    Aaron N. Sexton

  2. Université de Strasbourg, ENGEES, CNRS, LIVE UMR 7362, Strasbourg, France

    Jean-Nicolas Beisel & Cybill Staentzel

  3. Department of Fish Biology, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany

    Christian Wolter

  4. University of Paris-Saclay, INRAE, HYCAR, Antony, France

    Evelyne Tales, Jérôme Belliard, Mathieu Floury & Alienor Jeliazkov

  5. Department of Freshwater Ecology and Water Quality, Deltares, Delft, the Netherlands

    Anthonie D. Buijse

  6. Aquaculture and Fisheries Group, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Anthonie D. Buijse

  7. Departamento de Sistemas y Recursos Naturales, E.T.S. Ingeniería de Montes, Forestal y del Medio Natural, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Vanesa Martínez Fernández

  8. UNESCO Chair ‘Fleuves et Patrimoine’, CNRS UMRS CITERES, Tours University, Tours, France

    Karl M. Wantzen

  9. CNRS UMR LIVE, Strasbourg University, Strasbourg, France

    Karl M. Wantzen

  10. Department of Community and Ecosystem Ecology, Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany

    Sonja C. Jähnig

  11. Geography Department, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Sonja C. Jähnig

  12. Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Research, Department of Biosciences, Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    Carlos Garcia de Leaniz

  13. CIM Marine Reseach Center, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain

    Carlos Garcia de Leaniz

  14. Institute of Hydrobiology and Aquatic Ecosystem Management, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, BOKU Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Astrid Schmidt-Kloiber

  15. Department of River Ecology and Conservation, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, Gelnhausen, Germany

    Peter Haase & James S. Sinclair

  16. Faculty of Biology, University of Duisburg, Essen, Germany

    Peter Haase & Ralf B. Schäfer

  17. Department of Animal Sciences and Aquatic Ecology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Marie Anne Eurie Forio, Peter Goethals & Rudy Vannevel

  18. INRAE, Aix Marseille University, RECOVER, Aix-en-Provence, France

    Gait Archambaud

  19. ARALEP—Ecologie des Eaux Douces, Villeurbanne, France

    Jean-François Fruget

  20. Environmental Research and Innovation Department, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Belvaux, Luxembourg

    Alain Dohet

  21. Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Vesela Evtimova

  22. Department of Hydrobiology, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary

    Zoltán Csabai

  23. HUN-REN Balaton Limnological Research Institute, Tihany, Hungary

    Zoltán Csabai

  24. Department of Tisza Research, Institute of Aquatic Ecology, Centre for Ecological Research, Debrecen, Hungary

    Gábor Várbiró

  25. FEHM Lab, Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research IDAEA, CSIC, Barcelona, Spain

    Miguel Cañedo-Argüelles

  26. Department of Plant Biology and Ecology, University of the Basque Country, Leioa, Spain

    Aitor Larrañaga

  27. Laboratoire National d’Hydraulique et Environnement, EDF R&D, Chatou, France

    Anthony Maire

  28. University Alliance Ruhr, Research Center One Health Ruhr, Essen, Germany

    Ralf B. Schäfer

  29. Environment Agency, VMM Flanders, Aalst, Belgium

    Rudy Vannevel

  30. Conservation Ecology Center, Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Front Royal, VA, USA

    Ellen A. R. Welti

Authors
  1. Aaron N. Sexton
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  2. Jean-Nicolas Beisel
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  3. Cybill Staentzel
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  4. Christian Wolter
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  5. Evelyne Tales
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  6. Jérôme Belliard
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  7. Anthonie D. Buijse
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  8. Vanesa Martínez Fernández
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  9. Karl M. Wantzen
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  10. Sonja C. Jähnig
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  12. Astrid Schmidt-Kloiber
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  13. Peter Haase
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  14. Marie Anne Eurie Forio
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  15. Gait Archambaud
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  16. Jean-François Fruget
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  17. Alain Dohet
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  18. Vesela Evtimova
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  19. Zoltán Csabai
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  20. Mathieu Floury
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  21. Peter Goethals
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  22. Gábor Várbiró
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  23. Miguel Cañedo-Argüelles
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  27. James S. Sinclair
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  28. Rudy Vannevel
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  29. Ellen A. R. Welti
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  30. Alienor Jeliazkov
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Contributions

A.N.S., A.J. and J.-N.B. conceived of the study. C.S., C.W., E.T., J.B., A.D.B., V.M.F., K.M.W., S.C.J., C.G.L. and A.S.-K. contributed to initial ideas. A.N.S. and A.J. designed and conducted analyses. P.H., M.A.E.F, G.A., J.-F.F., A.D., V.E., Z.C., M.F., P.G., G.V., M.C.-A., A.L. A.M., R.B.S., J.S.S., R.V., E.W., C.W., E.T. and J.B. provided biodiversity data, A.N.S. wrote the first draft of the manuscript and all authors provided important input on manuscript writing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aaron N. Sexton.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks Ignasi Arranz, Thiago Couto and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Macroinvertebrate’s response to channelization is dependent on riparian degradation and agricultural cover.

The panels show the marginal effect of channelization from the GLMMs on macroinvertebrate communities along a gradient of riparian degradation and agricultural land use. A negative value on the y-axis indicates a negative impact of channelization on said metric (for example a decrease in taxonomic richness), and a value at 0 (grey horizontal line) indicates a null effect. Left panel shows the relationships of taxonomic richness and right panel shows the prevalence of invasive taxa. Predictors were standardized to zero mean and a SD of ±1.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Fish and macroinvertebrate trait relationships with ship traffic across different land use scenarios.

Trait scores associated with the environmental axis of heightened ship traffic in the RLQ analysis are shown in the ‘Full Dataset’ column, and are the values shown in the ordination of Figs. 4 and 5. Columns two and three of each table show the trait associations with heightened ship traffic when the RLQ is re-run in highly agricultural sites (those with the top 25% of agricultural cover across the datasets) and in highly urbanized sites.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Relationships between taxonomic evenness and the abundance and occurrences of rare species in fish and macroinvertebrates.

We defined a rare species as a species whose abundance accounting for less than 25% of the total community abundance (see Supplementary File 2 for details). Blue line represents the model regression and the area in grey surrounding the line represented the 95% confidence interval.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–5.

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Supplementary Table 1–5

Supplementary Tables 1–5.

Supplementary File 1

Code for reproducing the subcatchment level selection for models.

Supplementary File 2

Code for reproducing the models run to show a relationship between rare species and community evenness.

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Sexton, A.N., Beisel, JN., Staentzel, C. et al. Inland navigation and land use interact to impact European freshwater biodiversity. Nat Ecol Evol 8, 1098–1108 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02414-8

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