“For the places that we have data, the situations are not really that good. There are many species that are declining, threatened or endangered,” said Bob Hughes, co-author of the paper and a courtesy associate professor in Oregon State’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. “But for most of the globe, there just is little rigorous data.”
The work by Hughes and the team, which included scientists from 16 countries and six continents, was recently published in the journal Water.
The biological assessment of rivers is essential to evaluate the condition of the ecosystems and to establish ways for them to recover. Such assessments occurred in some countries beginning in the 1990s but have not occurred on a global scale.
