Wednesday, June 6, 2007 - 3:00 PM
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The feasibility of a database of causal evidence for identifying human impacts in river ecosystems

Michael J., Stewardson1, Angus Webb1, Brian Finlayson1, Wayne Stephenson1, Andrew Western2, and Peter Gell3. (1) School of Social and Environmental Equiry, eWater CRC, The University of Melbourne, Australia, (2) Dept. Civil and Environmental Engineerring, eWater CRC, The University of Melbourne, Australia, (3) School of Social Sciences, eWater CRC, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

There is growing interest in the use of epidemiological causal criteria to identify effects of human activities in river ecosystems. This approach requires a systematic review of literature to catalogue relevant causal evidence linking human-derived stressors and ecosystem response. Over the last decade, there has been a rapid expansion in the literature providing such evidence. A keyword search of the Web of Science identified more than 12,500 scientific papers dealing with human impacts in river ecosystems. Reviewing abstracts for these papers reduced the number of papers with relevant causal evidence to approximately 4000 papers. We discuss the feasibility of cataloguing evidence in these papers for wide use in research and practice. We present a prototype database and populate this database with causal evidence for a narrowly defined set of human disturbances and ecosystem responses. The use of this prototype database is demonstrated for a case study problem. The key challenges to establishing such a database are: (i) the effort required to catalogue the data; (ii) providing sufficient information for third parties to assess relevance of the study to their particular problem; and (iii) providing sufficient information for a third party to apply the data without reference to the original source.