Science Articles & Reviews

Scotland’s freshwater lochs are among the country’s most important natural assets, supporting amongst other things biodiversity, drinking water supplies, fisheries, hydropower generation, and recreation. Dr Jan Krokowski is a Senior Specialist Ecologist at SEPA, specialising in freshwater ecology, eutrophication, and algal and cyanobacterial science. Here Jan provides a 2025 snapshot of the ecological status of Scottish freshwater lochs using phytoplankton.

Dr Daniel Osmond examines how trout have adapted to living in some of our most polluted post-industrial landscapes. Daniel is a senior fisheries scientist for Westcountry Rivers Trust and research associate with Jamie Stevens’ Molecular Ecology group at the University of Exeter. He is an enthusiast of wild trout and the places where they live. This article is reproduced with kind permission from the Wild Trout Trust.

In this article, FBA Fellow Martyn Kelly, Environment Agency biologists Jason Doe and Luke Walters, and former FBA Chief Executive Bill Brierley reanalyse a dataset from the River Wye to document spatial and temporal variation in the attached algae, and what this means for managing this iconic river.

FBA Fellow Paul Raven led development of the River Habitat Survey, producing the first UK-wide assessment of the physical state of rivers. Malcolm Newson is Emeritus Professor at Newcastle University and co-author of the Guidebook of Applied Fluvial Geomorphology. Here we join Paul and Malcolm for a think piece with a difference, inviting you to participate in some river-related observational tests, to identify evidence of specific physical habitat features.

Glen George is an Honorary Research Fellow with the FBA. In this article, using the 1927 Greenside Mine disaster at Ullswater as a case study, he explains why the ongoing increase in the intensity of extreme weather events could lead to the re-emergence of water quality problems that were thought to have been resolved.

Here, Holly Tipper, Amy Thorpe, and Daniel Read from UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, report on their work on the PAthways of Chemicals Into Freshwaters and their ecological ImpaCts (PACIFIC) project, which is investigating how human-made chemicals enter freshwater ecosystems and the impacts they have, particularly on microbial communities.

Catherine Duigan is an FBA Fellow, an honorary Professor of Environmental Science at Aberystwyth University and an independent environmental consultant, researcher and writer living in Wales. In this article, Catherine explores the significance of recently discovered records of the early history of the FBA.

Join Paul Leonard for his review of SEFS14, the 14th Symposium for European Freshwater Sciences, held in Bolu, Türkiye, from 21-25 July, 2025. Established in 1992, Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University is situated approximately 250km east of Istanbul. This was the first time SEFS has been held in a non-European country, but this did not deter over 200 participants from 45 countries that included China, Russia, Nepal, the USA and Australia.

Simon Johnson introduces the exciting new LD-CHARM (Lake District Charr Recovery & Management) project. Simon is Executive Director of the Freshwater Biological Association, based in Windermere. He is a former Director of the Wild Trout Trust and the Eden Rivers Trust, and has worked as an independent consultant for river and catchment restoration. This article is reproduced with kind permission from the Wild Trout Trust.

James White is a research fellow specialising in water sciences at the University of Birmingham. Here, James and colleagues report their collaborative research in which palaeoecological data was used to contextualise freshwater ecosystem recovery following a restoration project on the River Wensum. This article summarises the research presented by White et al. (2025), which formed part of a wider special issue on river restoration practices.

Louise Lavictoire is the FBA’s Head of Science and an expert in the conservation of rare freshwater species. Here, Louise and colleagues introduce Lake District Charr Recovery and Management (LD-CHARM), a new project that seeks to inform protection of threatened populations of the Arctic charr.

Rachel Stubbington and Romain Sarremejane from Nottingham Trent University, and Glenn Watts from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, are researchers interested in the ecological effects of drought and river drying on freshwater biodiversity. Here, they consider how future droughts could alter the communities in UK rivers, and if these events could drive communities and ecosystems to new stable states.

Lesser flamingos (Phoeniconaias minor) are fascinating birds. The only vertebrate to subsist on bacteria and algae, they mostly filter-feed the colonial cyanobacterium spirulina (Arthrospira fusiformis) from the surface waters of tropical African soda lakes. David Harper led research teams to Kenyan and Tanzanian lakes from 1982 until his retirement in 2015. In this – his second of two recent articles – David recalls his work with soda lakes and lesser flamingos.

Limnology, the science of lakes, had a slow start in Britain. The first limnological laboratory in Europe was established in Germany in 1892 and was followed by similar ventures in Denmark and Austria. Today, not many people know that the first limnological laboratory in Britain and Ireland was established on Lough Derg on the River Shannon in 1921. In this article, Glen George, Honorary Research Fellow with the FBA, describes the pioneering work carried out by scientists based at Ireland’s Lough Derg laboratory between 1921 and 1923.

Some of the oldest cartographic names in Britain are those associated with lakes and rivers. One area that has retained many ancient names is the modern county of Cumbria. The Anglo-Saxons only reached the area at the end of the 7th century and were displaced by the Strathclyde Welsh in the 10th. Tracing the roots of these names can thus be difficult, because they include elements from several languages. In this article Glen George, Honorary Research Fellow with the FBA, explores the ancient roots of some lake and river names in Cumbria.

River restoration projects often focus on riparian management actions such as planting and fencing. Isabelle Barrett from Waterways Centre, Lincoln University, New Zealand, discusses how such projects can help rivers to recover from degradation, and explores how successful recovery of instream communities requires additional steps targeting physical habitat quality.

There is arguably no lake anywhere in the world that has greater combined economic value and scientific knowledge than Lake Naivasha, a freshwater lake at 2,000 m altitude in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Here, David Harper, FBA Fellow and Emeritus Professor at the University of Leicester, reviews the past and looks to the future of the lake and its alteration by human pressures.

Mary Kelly, Professor of Applied Freshwater Ecology at University College Dublin and FBA Fellow, introduces the Co-Centre for Climate + Biodiversity + Water, which launched in January to undertake research providing evidence and urgently needed solutions for the interlinked climate change, biodiversity loss and water quality degradation crises.

Martin Wilkes from the School of Life Sciences, University of Essex, provides a new vision for river restoration planning and ecosystem assessment, in response to new laws in England intended to stem biodiversity loss, placing rivers at the heart of national efforts to promote nature recovery.

In this article, Kate Heppell and Hannah Parry-Wilson introduce the River Chess Smarter Water Catchment project, which is funded by Thames Water and delivered by a partnership of eight stakeholder organisations who share an interest in the health of the River Chess.

By Richard Handley & Judy England

Richard Handley is the Chalk Stream Manager at the Environment Agency and President of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management. Judy England is a National Research Scientist within the Environment Agency’s Chief Scientist’s Group, an FBA Fellow and a member of the River Restoration Centre Advisory Board.

By Beth Mondon

Beth Mondon is a Fluvial Geomorphologist at AECOM who recently completed her PhD at the University of Southampton. Here, Beth discusses the fine sediment problem in chalk streams and key findings from her research on the development of ecologically relevant fine sediment targets.

Lakes in the Anthropocene: Reflections on Tracking Ecosystem Change in the Arctic, by John P. Smol

Benoît Demars reviews this important new textbook.

By Oliver Longstaffe, Andrew Apanasionok, Phillipa Bates, Lesley Rippon, Simon Rouen, Romain Sarremejane and Rachel Stubbington

The authors collaborated on a project to develop biomonitoring methods for England’s new Small Streams Network. In particular, we evaluated how well the standard 3-minute kick sampling method characterizes macroinvertebrate assemblages. Here, we report key project findings.