Environmental flow mechanism and management for river–lake-marsh systems

Abstract

Sustaining environmental flows (e-flows) is a basic requirement for river, lake and marsh management. Rivers, lakes and marshes have close hydrological and ecological connections in a river basin, and form river–lake-marsh systems. Any measure that is designed to address problems related to only one of these water bodies in isolation of the others may lead to unexpected, undesired and sub-optimal consequences for one or all of the water bodies. Papers were selected for this special issue ‘Environmental Flow Mechanism and Management for River-Lake-Marsh Systems’ to illustrate recent advances in revealing new mechanisms connecting hydrological and environmental/ecological processes, developing new methods for e-flow calculation, and establishing new measures for e-flow management.