Monday 6 October 2025

Climate change is altering the global water cycle. Extreme floods, droughts and heatwaves continue to increase in frequency with ongoing climate change. Such climate-driven extremes are already impacting river ecosystems, and models indicate these will continue to accelerate. Yet, much of river management is founded on the assumption of stationarity — those conditions observed in the past will continue. Particularly problematic is when unexpected shocks arrive that were foreseeable in hindsight. A shift is needed at this critical time from being reactive to proactive. In this talk, I will discuss research from my lab focusing on approaches to understand, forecast, and manage river ecosystems in flux. I will start with work focusing on how ecological communities are already changing in response to altered environmental cycles and progress to ways that we can foresee changes before they happen and embed resilience into rivers to cope with unknown future shocks. In short: we need to shift from restoration thinking to resilience thinking. Finally, I will discuss the need to work in new ways in times of rapid change, including transitioning from siloed research to more inter- and transdisciplinary ways of doing research.