Towards achieving sustainability for the biodiversity of aquatic habitats in UK agricultural landscapes

摘要

The protection of freshwaters in the UK is driven by a wide variety of policy and legislation, aimed at many aspects from biodiversity to drinking water quality and flood defence to abstraction. Despite this, aquatic biodiversity has continued to decline in many areas. Impacts from widespread intensive agriculture, and in particular, diffuse pollution, are thought to play an important part in the degraded state of aquatic biodiversity across agricultural landscapes. Indeed, in some regions there hasbeen a call for a halt to agriculture and conversion to semi-natural landuses to protect aquatic habitats, unless 'smart' solutions can be found that enable effective waterbody protection and farming to coexist. Some of the problems with the current measures used to mitigate the impact of agriculture on freshwaters are investigated and ways forward are postulated to ensure more effective protection of aquatic biodiversity across agricultural landscapes.