F3.1 Large reservoirs

Biome: F3. Artificial wetlands biome

Contributors:
(texts)

Large dams or reservoirs occur in humid, populated areas of the world. Their biological productivity and diversity is generally limited due to their depth and frequent and large changes in water level. Shallow zones have the highest diversity, with simple food webs of algae, waterbugs, birds, frogs and aquatic plants, often supporting introduced fish species. Plankton live at the surface, but life is scarce in the depths. Algal blooms may be common if there are high nutrient inputs from rivers.

Key Features

Large, usually deep stratifed waterbodies impounded by walls across outflow channels. Productivity and biotic diversity are lower than unregulated lakes of simila rsize and complexity. Trophic networks are simple.

Overview of distribution

Scattered across all continents with high concentrations in Asia, Europe and North America.

Profile versions

• v1.0 (2020-01-20): DJ Roux; RT Kingsford; DA Keith
• v2.0 (2020-06-18): DJ Roux; RT Kingsford; CA Reidy Liermann; B Robson; M Kelly-Quinn; DA Keith
• v2.01 ():
• v2.1 (2022-04-06): DJ Roux; RT Kingsford; CA Reidy Liermann; B Robson; M Kelly-Quinn; DA Keith Full profile available at official site

Main references

Selected references for this functional group:

• Lehner B, Liermann CR, Revenga C, Vörösmarty C, Fekete B, Crouzet P, Döll P, Endejan M, Frenken K, Magome J, Nilsson C (2011) High‐resolution mapping of the world’s reservoirs and dams for sustainable river‐flow management Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 9: 494-502 DOI:10.1890/100125

• Clavero M, Hermoso, V (2011) Reservoirs promote the taxonomic homogenization of fish communities within river basins Biodiversity and Conservation 20, 41-57 DOI:10.1007/s10531-010-9945-3

Diagrammatic assembly model

Diagrammatic assembly model of F3.1 Large reservoirs. See general notes on diagrams. Open image full size.

Maps

Maps are indicative of global distribution patterns are not intended to represent fine-scale patterns. The maps show areas of the world containing major (coloured red) or minor occurrences (coloured yellow) of each ecosystem functional group. See general notes on maps.

There are 2 alternative versions of the indicative map for this functional group, please compare description and sources below.

F3.1.WM.nwx_v1.0

Polygons of reservoirs were obtained from water bodies in classes 2 and 3 in the HydroLakes database, except for those larger than 100 km2, as these included a number of semi-regulated natural lakes (Messager et al. 2016). Additional point locations were taken from the Global Georeferenced Database of Dams (Mulligan et al. 2020), adding a spatial buffer of 15 arc-minutes to represent uncertainty in their exact location and extent. Major and minor occurrences were not distinguished . Open image full size.

Datasets

• HydroLAKES-1.0
• GOODD-2020

Map references

• Messager, M.L., Lehner, B., Grill, G., Nedeva, I., Schmitt, O. (2016) Estimating the volume and age of water stored in global lakes using a geo-statistical approach Nature Communications 13603 DOI:10.1038/ncomms13603

• Mulligan, M., van Soesbergen, A. and Saenz, L. (2020) GOODD, a global dataset of more than 38,000 georeferenced dams Scientific Data 7 (31) DOI:10.1038/s41597-020-0362-5

F3.1.web.orig_v1.0

Point locations of large reservoirs were obtained from water bodies tagged as 'reservoirs' in "reservoirs" in vector layers GLWD1 and GLWD2 of Lehner & Döll (2004). These were mapped with a spatial buffer of 15 minutes, enabling reservoirs to be represented in 0.5 degree grid cells. Open image full size.

Datasets

• GLWD-2004

Map references

• Lehner B, Döll P (2004) Development and validation of a global database of lakes,reservoirs and wetlands Journal of Hydrology 296: 1–22

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