The Anthropocene: changing aquatic environments and ecosystems

TL;DRAbstract

Water in the form of lakes, rivers or the ocean, and the sediments that accumulate below water, are inevitably impacted, either directly or indirectly, by many of the changes that have affected the land and the atmosphere. In some cases, water simply provides one of the major links in biogeochemical cycling. Often, as in the case of carbon, it provides, along with accumulating sediments, one of the major sinks. Irrespective of the role it fulfils with respect to any given process within the Earth system, its quality, distribution and availability are altered by many of the changes already described in the two previous chapters. Since water is one of the essentials for the maintenance of life on Earth, as well as a vital ingredient in a vast range of industrial and domestic processes, the changes to lakes, rivers and the oceans brought about by human activity are a key part of global change. Anthropogenic transformations of both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the hydrological c

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