Plastic pollution in freshwater systems represents a major global concern, as rivers serve as critical pathways between land-based sources and marine environments. Yet, inconsistencies are observed between estimated plastic inputs from land and concentrations in the ocean. Despite growing monitoring efforts, the lack of standardized methods and the use of diverse metrics for quantifying plastic pollution hamper direct comparis...

Mass mortality events (MMEs) are decimating populations and compromising key ecosystem functions around the globe. One taxon particularly vulnerable to MMEs is freshwater bivalve mollusks. This group has important ecosystem engineering capacities and includes highly threatened and highly invasive taxa. Thus, MMEs of freshwater bivalves have important implications for conservation and ecosystems. Despite this, little is known a...

Globally, plastic pollution in aquatic environments has become an emerging concern. A multitude of monitoring techniques have been used to collect information on the presence of macroplastics (> 25 mm) and mesoplastics (> 5 mm ≤ 25 mm) in river systems. The differences between these methodological approaches, combined with limited knowledge of the fundamental processes that affect plastic presence and detection ability, lead t...

Longitudinal training dams (LTDs) in the river Waal are novel river training structures that protect the littoral zone from the adverse effects of navigation providing new habitats for riverine macroinvertebrates. In order to inform river management and to better understand their ecological value for native and alien mussel species, it is important to assess the habitat suitability of the protected LTD shore channels. We appli...

Current conservation templates prioritize biogeographic regions with high intensity ecosystem values, such as exceptional species richness or threat. Intensity‐based targets are an important consideration in global efforts, but they do not capture all available opportunities to conserve ecosystem values, including those that accrue in low intensity over large areas. We assess six globally‐significant ecosystem values—intact wi...

Many of the world's fisheries are unassessed, with little information about population status or risk of overfishing. Unassessed fisheries are particularly predominant in developing countries and in small‐scale fisheries, where they are important for food security. Several catch‐only methods based on time series of fishery catch and commonly available life‐history traits have been developed to estimate stock status (defined as...

Fishery managers must often reconcile conflicting estimates of population status and trend. Superensemble models, commonly used in climate and weather forecasting, may provide an effective solution. This approach uses predictions from multiple models as covariates in an additional “superensemble” model fitted to known data. We evaluated the potential for ensemble averages and superensemble models (ensemble methods) to improve...