Purpose The demand for mineral raw materials for the energy transition is expected to increase greatly in the coming years, raising concerns about the environmental impacts associated with their value chains. Prospective Life Cycle Assessment (pLCA) can be applied to explore such impacts under alternative future scenarios. However, pLCA studies in the mineral value chain often lack consistency, as they use different modelling...

Mining poses significant and persistent threats to freshwater ecosystems, with impacts often enduring long after operations cease. Growing concerns suggest that the expansion of mining to meet global mineral demands for decarbonization may amplify these cumulative risks to freshwater biodiversity. However, the location and extent of potential conflict hotspots remain poorly understood, hampering our ability to meet internation...

Large‐scale investigations of patterns in heat tolerance often use latitude as a proxy for thermal conditions. We examined how heat tolerance of fishes and its plasticity relate to thermal extremes and seasonal fluctuations in habitat temperatures. Our dataset included over 3000 heat tolerance measurements from 500+ fish species inhabiting freshwater, marine and brackish environments. While heat tolerance varied with latitude,...

Aim Cave fish have long fascinated biologists due to their unusual morphology, biology and physiology. Here, we developed the first database of cave fish occurrences, provided the first map of cave fish diversity patterns and evaluated how environmental changes are threatening cave fish diversity across the globe. Location Global. Time Period 21st century. Major Taxa Studies Cave fish, classified as Stygobionts and Stygophiles...

Habitat fragmentation due to dams is a well‐known threat to freshwater fish. Yet, the global consequences of fragmentation for the viability of freshwater fish populations are unknown. Here, we provide the first global assessment of the threats of dams to the persistence of freshwater fish species. We developed a global macroecological relationship between freshwater fish range size and body size and used this relationship to...

Climate change impacts on freshwater ecosystems and freshwater biodiversity show strong spatial variability, highlighting the importance of a global perspective. While previous studies on biodiversity mostly focused on species richness, functional diversity, which is a better predictor of ecosystem functioning, has received much less attention. This study aims to comprehensively assess climate change threats to the functional...

Aim Discharge is a key determinant of biodiversity in rivers. Positive relationships between riverine biodiversity and discharge, also called species–discharge relationships (SDRs), have been widely documented. However, potential human influences on these relationships are typically not considered. We aimed to fill this gap by exploring whether and how the slopes and intercepts of global riverine fish SDRs might be affected by...