The Future of RivTool

Abstract

Effective research, conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems must take into consideration the environment, ecosystem functioning and human activities at multiple river scales. The river Network toolkit (RivTool) is a user-friendly and freely available software of universal applicability that enables the integration of these multiple inputs for large scale river network analysis. It is a table-driven application with several freely available datasets for European and South American basins. This software is currently implemented in all five continents, having been downloaded in nearly 70 countries, and represents a platform with high future scientific and management potential. As such, three new plugins are being conceptualized and developed to widen the contribution of this software to the freshwater community: the first is RivFish, a tool to integrate the resources of the rGBIF package with the river network framework of RivTool; the second RivConnect, an add-on for quantitative network connectivity analysis based on graph-theory, i.e., to enable the calculation of fragmentation metrics and river connectivity indexes; and a third tool, RivOpt, a multifunctional decision support system aiming at selecting an optimal portfolio of barrier removal and/or mitigation actions towards balancing competing environmental and socioeconomic objectives. Adding these new tools to RivTool will widen its scope of action and overall usefulness. The future of RivTool will provide, to the freshwater scientific and management community, a set of tools that will increase the ability to interpret and manage river systems, ultimately contributing to attain the European biodiversity goals.