Wetland Drainage Research Articles

“Liquid assets”: Coastal wetlands, regional parks, and the protection of Mediterranean deltas

After a century of accelerating drainage, in the 1960s coastal wetlands became the object of unprecedented protection campaigns around the world. This paper compares the history of three successful cases of coastal wetland protection in the Mediterranean between the 1960s and 1980s: the Rhône (France), Po (Italy), and Ebro (Spain) River deltas. As most of the coast of Mediterranean Europe, these three cases were at the center of renewed redevelopment attempts, to further expand intensive agriculture, industry, and seaside tourism, which invariably involved wetlands drainage. In these three cases, protection was achieved by establishing “regional parks” in the deltas. We argue that it was not by chance. Wetland advocates at the international, national, and local scales coated their plea for protection in the language of economics, making the case for wetlands’ value as “liquid assets.” They argued that wetland protection could rhyme with development and, abandoning initial projects to protect deltas as national parks, focused their efforts on creating regional parks instead. Stemming from the European regional planning movement, the regional park framework proved expedient to combine development expectations and wetland protection. Thanks to modular land use zoning, it promised to combine productive activities with protected areas, without imposing uniform restrictions on the entire deltas such as those often associated with national parks. The history of these three coastal parks, therefore, sheds light on the counterintuitive but strong relationship existing between coastal development and protection by uncovering the discursive strategies and unlikely coalitions that made conservation possible.

Changing plant phosphorus acquisition strategies in relation to altered soil phosphorus fractions after wetland drainage

Abstract Plant phosphorus (P) acquisition strategy is considered to be an intrinsic driver behind plant succession. However, variations in plant P acquisition strategies in connection to soil P fraction changes after wetland drainage remain unclear. To address this issue, here we conducted a study in six distinct wetlands that experienced long‐term (>20 years) artificial drainage, with the adjacent waterlogged wetlands as a control. We analysed plant community composition, biomass and soil P fractions, and identified three plant P acquisition strategies based on soil acid phosphatase activity, plant P resorption efficiency, and soil arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) content. We found that soil calcium‐bound P (PCa) and enzyme‐extractable P (Penzyme) were key factors influencing plant P acquisition. Soil PCa correlated negatively with acid phosphatase activity but positively with AMF content. Soil Penzyme negatively impacted P resorption efficiency. The wetlands were categorised into three types based on the change in plant richness and composition, with each exhibiting distinct plant P acquisition strategies. These changes in strategies after drainage corresponded with shifts in soil P fractions. Overall, our study highlights the role of soil P fractions in explaining plant P acquisition strategies after wetland drainage, suggesting P regulations on plant succession and ecosystem services. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Towards a Canadian National River Water Quality-Modelling System: State of Science and Future Prospects

Water quality is of significant concern and ultimately critical to every Canadian’s quality of life and security. Canada has diverse and vast landscapes and stressors that impact various waterbodies differentially, with influencing factors including contaminant and nutrient loads from human activity (mining effluent, wastewater, agricultural runoff, plastics), landscape change (wetland drainage, urbanization) and climate change (warming water temperatures, longer open water seasons, extreme hydrological events, intensifying wildfires). Canadian rivers are especially important to the overall biogeochemistry, hydrology, biodiversity, and ultimate health of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. While each of Canada’s provinces and territories has extensive river water quality (physical, chemical, biotic) data and monitoring programs, Environment and Climate Change Canada coordinates various national programs that contribute to the collection and consolidation of these data and conducts extensive research into the study and modelling of key river water quality processes. Despite program-specific efforts, there remains poor capacity to predict current and future conditions in monitored and unmonitored Canadian rivers, particularly remote or northern rivers, due to a myriad of factors including lack of coordination amongst groups and examination of areas in which modelling efforts might be integrated. Herein, we review and analyse the current state of data availability, process studies, and modelling systems for Canadian river water quality. Our synthesis reveals that specific physical processes (water temperature, ice formation, permafrost thaw, sediment dynamics), biogeochemical processes (dissolved oxygen, dissolved organic matter, nutrient cycling, metals/contaminants) and ecological/biological features (biota mass, functional indicators) are well understood, though complex, and are amenable to empirical or mechanistic modelling. Review of this information assists us in identifying opportunities and challenges for developing a national water quality modelling system (NWQMS), that would eventually include similar modelling activities for parallel processes in lakes and integrated watersheds. We identify needs for stronger coordination of monitoring programs in remote areas, recommend use of novel remote sensing technologies, and development of a flexible, iterative ‘process’ for integrated modelling to which stakeholders beyond government can contribute. Such a platform would support short and long-term predictive models of Canadian water quality and ecosystem health, inform effluent concentration limits, and be an early warning system for source waters.

Hydrochemistry and isotope hydrology of groundwater and surface water in the Sor and Gebba watershed, southwestern Ethiopia

The Sor and Gebba watershed plays a crucial role in the water resources of the Baro-Akobo River Basin. However, various factors have had a detrimental effect on the watershed. Unplanned groundwater extraction, wetland drainage, surface water pollution, and land use changes have all intensified due to population growth, urbanization, commercial farms, industrial development, poor water resources management, and improvements in living standards. This research utilized major hydrochemical ions and environmentally stable isotopes to elucidate the interaction between groundwater and surface water in the watershed, which are reliable tracers in various hydrologic processes. During the 2020 wet season and 2022 dry season, over 25 meteoric water samples were collected from different locations for hydrochemical and isotopic analysis. The hydrochemical analysis revealed that the dominant water type is Ca–Mg–HCO3−. Among the anions, HCO3− was the most dominant, followed by NO3−, Cl−, and SO42−, and those of cations Ca2+, followed by Na+, Mg2+, and K+. The spatial analysis of environmentally stable isotopes confirmed the interaction between groundwater and surface water in the watershed. The quality of groundwater is primarily influenced by rock-water interaction (Gibb's diagram) and, to some extent, by evaporation (Isotope study). A graph of the water samples closely aligned with the Addis Ababa-local meteoric water line indicates their meteoric origin. However, there was a slight deviation to the left due to the effects of distance and altitude. The isotopic correlation further supported the interaction between different water sources.

Soil carbon dynamics in drained prairie pothole wetlands

Drainage leads to trade-offs between crop production efficiency and wetland conservation, with complex impacts on ecosystem services. In North America’s Prairie Pothole Region, wetland drainage is widespread, often to increase the available land for cultivation, prevent crop loss due to flooding, and manage soil salinity. Wetlands are known for providing key ecosystem services such as improved water quality, flood mitigation, and carbon storage. There is limited research on how changes to soil hydrology and soil redistribution through wetland drainage can impact soil carbon storage and persistence in this region. This research evaluates factors that contribute to soil carbon storage in drained prairie pothole wetland based on 33 drained wetlands in Saskatchewan, Canada. These analyses showed regional differences in the response of soil carbon storage to drainage that are driven by environmental factors such as annual precipitation, temperature, and wetland permanence. We observed increasing soil carbon storage from the Dark Brown to Black soil zones, as well as with longer wetland pond permanence. The sampling depth used for calculating soil carbon storage was especially important when comparing geographically across the soil zones as the Black soil zone had greater soil carbon stored at depth. Soil carbon was also intensively monitored over 2 years following installation of surface drainage across a wetland complex (8 drained wetlands) where water was partially directed to a consolidation wetland. We further assessed changes in soil carbon dynamics and protection from microbial decomposition based on three soil organic matter fractions, ATR-FTIR for organic matter functional groups, and phospholipid fatty acid analysis to understand the microbial community abundance and structure. After 2 years following drainage, ephemeral wetlands with short pond permanence were found to be most sensitive to drainage and the only wetland class with decreases in soil carbon. The temporary and seasonal wetland classes showed no significant differences in soil carbon content but there were changes in the organic matter with depth due to soil redistribution during drainage implementation. Jointly, this research provides region-specific estimates of soil carbon storage in drained prairie pothole wetlands that can be used to inform wetland soil carbon management in cultivated fields.

“Autumn”: John Clare and the Altered Fenland

abstract: The draining of the fens has been described as “England’s greatest ecological disaster.” This article delineates how John Clare’s ‘flitting’ to Northborough in the spring of 1832 fatefully coincided with a new, more efficient—or, in ecological terms, more disastrous— era of wetland drainage projects in the late 1820s and 30s. Focusing on his late (and sadly neglected) prose essay “Autumn” (1841), I explore how Clare recalls and recasts some of the enduring themes of both Romanticism and his own early poetry as he surveys the ecological disaster he had lived to see unfold.

The chronology of T-shaped antler axe technology in northeastern Europe

Abstract We present new AMS 14C dates and technological characteristics of an enigmatic osseous implement – the T-shaped antler axe. T-shaped axes (T-axes) are made of red deer (Cervus elaphus L.) antler beams with the perforation for a shaft through the removed trez tine. Our study centres on 33 axes from Belarus, Latvia and Lithuania, most of which were found during drainage of wetlands or sediment extraction in the 20th century, and thus remained unknown internationally. We successfully dated 19 of these artefacts, and here we compare their dates to published dates of T-shaped antler axes from western Europe (Belgium, The Netherlands, western Germany, Scotland), the southwestern Baltic (Denmark, northern Germany and northwestern Poland) and southeastern Europe (Ukraine). Radiocarbon results suggest the gradual spread of this specific antler tool producing technique from southern Europe towards the Baltic during the 6th millennium BC. The technological characteristics of T-axes in combination with the radiocarbon data enable us to preliminary discuss the chronology of aspects of T-axe production.

An integrated assessment of impacts to ecosystem services associated with prairie pothole wetland drainage quantifying wide-ranging losses

An integrated assessment of impacts to ecosystem services associated with prairie pothole wetland drainage quantifying wide-ranging losses

T-shaped antler axes in Lithuania : previously unrevealed Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer technology

This paper discusses one of the most characteristic hunter-gatherer osseous implements — the T-shaped antler axe. These are made from red deer (Cervus elaphus) antler beam by removing the trez tine and creating a perforation for a shaft in its place. This type of axe is quite widely known in the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic contexts of northern, western and central Europe. Until now, T-shaped antler axes have been only sporadically mentioned in research on Lithuanian prehistory. Ten T-axes are currently known from eight find locations, concentrated in western and southern Lithuania. These axes were mainly discovered as single finds during wetland drainage or peat extraction. Only two excavated sites contained T-axes in settlement refuse layers. This paper provides details of the find circumstances and technological features of all ten axes, as well as the results of AMS 14C dating. The dating suggests that this technology had already spread among hunter-gatherers in the territory of Lithuania as early as the second half of the 6th millennium, and continued at least until the transition to the 4th millennium cal BC.

Carbon Footprint Reduction and Climate Change Mitigation: A Review of the Approaches, Technologies, and Implementation Challenges

Since the Industrial Revolution, human economic activity and the global development of society in general have been heavily dependent on the exploitation of natural resources. The use of fossil fuels, deforestation, the drainage of wetlands, the transformation of coastal marine ecosystems, unsustainable land use, and many other unbalanced processes of human activity have led to an increase both in the anthropogenic emissions of climate-active gases and in their concentration in the atmosphere. It is believed that over the past ~150 years these phenomena have contributed to an increase in the global average temperature in the near-surface layer of the atmosphere by ~1 °C. Currently, the most pressing tasks facing states and scientific and civil societies are to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions and to limit the global air temperature increase. In this regard, there is an urgent need to change existing production systems in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to sequester them. In this review, we consider up-to-date scientific approaches and innovative technologies, which may help in developing roadmaps to reduce the emissions of climate-active gases, control rising temperatures, decarbonize economies, and promote the sustainable development of society in general.

Drainage ditch network extraction from lidar data using deep convolutional neural networks in a low relief landscape

Drainage networks composed of small, channelized ditches are very common in the eastern United States. These are human-made features commonly constructed for wetland drainage and constitute the headwater portion of permanent hydrographic networks. Accurate information on the drainage ditch location can help define where wetlands have been drained and evaluate impacts of artificial drainage patterns on hydrologic changes. Traditional water channel extraction approaches often cannot accurately identify small ditches especially in low-relief agricultural landscapes. In this study, we employed a state-of-the-art deep learning (DL) approach to extract drainage ditches using light detection and ranging (lidar) data in a low-relief agricultural landscape within the Delmarva area. First, we adopted a deep convolutional neural network based on U-Net architecture to classify ditches from different combinations of aerial optical and lidar derived (i.e., topographic and return intensity) features. The classification results were compared with a typical pixel-oriented machine learning classifier, random forest (RF). Next, we improved the connectivity of ditch networks through a minimum-cost approach and a further incorporation of FA to connect with natural drainage networks. Finally, we evaluated the connected drainage networks against flowlines derived from typical flow routing method (D8), an open-source channel network extraction tool (GeoNet), and the U.S. Geological Survey National Hydrography Dataset High Resolution data at 1:24,000 scale. Our results show that the DL model significantly outperformed the RF model, and the lidar derived topographic features were the most important input for ditch classification. The connected drainage networks extracted with DL exhibited pronouncedly higher precision (0.88) and recall (0.89) and a higher positional accuracy (within one pixel) than other flowline products. Overall, this study demonstrates the utility of DL approaches for automated extraction of ditch networks and the important contribution of lidar-derived topographic data for operational drainage network mapping at local and regional scales.

Timing of reed management affects habitat use and breeding success in Great Reed Warblers: A field experiment on agricultural drainage canals

Freshwater wetlands and their biodiversity have suffered substantial losses globally, mainly due to the drainage of wetlands for agriculture. Recent studies suggest that small drainage and/or irrigation canals established in lowland areas can function both as partial replacement of wetlands lost and as biodiversity hotspots in agricultural landscapes. However, small canals are usually not protected or managed for biodiversity. We studied whether and how the timing of reed management (removal in winter, in spring, no removal) on small canals affects nest site selection and breeding success in Great Reed Warblers, Acrocephalus arundinaceus, a flagship species of small canals in an intensive agricultural landscape in a five-year quasi-experiment. We found significantly more nests in winter-managed than in non-managed canal sections and hardly any in spring-managed sections. The number of nests also increased with the proportion of reed removed and with reed density. Breeding success measured as the probability of fledging chicks was positively influenced by reed density only and was not affected by management type, nesting height, water depth and water level fluctuation. Reed density had a central role as it mediated the effect of management both on nest site selection and breeding success, likely through better concealment of the nests from predators. Our results suggest that winter management should be favored as much as possible in the conservation of Great Reed Warblers and other reed-nesting passerines, whereas spring management should be avoided as it results in a complete lack of reed or poorly grown reed unsuitable for nest-building by the start of the breeding season. Our study draws attention to the importance of proper management of small canals that can serve as local hotspots of biodiversity in heavily human-modified landscapes, and which thus deserve more conservation attention than they currently have.

Quantifying population-level conservation impacts for a perpetual conservation program on private land

Area-based targets, such as percentages of regions protected, are popular metrics of success in the protection of nature. While easily quantified, these targets can be uninformative about the effectiveness of conservation interventions and should be complemented by program impact evaluations. However, most impact evaluations have examined the effect of protected areas on deforestation. Studies that have extended these evaluations to more dynamic systems or different outcomes are less common, largely due to data availability. In these cases, simulations might prove to be a valuable tool for gaining an understanding of the potential range of program effect sizes. Here, we employ simulations of wetland drainage to estimate the impact of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Small Wetlands Acquisition Program (SWAP) across a ten-year period in terms of wetland area, and breeding waterfowl and brood abundance in the Prairie Pothole Region of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana. Using our simulation results, we estimate a plausible range of program impact for the SWAP as an avoided loss of between 0.00% and 0.02% of the carrying capacity for broods and breeding waterfowl from 2008–2017. Despite the low programmatic impact that these results suggest, the perpetual nature of SWAP governance provides promising potential for a higher cumulative conservation impact in the long term if future wetland drainage occurs.

Turtles in trouble. Conservation ecology and priorities for Australian freshwater turtles

AbstractThe Australian freshwater turtle fauna is dominated by species in the family Chelidae. The extant fauna comprises a series of distinct lineages, each of considerable antiquity, relicts of a more extensive and perhaps diverse fauna that existed when wetter climes prevailed. Several phylogenetically distinctive species are restricted to single, often small, drainage basins, which presents challenges for their conservation. Specific threats include water resource development, which alters the magnitude, frequency, and timing of flows and converts lentic to lotic habitat via dams and weirs, fragmentation of habitat, sedimentation, nutrification, and a reduction in the frequency and extent of floodplain flooding. Drainage of wetlands and altered land use are of particular concern for some species that are now very restricted in range and critically endangered. The introduced European red fox is a devastatingly efficient predator of turtle nests and can have a major impact on recruitment. In the north, species such as the northern snake‐necked turtle are heavily depredated by feral pigs. Other invasive animals and aquatic weeds dramatically alter freshwater habitats, with consequential impacts on freshwater turtles. Novel pathogens such as viruses have brought at least one species to the brink of extinction. Species that routinely migrate across land are impacted by structural simplification of habitat, reduction in availability of terrestrial refugia, fencing (including conservation fencing), and in some areas, by high levels of road mortality. We report on the listing process and challenges for listing freshwater turtles under the Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, summarize the state of knowledge relevant to listing decisions, identify the key threatening processes impacting turtles, and identify key knowledge gaps that impede the setting of priorities. We also focus on how to best incorporate First Nations Knowledge into decisions on listing and discuss opportunities to engage Indigenous communities in on‐ground work to achieve conservation outcomes.

New records of the azure gallinule Porphyrio flavirostris (Gmelin, 1789) (Gruiformes: Rallidae) for the state of Paraná

Although it has a wide distribution in the country, the Azure Gallinule (Porphyrio flavirostris) has become rare in the southern region, due to the drainage of wetlands, implementation of hydroelectric reservoirs and the reduction of surrounding forests. Through the inventory carried out in the municipality of Capanema, field trips in Francisco Alves and Foz do Iguaçu in humid areas with a predominance of seasonal semideciduous forest, individuals of P. flavirostris were registered in October 2019, December 2020 and January 2021 on the floating vegetation. This work communicates new records of the species in the state of Paraná and makes a brief contribution about its conservation status.

A wetland permanence classification tool to support prairie wetland conservation and policy implementation

AbstractWetland permanence, the duration and frequency that surface water is present, affects biological communities and whether wetlands are protected under legislation in some jurisdictions. Wetland drainage in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) has changed the distribution of wetlands because smaller and more temporary wetlands are more likely to be drained. This change in distribution affects biodiversity and other wetland ecosystem services. In Manitoba, Canada, wetlands are treated differently under the Water Rights Act based on permanence classification and can either be drained with a simplified registration (temporary and ephemeral wetlands), drained with a permit requiring mitigation (seasonal wetlands), or are protected from drainage (semipermanent and permanent wetlands). To facilitate implementing a conservation program targeting the most vulnerable wetlands, we built a classification model using LiDAR and Sentinel‐2 data (1312 training observations). Our random forest model had 73% accuracy on 563 test observations and is applicable across the agricultural region of southwestern Manitoba. We predicted the wetland permanence class of 365,499 wetlands and built an online tool to help practitioners implement a conservation program that pays producers to conserve temporary and ephemeral wetlands. Our approach is applicable elsewhere in the PPR and other regions with variation in wetland permanence.

Assessing prioritization measures for a private land conservation program in the U.S. Prairie Pothole Region

AbstractPrivate land conservation has become an important tool for protecting biodiversity and habitat, but methods for prioritizing and scheduling conservation on private land are still being developed. While return on investment methods have been suggested as a potential path forward, the different processes linking private landscapes to the socioeconomic systems in which they are embedded create unique challenges for scheduling conservation with this approach. We investigated a range of scheduling approaches within a return on investment framework for breeding waterfowl and broods in the Prairie Pothole Region of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana. Current conservation targeting for waterfowl in the region focuses mostly on the distribution and abundance of breeding waterfowl. We tested whether MaxGain approaches for waterfowl conservation differed from MinLoss approaches in terms of return on investment and which approach performed best in avoiding loss of waterfowl and broods separately. We also examined variation in results based upon the temporal scale of the abundance layers used for input and compared the region's current scheduling approach with results from our simulations. Our results suggested that MinLoss was the most efficient scheduling approach for both breeding waterfowl and broods and that using just breeding waterfowl to target areas for conservation programs might cause organizations to overlook important areas for broods, particularly over shorter timespans. The higher efficiency of MinLoss approaches in our simulations also indicated that incorporating probability of wetland drainage into decision‐making improved the overall return on investment. We recommend that future conservation scheduling for easements in the region and for private land conservation in general include some form of return on investment or cost‐effective analysis to make conservation more transparent.

Effects of hydrological change in fire‐prone wetland vegetation: An empirical simulation

Abstract Upland swamps are peat‐accumulating, groundwater‐dependent and fire‐prone wetland ecosystems. Drying caused by anthropogenic processes such as underground mining, ditching and climate change may disrupt surface and groundwater flows and result in bottom‐up controls on wetland expression. Fire is an endogenous, recurring disturbance that drives a top‐down consumptive force in many upland swamp systems. When compounded with drying, fire may facilitate permanent community transitions. A dearth of ecological data and temporal lags have hampered our ability to predict risks associated with multiple disturbances in wetland plant communities. We collected intact wetland mesocosms from valley floors and lower slopes of four undisturbed swamp sites. We transferred the mesocosms to a glasshouse and established three different soil moisture availability levels to simulate wetland drainage. After 20 months of the hydrological treatment, we simulated a fire event by sequentially applying biomass removal (clipping), heat and smoke to half of the mesocosms. We monitored species biomass, richness and composition over a 3.5‐year time frame. We found evidence of a temporal lag in biomass response to low water availability and synergistic hydrological and fire effects on species richness. In unburnt conditions, richness declined with low water availability but was maintained under high and medium water availability. After simulated fire under medium water availability, however, richness also declined and converged with depauperate low‐water mesocosm richness. Representation by many obligate swamp species declined in low compared with high water availability mesocosms over time, an effect that was amplified by the fire treatment. Synthesis. Our evidence of lagged effects of hydrological change on wetland vegetation and compounding effects of fire should be considered in impact assessments, monitoring programs and ecosystem management to avoid irreversible wetland change in drying environments.

Free and underfit-scavenger river dynamics dominate the large Amazonian Pacaya-Samiria wetland structure

The Peruvian Amazon is known for harboring the greatest biodiversity on the planet, with a world record for biodiversity per unit area. Previous studies suggested that the high ecological value depends on correlations between ecosystem functionality and seasonal inundation control vegetation patches. However, the knowledge on how river morphodynamics and its complex erosion-depositional processes influence the aquatic mosaic and fishing activity in the region is still incipient. This study examines the hydrogeomorphology of the Peruvian tropical wetland of Pacaya Samiria, located in Western Amazonia, and its role in the distribution of aquatic habitats. By using remote sensing techniques, the hydrogeomorphological connectivity that bounds the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve is characterized by ancient to modern river processes. Additionally, river signatures developed by the Ucayali, Marañon, Huallaga, Pacaya, and Samiria Rivers overlap with fish extraction and dominant vegetation to describe how geomorphology is associated with the spatial distribution of fishing zones. Results indicated that paleochannels regulate wetland drainage within the Ucamara Depression, supporting stational water stagnation, vegetation cover, and formation of carbon rich detritus, relevant aspects to understand fish traits. Moreover, the Ucayali River dominates river dynamics in the Pacaya Samiria wetland, thus playing a pivotal role in shaping the complexity of streams and lakes. Furthermore, underfit-scavenger meandering rivers are observed in areas where paleochannels from large rivers are found. A geomorphological characterization of drainage patterns in freshwater environments, such as Amazonian wetlands, is crucial to develop sound management strategies. This methodological approach is expected to support decision-making in conservation actions in Amazonian environments based on understanding wetland connectivity and hydrogeomorphological behavior and their influence on commercial fisheries.

Оценка антропогенной нагрузки на водные ресурсы и эффективности их использования: обзор методологических подходов

Anthropogenic pressure as a measure of quantitative measurement of human impacts on water resources is subject to evaluation in modern scientific research. The relevance of such a study is related to the quantitative limitation and qualitative transformation (pollution) of water bodies. There are two main methodological approaches - geographical and hydrological. The first one is characterized by taking into account to a greater extent indirect impacts on water bodies, the second one - direct and indirect (diffuse runoff). Types of impacts that make a significant contribution to the transfor-mation of natural water bodies (channel regulation, irrigated farming, flow diversions, industrial, municipal and agricultural water supply, drainage of marshes and wetlands, forest cutting and planting, urbanization, etc.) are described. The peculi-arities of use and reliability of the applied indicators in assessments of anthropogenic load are discussed. Available data and initial information for water use efficiency assessment are summarized.