Tuesday April 30, 2024
University of California, Davis —
After nearly a century of people building dams on most of the world’s major rivers, artificial reservoirs now represent an immense freshwater footprint across the landscape. Yet, these reservoirs are understudied and overlooked for their fisheries production and management potential, indicates a study from the University of California, Davis.
The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, estimates that U.S. reservoirs hold 3.5 billion kilograms (7.7 billion pounds) of fish. Properly managed, these existing reservoir ecosystems could play major roles in food security and fisheries conservation.
“There is a large amount of fish mass in U.S. reservoirs that are being overlooked, despite the value being comparable to fish harvest from fisheries around the world,” said lead author Christine Parisek, a Ph.D. candidate in the UC Davis Ecology Graduate Group and the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology.