Dear Colleagues,

Without the implementation of mitigating measures such as reducing monoculture or the implementation of buffer zones, silviculture operations can negatively affect stream ecosystems. Such effects on water quality, physical habitats, and stream communities, as well on hydrological changes at the catchment level, have been widely documented. Nevertheless, the increasing role that climate changes and dramatic disturbances such as forest fires or more intense drought periods modify the functioning of the aquatic ecosystems, which is not very well understood. Particularly, wildfires result in a cascade of environmental changes in riparian and stream ecosystems as a consequence of post-fire erosion, snag-fall, and debris flows, and all these impacts require observation from an integrated perspective in the aquatic systems.

Additional scientific support for ameliorative procedures in forest stands is also necessary—specifically the best management practices to reduce the impacts of disturbance, such as the effect of particulate transport and nutrient leaching on running waters and on riparian vegetation—in order to maintain the physical and water quality characteristics of stream ecosystems as well as their inherent biodiversity.

However, the ability to act also implies a definition of rapid survey techniques to monitor these dramatic events, which should be based on proper structural and functional metrics. Moreover, the combined and interrelated influences of multiple parameters demands convenient data treatment techniques and the use of robust models that may allow the prediction of scenarios related to forest management practices at the catchment scale.

The present Special Issue seeks works that discuss integrated assessments of factors that can impact stream water quality, hydromorphology, and biodiversity at the catchment scale and in a changing climate.

Prof. Dr. Rui Cortes
Prof. Dr. Fernando A.L. Pacheco
Prof. Dr. Luís Filipe Sanches Fernandes
Guest Editors

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• land use
• forested watershed
• best management practices
• modelling
• deforestation
• chemical budgets
• water quality
• erosion
• restoration of macroinvertebrate and fish communities