Research

Africa’s great rivers sustain diverse ecosystems, thriving fisheries, and millions of livelihoods. However, changing river flows and hydro-morphological alterations—driven by water abstraction and infrastructure development—are transforming these river systems, with profound consequences for biodiversity, fish productivity, and human well-being. This project investigates how anthropogenic changes impact aquatic ecosystems, fisheries, and food security across major river basins. We track spatial and temporal changes in large African rivers, combining remote sensing, ecological monitoring, and hydrological modeling to assess the effects of flow alterations and land use change on river-floodplain connectivity, fish production, and water quality. Additionally, we conduct basin- and floodplain-level hydro-morphological assessments to evaluate how modifications in river structure, sediment transport, and habitat availability influence biodiversity and ecosystem stability. Our research integrates large-scale biodiversity and fisheries assessments, using extensive datasets on fish presence, distribution patterns, and key threats to evaluate biodiversity status and conservation priorities at the regional level. Furthermore, we map hydropower and renewable energy infrastructure, and study how river flow alterations affect aquatic ecosystems. This project focuses on multiple lines of evidence to provide a comprehensive understanding of the changing dynamics of African rivers. Our findings will support sustainable water and fisheries management, conservation strategies, and policy decisions, ensuring that Africa’s rivers remain vital lifelines for biodiversity and human well-being in a rapidly changing environment.

Previous transnational cooperation attempts failed to build a truly transnational and sustainable data and knowledge-sharing framework that would be the prerequisite for coordinated policy-making, regulation and conservation actions to preserve the declining and endangered sturgeon populations of the Danube River Basin. The key ambition of the MonStur in the Danube project is to establish such a framework (comprising of joint sturgeon population database and habitat inventory) that answers the following challenges: • Macro-regional scale monitoring should use a unified approach, similar/comparable methods and a shared monitoring system. • Overarching and continuous cooperation between relevant authorities has to be established and maintained. • Justified resources and commitment are required for long-term hosting and continuous updating of joint databases. Policy embeddedness and sustainable operation is a key success factor, supported by the following focal points of the approach: • A wide partnership is established, covering all DRB countries, including ministries, policy institutions and water management/environment authorities, combining them with research institutions and NGOs providing knowledge and field experience related to sturgeons, ecological corridors, and population and habitat survey. • ICPDR – contributing as a project partner – has a crucial role: it will host the joint monitoring system and will Integrate its use and continuous updating in the agendas and procedures of EUSDR workgroups as well as the upcoming Joint Danube Survey (JDS5). Other relevant ambitions of the project include: • Increased stakeholder involvement on national and macro-regional levels • Target the key knowledge gap of sturgeon monitoring: the lack of known spawning habitats; with targeted field surveys detecting spawning places • Deliver a multi-country sturgeon monitoring action plan and stimulate national action plans, for improved cooperation and harmonised conservation actions

The project "Mission Soil & Water: Working together for healthy soil and water" shows how BOKU can contribute to finding transformative solutions for the sustainable use, protection and revitalisation of soils and waters together with society. To this end, BOKU's extensive expertise in the Soil and Waters missions will be linked and made visible internally for an exchange with society and thus positioned externally as a thematic beacon of transformation on a supra-regional level. In order to make the best possible use of BOKU's unique position and expertise in both missions, cross-mission goals that relate to both the Soil and Waters missions are also being pursued. To this end, inter- and transdisciplinary approaches will be applied and the universities' training programmes (doctoral schools) will be integrated into the activities. Principles of inter- and transdisciplinarity, co-creation, co-design and citizen science will be applied to approach the objectives of the missions, such as measures for the protection and remediation of waters and soils as well as measures for the sustainable use of these important natural resources. This supports the implementation of the missions at BOKU itself and in Austrian society.