This book constitutes a pioneering and unique work on Lake Victoria. It is the world’s second largest fresh-water lake and supports the livelihood of more than 30 million people. Surprisingly, there has been no comprehensive book addressing its problems and potentials. Ecology, environmental pollution and resource management are some of the issues addressed by this comprehensive insight into the limitations, challenges and opportunities facing Lake Victoria.

Growing human populations and higher demands for water impose increasing impacts and stresses upon freshwater biodiversity. Their combined effects have made these animals more endangered than their terrestrial and marine counterparts. Overuse and contamination of water, overexploitation and overfishing, introduction of alien species, and alteration of natural flow regimes have led to a 'great thinning' and declines in abundance of freshwater animals, a 'great shrinking' in body size with reductions in large species, and a 'great mixing' whereby the spread of introduced species has tended to homogenize previously dissimilar communities in different parts of the world. Climate change and warming temperatures will alter global water availability, and exacerbate the other threat factors. What conservation action is needed to halt or reverse these trends, and preserve freshwater biodiversity in a rapidly changing world? This book offers the tools and approaches that can be deployed to help conserve freshwater biodiversity.

In this age of increased fundamental and applied research on biodiversity, no single volume was as yet devoted to the various temporal and spatial aspects of aquatic biodiversity. The present book is published in honour of Professor Henri Dumont (Ghent, Belgium) at the occasion of his retirement as Editor-in-Chief of Hydrobiologia. The volume presents a selection of contributions on aquatic biodiversity, written by colleagues from the editorial board, fellow editors of aquatic journals and former students and collaborators. Contributions deal with a wide spectrum of topics related to aquatic biodiversity and cover fields such as actual- and palaeolimnology, taxonomy, and fundamental and applied limnology. Even reconnaissance chapters on management and cultural impact of water bodies are included. The book combines state-of-the-art contributions in aquatic sciences.

Aldo Leopold, father of the "land ethic," once said, "The time has come for science to busy itself with the earth itself. The first step is to reconstruct a sample of what we had to begin with." The concept he expressedâ€"restorationâ€"is defined in this comprehensive new volume that examines the prospects for repairing the damage society has done to the nation's aquatic resources: lakes, rivers and streams, and wetlands. Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems outlines a national strategy for aquatic restoration, with practical recommendations, and features case studies of aquatic restoration activities around the country. The committee examines: Key concepts and techniques used in restoration. Common factors in successful restoration efforts. Threats to the health of the nation's aquatic ecosystems. Approaches to evaluation before, during, and after a restoration project. The emerging specialties of restoration and landscape ecology.

The idea for this book was born at the June 1996 meeting of the IDEAL Steering Committee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We had just completed a successful and stimulating special symposium during the annual meeting of the American Society for Limnology and Oceanography, and enthusiasm was running high for the production of a volume that could assemble in one place the scientific findings that were starting to emerge from East Africa. IDEAL, an International Decade for the East African Lakes, had ended one round of field investigations, many of which had been centered on Lake Victoria. As the climatologists, geologists, paleolimnologists, and biologists displayed their results and debated interpretations, it appeared that some paradigms were shifting, and that new explanations of climate history and modem processes were taking shape. The Steering Committee endorsed the production of a volume that would draw together the different research results that were emerging and which would be representative of the scope of science issues that exist within IDEAL. This book follows in the spirit of The Limnology, Climatology, and Paleoclimatology of the East African Lakes, published in 1996, but has a somewhat different purpose. The previous publication also included original science results, but it was conceived to review the state of knowledge, identify critical problems, and point to new paths of inquiry. It accompanied the development of our first Science and Implementation Plan for the East African Lakes.