Freshwater Ecoregions of North America: A Conservation Assessment

North America's freshwater habitats and the extraordinary biodiversity they contain are facing unprecedented threats from a range of sources, including flow alteration, habitat fragmentation, introduced species, and overall land use changes. With nearly every freshwater system suffering from some degree of degradation and conservation resources limited, there is an urgent and practical need to set priorities.World Wildlife Fund-U.S. assembled a team of leading scientists to conduct a conservation assessment of freshwater ecoregions as an initial step in identifying the areas where protective and restorative measures should be implemented first. Freshwater Ecoregions of North America presents that assessment and outlines measures that must be taken to conserve, and in many cases restore, native biodiversity.The book identifies freshwater ecoregions that support globally outstanding biological diversity, assesses the types and immediacy of threats to North American ecoregions, identifies gaps in information that hamper an accurate evaluation of biodiversity, and provides a broad-scale framework for conservation activities. In addition, it features full-color maps and appendixes that provide detailed descriptions of methodologies, raw scores and statistical analysis of results, and an integrated biological distinctiveness and conservation status index.The authors are affiliated with the Conservation Science Program of World Wildlife Fund.