European rivers are fragmented by many more barriers than had been recorded

Zarfl, Christiane; Lehner, Bernhard

doi:10.1038/d41586-020-03440-9

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16 December 2020

European rivers are fragmented by many more barriers than had been recorded

An atlas of European river barriers has been made, by curating and correcting existing records, and by surveying 2,700 kilometres of waterways. It reveals that rivers are fragmented by an amazing number of obstructions.

Christiane Zarfl⁰ &
Bernhard Lehner¹

Christiane Zarfl
1. Christiane Zarfl is at the Centre for Applied Geoscience, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany.
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Bernhard Lehner
1. Bernhard Lehner is in the Department of Geography, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 0B9, Canada.
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If you asked a child in Europe to draw a river, what would this picture look like? Would it resemble a natural, wild and scenic river, with braided and meandering flow paths in a vast floodplain, fringed by riverine vegetation? Or would it show a modern, well-managed river with houses lined up along the banks and boats passing by on a confined channel? Writing in Nature, Belletti et al.¹ report a remarkably detailed survey of river barriers in Europe, which suggests that the second picture would be much more likely.

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Nature 588, 395-396 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03440-9

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