Journal of Freshwater Ecology

Global Advances in Freshwater Ecosystem Biomonitoring

Biotic indices and biological assessments are among the most widely used tools for judging the ecological health of rivers, lakes, and wetlands. Methods have developed unevenly across regions, shaped by differences in taxa, climate, geology, and available datasets. As a result, tools built for one region often need careful validation, adaptation, or refining before they can be applied in another region. This Collection brings together research on developing, testing, and applying biomonitoring approaches for freshwater ecosystems worldwide.

Freshwater ecosystems are among the most threatened on Earth, yet monitoring coverage and methods remain uneven. Without robust, well-validated assessment tools, ecological degradation goes undetected, and management and conservation decisions rest on incomplete evidence. Advances in statistical modelling, machine learning, molecular methods, and remote sensing are changing what biomonitoring can do. A global view helps researchers compare ecosystems, share methods, and build assessment frameworks that are both locally credible and internationally comparable.

This Article Collection welcomes the following subtopics:

• Development and validation of biotic indices for rivers, lakes, and wetlands
• Environmental DNA, remote sensing, and other emerging biomonitoring technologies
• Statistical and machine-learning approaches to modelling and predicting ecological water quality
• Macroinvertebrate, diatom, fish, and cross-regional and cross-continental comparisons of freshwater communities and assessment methods
• Transferability and calibration of biomonitoring tools across biogeographic regions
• Effects of land use, climate change, and altitude on freshwater community structure
• Biodiversity, invasive species, and habitat quality in freshwater ecosystems from a continental or global perspective

Journal of Freshwater Ecology accepts the following types of article: original articles, review articles, methods articles, software tool articles and laboratory protocols.

Keywords:

1. biotic index
2. biomonitoring
3. biodiversity
4. community ecology
5. environmental DNA

­­All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo a full peer-review; the Guest Advisor for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member).

Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is August 20, 2027.

Please contact Kara Roberts at kara.roberts@taylorandfrancis.com with any queries on discount codes regarding this Article Collection.

Please be sure to select the appropriate Article Collection from the drop-down menu in the submission system.

Guest Advisor does not declare any potential conflicts of interests in line with our Editorial Policies.

Dr. Peace Liz Sasha Musonge holds a PhD in Bioscience Engineering from Ghent University, Belgium. She is a freshwater ecologist and Water–Energy–Food–Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus expert specializing in biomonitoring, ecological water quality assessment, and integrated natural resource management. She developed the Rwenzori Score, Uganda’s first biotic index for assessing river ecological health, and has co-authored peer-reviewed publications on rivers and reservoirs across the Rwenzori, Guayas, Mekong, and Nile basins. Her research integrates biological assessment with quantitative approaches, including generalised linear models, Bayesian belief networks, and fuzzy logic, to evaluate freshwater ecosystem health and support evidence-based environmental management. She serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Freshwater Ecology and contributes to various professional and scientific organisations. She currently leads environmental programmes that advance integrated approaches to water security, ecosystem health, and sustainable development. As Guest Advisor for this Collection, she aims to foster international scientific collaboration, encourage cross-regional comparisons, and advance robust, locally relevant, and internationally transferable approaches to freshwater biomonitoring.