Anthropocene Rivers

Catherine Russell, Martin Gibling

In the age of the Anthropocene, rivers around the world are an important source of water and routes for transport. However, many have been intensely engineered to account for our needs through morphological adjustments and connection to infrastructure so that they can behave more efficiently in removing unwanted materials from an environment. Many of the unwanted materials are markedly different from what would be natural (i.e. pollution) and may be anything from an increase in silt due to intensive farming, through to entirely anthropogenic inventions such as chemicals and microplastics. In this session, we welcome abstracts that consider Anthropogenic changes to rivers with the goal to draw together the current understanding so that we can better mitigate future challenges.