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Sustainable Water Systems

Sustainable Water Systems
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Around 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. Access to clean drinking water is considered a basic human right, but it is also deeply ingrained in many other aspects of our lives, including food, sanitation, energy, business and industry, transport, tourism, culture and social wellbeing.

The Sustainable Development Goals, set out by the UN Member States, aim to incite a global shift to a significantly more sustainable way of living by 2030, which will inevitably require these sectors to transform at a rate and scale greater than any in recent history. The connectivity of water within and between these sectors will be crucial to this global transformation. As such, this cross-journal collection prudently investigates water systems, the sustainability crises that affect them and the opportunities they offer to resolve issues of sustainability.

The following journals are accepting submissions to this collection:

Articles submitted to this collection should completely and coherently address one or more aspects of sustainability related to oceans, rivers, lakes, groundwater systems or water cycles. They should be applicable at the system or landscape scale, globally or in multiple regions. Most importantly, articles in this collection should be solution-oriented, providing recommendations for change wherever possible or, wherever not possible, providing a detailed description of the research and data advancements required to inform change. Contributions that address contemporary management practices, industry, policy and governance are strongly encouraged. State-of-the-field pieces are also accepted for submission.

This collection invites contributions from many disciplines, including geosciences and hydrology, engineering, environmental chemistry and toxicology, biology, ecology and conservation, social sciences and humanities, as well as inter- and multidisciplinary studies.

Topics of particular interest to this collection include, but are not limited to:

  • Water system roles in climate change mitigation
  • Aquatic ecosystem services
  • Drought, irrigation and food security
  • Hydropower systems and technology
  • Aquatic pollution, contamination and ecotoxicology
  • Biochemistry of water systems, especially ocean acidification
  • Fisheries and fish stock health
  • Water resource management, policy and governance
  • Emerging issues in water system sustainability


Submission guidelines

Authors should choose one of the above journals to submit to and format their manuscript according to that journal’s submission guidelines. They should submit their article through the online submission system for that journal, indicating clearly in the title page that the manuscript is to be considered for the article collection on 'Sustainable Water Systems'. Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed independently by the respective journal, in accordance with each journal’s peer-review policies. Accepted articles will be published online on a continuous basis.


Published articles in this collection:

  1. Pollutant emissions in river basins may be subject to change. How can we succeed in predicting future pollutant emissions and risks? The approach presented here is based on the hypothesis that the existing sce...

    Authors: Dirk Bunke, Susanne Moritz, Werner Brack, David López Herráez, Leo Posthuma and Margarita Nuss
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:32
  2. In the rainfed areas, water, not land, is the foremost restraining resources for better agricultural production to satisfy the growing demand of food and other needs. Water harvesting and enhancing productivit...

    Authors: Tesfa Worku Meshesha and Deepak Khare
    Citation: Environmental Systems Research 2019 8:5
  3. Livestock production and consumption of meat are significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems and global warming. This paper investigates the role of marine reserves in shaping meat ...

    Authors: Beatrice D. Simo-Kengne, Johane Dikgang and Sunita Prugsamatz Ofstad
    Citation: Agricultural and Food Economics 2018 6:12