Oral Presentation Society for Freshwater Science 2025 Annual Meeting

 Novel and scalable tools in spatial freshwater biodiversity science (116724)

Afroditi Grigoropoulou 1 2 , Jaime R. García Márquez 1 , Thomas Tomiczek 1 , Marlene Schürz 1 2 , Vanessa Bremerich 1 , Yusdiel Torres-Cambas 1 , Merret Buurman 1 , Kristi Bego 1 , Giuseppe Amatulli 3 4 , Sami Domisch 1
  1. (Dept. 2) Community and Ecosystem Ecology, IGB Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany
  2. Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy, Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
  3. School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA
  4. Spatial Ecology, Penn, United Kingdom

Spatial freshwater biodiversity assessments remain complex as the longitudinal connectivity of aquatic habitats poses a challenge in the geospatial data processing and subsequent analyses. To address this challenge, we present three complementary geospatial tools for spatial freshwater biodiversity research.

GeoFRESH (https://geofresh.org) is an online platform that simplifies the pre-processing of freshwater-specific geospatial data for further analyses. It allows users to upload and visualize coordinates, assign points to the closest stream network segments of the high-resolution Hydrography90m dataset, and annotate them with 104 local and upstream-aggregated environmental variables. GeoFRESH contributes to the accessibility of spatial freshwater biodiversity science, as users can generate analysis-ready datasets without coding expertise.

As a complementary tool, the hydrographr R package (https://github.com/glowabio/hydrographr) provides scalable tools for processing hydrographic data, including downloading, analyzing, and extracting information from high-resolution stream networks. By leveraging powerful open-source GIS software within R, hydrographr supports workflows such as species distribution modeling and connectivity assessments. Its scalability ensures efficient data processing, even for large geographic extents and high-resolution analyses. 

Finally, the AquaINFRA project aims to integrate these tools within a Virtual Research Environment (VRE). AquaINFRA is tapping on tools such as hydrographr and GeoFRESH to provide seamless workflows for biodiversity modeling across aquatic systems. Researchers will be able to link sampling sites, calculate catchments, intersect environmental, species, or remote sensing data, and analyze connectivity across inland, coastal, and marine systems. AquaINFRA will enable collaborative, cross-disciplinary research by linking datasets and providing advanced analytical tools.

These tools address key obstacles in spatial freshwater biodiversity science. They facilitate scalable analyses of biodiversity patterns, improve data accessibility and suggest reproducible geospatial workflows, supporting freshwater biodiversity analyses at a global scale.

  1. Amatulli, G., J. G. Marquez, T. Sethi, J. Kiesel, A. Grigoropoulou, M. M. Ublacker, L. Q. Shen, and S. Domisch. 2022. “Hydrography90m: A new High-Resolution Global Hydrographic Dataset.” Earth System Science Data 14 (10): 4525–4550. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-4525-2022.