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Pollution, overexploitation and climate warming endanger the freshwater ecosystems in many regions, particularly in developing countries. This publication asks if at least the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) group and the Outreach countries (in addition South Africa and Mexico), have the scientific capacity in limnology to mitigate this development. For this reason the scientific output was analyzed between 1999 and 2007. With a share of 5.0% of all limnological papers in 2007 world wide the P.R. China (Peoples Republic of China) produced the largest numbers of publications, followed by Brazil and Mexico. For comparison, this year Germany's share was 5.8% and the USA had the highest share with 33.9%. The growth rate was also highest for the P. R. China and Brazil. Based on the journal impact factors, China's quality of papers was best followed by South Africa and Russia. Brazil was strong in fish biology, whereas China published the most papers in all other disciplines. (© 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ecosystem services (ES) is a powerful tool for communicating with stakeholders because it highlights the benefits of ecosystems for people and demonstrates their economic importance through monetized values. However, this hypothesis has rarely been substantiated in the context of local landscape planning. To investigate which ecosystem services information formats (ESIF) stakeholders prefer in decision situations, we experimented with a highly conflictual planning situation about the Lower Mulde restoration in Germany. We invited local stakeholders to a so‐called 'future vision workshop'. It included a paper‐based, noncompetitive planning game, which combined the freedom of choice with strict rules for justifying the proposed measures. We tested how often participants used different ESIFs to justify their decisions, focusing on quantification, monetization, and the default qualitative (ordinal‐scaled) format applied in landscape planning. A total of 17 representatives from stakeholder groups such as nature conservation, recreation, and local politics attended. We provided information on four ES and eight related measure proposals to the stakeholders, who used them to select, locate, and justify actions for the area's future development. The participants applied the ordinal‐qualitative format in more than two‐thirds of the decisions. Quantification and monetization were used with approximately equal frequency, mostly for measures that favoured flood risk regulation. Actions supporting habitat provision and biodiversity were justified exclusively in ordinal‐qualitative terms. Instead of our provided quantifications, some participants mentioned numbers they were already familiar with before. They also partly doubted our monetization approaches. In conclusion, we recommend combined and context‐specific uses of several ESIFs, while using the ordinal‐qualitative format as the basis. Furthermore, the participants appreciated the workshop and requested that the results be presented to the city council. The workshop also confirmed that the ES concept is challenging to understand, especially for laypeople unfamiliar with ES and landscape planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]