Conclusions
Global challenges associated with climate change adaptation and
mitigation underpin the need for an accurate understanding of factors
influencing carbon cycling at whole catchment scales, to then inform
effective management responses (Battin et al., 2023). A primary barrier
is the lack of water quality and emissions data, which are also key to
improving water management generally in river basins around the world.
The coincident need for data collection at higher resolution should be
addressed by capitalising on advances in distributed high-resolution
sensor networks, combined with data analytic advances including ML
methods. These systems provide an opportunity to overcome challenges
including resource limitation, access to remote areas, inconsistent
monitoring practices, and/or data collection with insufficient
spatial/temporal resolution. Benefits from expanding the river carbon
cycle process and emission understanding include closing knowledge gaps
in international emissions inventories (IPCC, 2019) and facilitating
more effective river catchment management.
While enhanced data collection and processing using in-situ sensors and
other data products can fill large gaps, logistical and financial
constraints will still limit comprehensive sampling of complex spatial
river networks at high-resolution. Therefore, advanced data analytics
methods need to be developed concurrently to allow for scaling-up from
point estimates in space, for filling in data gaps in time-series
(Segatto et al., 2023), and for predicting water quality parameters for
which robust and reliable sensors do not yet exist (Ba-Alawi et al.,
2023). DL methods have created significant opportunities and challenges
in environmental research (Reichstein et al., 2019), although PINN and
TL now provide a new basis to advance traditional DL methods. These
methods are still in the research stage and significant investment will
be needed to ensure confidence in water resource management
applications. Nevertheless, rapid developments in data collection and
analysis, with reducing costs present unprecedented new potential for
monitoring and improving the status of freshwater systems worldwide.
Capitalising on these technological advances quickly will be vital to
address intersecting global crises in freshwater availability, water
quality, biodiversity and climate change (Vörösmarty et al., 2010, Zhang
et al., 2023) and maintain for future generations the array of critical
ecosystem services that freshwaters provide to humanity.