JohnsonDiversey sponsorship enables critical water resources research
A child plays in a river that flows out of Virunga National Park, near the provincial capital of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Congo River system supplies essential freshwater ecosystem services to millions of people. A program sponsored by JohnsonDiversey with the World Wildlife Fund significantly improved information about the world's freshwater systems and their water resources.
Preserving the earth starts with understanding our natural resources, and no resource is more precious than the world's water. JohnsonDiversey has made a substantial commitment to supporting water conservation and ecosystem preservation through its sponsorship of two major scientific projects conducted by the World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy to map the earth's freshwater resources and species.
Freshwater ecosystems face great perils worldwide, yet few large-scale conservation plans have ever targeted the protection of freshwater biodiversity. In part, the lack of attention to freshwater habitat protection has been due to a lack of comprehensive worldwide data. The new Freshwater Ecoregions of the World project is a substantial and important step in closing the gap and enabling greater understanding of freshwater ecoregions and the need to conserve them. It brings together distribution data from scientists around the world on freshwater species and assesses threats in all of the world's 426 freshwater ecoregions. The project is the result of a collaboration between the World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy.
"Water is one of the most strategic natural resources in world," said JohnsonDiversey Chairman Curt Johnson, a member of the World Wildlife Fund Board of Directors. "I'm excited to see how the World Wildlife Fund is using its expertise to foster better understanding of freshwater supplies and improved protection of the world's water resources."
A WWF Field Hydrologist measures the water quality of a spring in the Sierra de las Minas, Guatemala.
A nomad fills a water vessel in Aïr, Niger.
The four-year HydroSHEDS project, an ambitious global hydrographic mapping effort, was also made possible with major funding from JohnsonDiversey. HydroSHEDS uses data from NASA to create a detailed, digital map of freshwater channels around the world. The radar-derived data from a space shuttle mission is 100 times more detailed than anything previously available, and the maps make it possible to conduct hydrologic analyses anywhere in the world.
HydroSHEDS created the most detailed and accurate maps to date of all the world's freshwater channels, including uninhabited regions that contain some of the most diverse, intact freshwater habitats on the planet.
The data from both projects is available on public Web sites to help scientists, students, policy makers, nongovernmental agencies and concerned citizens better understand the earth's water resources and biodiversity. The maps and databases created through these key projects facilitate additional knowledge sharing and research into freshwater ecosystems, including freshwater climate change adaptation and water security for nature and humankind, according to Robin Abell of the World Wildlife Fund.
The scope and clarity of the data provided through these projects is a substantial improvement over the tools scientists previously had available to understand and assess freshwater systems, and the intricate relationships between freshwater resources and the human and wildlife species that depend on them.