in Goiás state — 230 kilometers (143 miles) from Brasília — members of seed networks from several parts of Brazil met for almost a week in early June they participated in discussions to boost Redário a new group seeking to strengthen these networks and meet the demands of the country’s ecological restoration sector “This meeting gathered members of Indigenous peoples It creates a beautiful mosaic and there’s a feeling that what we are doing will work and will grow,” says Milene Alves a member of the steering committee of the Xingu Seed Network and Redário’s technical staff 64 metric tons of native seeds were sold for this purpose by the more than 20 member networks Redário directly supported the sales of around 16 metric tons of more than 200 species sown across 1,200 acres Collection of native seeds by traditional populations in preserved areas of different Brazilian biomes has contributed to effective and more inclusive restoration of degraded areas The effort is necessary for Brazil to fulfill its pledge under international agreements to recover 30 million acres of vegetation by 2030 Seed collection for restoring these areas used to be done only by companies which have multiplied in the last decade and are organized as cooperatives enable people in the territories to benefit from the activity a restoration expert from the Socio-Environmental Institute and one of Redário’s leaders advocates for community participation in trading and planting seeds “These are the people who went to all the trouble to secure the territories and who are there now They have the greatest genetic diversity of species and hold all the knowledge about the ecosystem,” he says One of the groups that make up Redário is the Geraizeiros Collectors’ Network a cooperative in northern Minas Gerais that was created in 2021 and now gathers 30 collectors from eight communities in five municipalities: Montezuma a local traditional population from the area known as Gerais collect and plant seeds to recover the vegetation of the Gerais Springs Sustainable Development Reserve The reserve was created in 2014 to stop the devastation that is causing water scarcity as a result of eucalyptus monocultures planted by large corporations which have been taking over the Cerrado landscape for decades now “The region used to be very rich in water and it is now supplied by water trucks or wells,” says Fabrícia Santarém Costa a collector and vice president of the Geraizeiros Collectors’ Network “Today we see that these activities only harm us and we are there suffering the consequences.” when a project carried out by Embrapa and financed by the Global Environmental Facility fostered the creation of a small group of seed collectors in her homeland and she says that working with the seeds changed her life and her view of the biome in which she was born We only knew pequi [Caryocar brasiliense] and araticum [Annona montana]; I had no idea about the importance of the other species about the Cerrado’s role in preserving water It’s because of seed collection that I work for the community now She describes restoring the sustainable development reserve as “ant work” — that is ongoing task — but it has already improved the water situation in the communities enabling them to remain in their territories This work has also gained strength in Indigenous territories. In southern Bahia’s Barra Velha Indigenous Land, the Forestation and Reforestation Cooperative (Cooplanjé) was created in 2012 in the Pataxó village of Boca da Mata operating in the territory and providing services to third parties the Pataxó started by restoring their own areas and then began selling the seeds they have already restored 670 acres of Atlantic Forest within the Indigenous land and the Monte Pascoal National Historic Park “We have a restored area there that is 4 years old where we are already harvesting from the very seeds we sowed the Indigenous people of Barra Velha have taken the practice of collecting and restoring to nearby communities and territories such as the Comexatiba (Cahy-Pequi) Indigenous Land where the territory has also endured decades of impacts of eucalyptus planted by a pulp company (Fibria) Tupiniquim and Guarani Indigenous people who are members of the Tupyguá Network now collect seeds for trading and reforesting “It is very rewarding to know that you can earn an income by collecting seeds But what’s important for us is to contribute to reforestation We want to show society that the forest is life,” says Ana Paula Moraes a member of the Tupiniquim Indigenous people from the Córrego do Ouro village and a seed collector in the Tupyguá Network Milene Alves, from Nova Xavantina, in the state of Mato Grosso, is yet another young “offspring” of seed networks. Recently awarded a master’s degree in ecology and conservation from the State University of Mato Grosso, since her adolescence she has played increasingly important roles in the Xingu Seed Network — a pioneering effort and the largest seed network in Brazil After 11 years dedicated to the Xingu Network which has already restored 20,000 acres in plantations with partners Milene works at Redário supporting the growth of new networks to monitor the work of the Portal da Amazônia Seed Network “I saw that they have a lot of potential and will get stronger; they’ll grow more when they start training leaders within the [collection] groups I was able to take much of what I’ve learned to them,” she says While Alves considers that each network has its “personality,” she sees many similarities between the challenges posed by this effort and those faced by the Xingu Seed Network in the past Many networks join us when they are still small and then they grow to become strong and walk on their own legs,” she says One of the factors that led to the creation of Redário was the similar development stages of seed networks throughout Brazil “We’ve seen several networks come and go over these 17 years,” says Eduardo Malta who participated in the creation of the Xingu Seed Network in the early 2000s “We started collecting stories and learnings both from those experiences that succeeded and those that didn’t Exchanges between networks help the process a lot because they will avoid making several mistakes.” A recurring challenge for the networks is to have customers all year-round because most of them are set up to supply a specific reforestation project which always ends when it reaches its goal One of Redário’s missions is to seek more buyers to stabilize demand allowing member networks to organize and evolve from there This has been one of the main challenges faced by the Geraizeiros Collectors’ Network “Sometimes we can’t sell all the seeds we collect Redário came to help us who work at the grassroots because we often don’t have anyone to count on Everyone helps everyone,” says vice president Fabrícia Costa The Redário initiative also intends to influence public policies and regulations in the restoration sector to disseminate muvuca the name given by the networks to the technique of sowing seeds directly into the soil rather than growing seedlings in nurseries Network experiences and technical studies show that this technique covers the area faster and with more trees per acre it requires less maintenance and lowers costs the system also distributes income to the local population and encourages community organizations “The muvuca system has great potential [for restoration] depending on what you want to achieve and local characteristics It has to be in our range of options for meeting the targets for achieving them at scale,” says Ministry of the Environment analyst Isis Freitas She is currently a member of the Forest Department’s division for the recovery of degraded areas under the National Secretariat of Biodiversity In 2017, Brazil formalized the National Plan for the Recovery of Native Vegetation (Planaveg) aimed at implementing international commitments signed at the end of the previous year the Bonn Challenge and the Initiative 20×20 the country declared its intention to restore 30 million acres by the end of the decade implement 12 million acres of integrated agricultural systems (crops and recover 12 million acres of degraded pastures the area is almost equivalent to the state of São Paulo In addition to creating social and economic benefits restoration is also important to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and mitigate climate change Deforestation has been the main driver of increasing emissions in the country The restoration target was confirmed this year by Minister of the Environment Marina Silva and she wants to put the Executive Commission for the Control of Illegal Deforestation and Recovery of Native Vegetation (Conaveg) up and running again in the second half of 2023 The termination of participatory councils by the administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro in 2019 disorganized the commission and the execution of Planaveg The Socio-Envioronmental Institute’s executive secretary is hopeful that the Redário strategy will leverage organizations that have had a positive impact on restoration and foster it in the country If we don’t make any progress in this decade helps recover the Atlantic Forest in southern Bahia through a local cooperative Image courtesy of Rodrigo Carvalho Gonçalves/Redário/ISA This story was first reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and published here on our Brazil site on July 10, 2023. The “fortress conservation” model is under pressure in East Africa, as protected areas become battlegrounds over history, human rights, and global efforts to halt biodiversity loss. Mongabay’s Special Issue goes beyond the region’s world-renowned safaris to examine how rural communities and governments are reckoning with conservation’s colonial origins, and trying to forge a path forward […] Volume 6 - 2024 | https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2024.1360515 A correction has been applied to this article in: Introduction: The Water Flow Diagram (WFD) is a novel advocacy and communication tool that presents urban water supply and management in a simple visualization and the climate crisis increase the pressure on water resources The WFD aims to foster a dialogue around conflict of interests and opportunities among different stakeholders and trigger actions toward more sustainable urban water management (UWM) Method: The WFD is produced from data on water abstraction The data were obtained from government services universities and reports of intergovernmental organizations default values or expert judgements were considered The annual water flows are presented in a Sankey Diagram An intuitive color code highlights the flows as “problematic” or “appropriate” and points to areas where UWM practices should be improved Results and conclusions: The final diagrams are a concise instrument that identifies challenges of UWM in the four application cases presented in this article Key challenges that became evident included: pollution from agricultural production the lack of wastewater and sanitation infrastructure high water losses in the distribution networks water exports leading to a lack in local supply and sewer overflows during heavy rainfalls Opportunities identified were the need to: invest in sanitation and wastewater to protect resources create coordination bodies to align conflict of interests and/or invest in blue-green infrastructure for rainwater retention such as in-depth discussions between relevant actors the formation of integrated water use committees and the interest of the national ministry in Senegal to replicate the diagram for other locations discusses the four case studies and deliberates on the prospective use of the WFD Such stress factors impair sustainable urban water management (UWM) and restrain progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) including SDG 6: clean water and sanitation SDG 11: sustainable cities and communities and SDG 13: climate action it is important to accelerate the shift to sustainable management of urban water resources Tools are needed to foster communication among stakeholders and to support advocacy and adequate planning decisions A collectively created visualization of the urban water flows could make a decisive contribution toward an earlier adoption of sustainable UWM schemes Because the sector did not have a useful tool to visualize water flows, researchers and development experts from the Swiss Community of Practice around water (Aguasan) jointly created the Water Flow Diagram (WFD). The rationale was that a well-crafted diagram could instantly and memorably communicate a connection that might otherwise demand an extensive and quickly forgettable explanation (Platts and Hua Tan, 2004) three criteria were defined for the diagram: it should: (i) be applicable without the need for any programming skills; (ii) allow for a quick identification of the challenges and opportunities through an easily understandable graphic and (iii) be based on a participatory approach that includes data collection The main stakeholders of the participatory process should include: private and industrial water users An extensive literature review on existing tools and instruments that visualize urban water balances led to the conception of the WFD The tool was further developed in an iterative co-creation process through several case studies feedback from different experts was collected and injected into the next stage of development A selection of tools that visualize water and wastewater flows documented in literature and/or highlighted by experts in the sector is presented in Table 1 Selection of existing urban water balance tools (white cells = favorable characteristics The Water Flow Charts by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory use Sankey Diagrams to represent annual water balances for states or an entire country (Kaiper, 2004) They provide an intuitive overview of state-wide or nation-wide water flows in a visual format The diagrams do not reveal whether or not the water is treated before use or discharge nor if the management practices are appropriate The methodology of how these water balances are put together is not publicly available In the sanitation sector, the Shit Flow Diagram was developed by the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (Peal et al., 2020) It uses a flow diagram approach to visualize which proportions of the fecal sludge and wastewater in a city are safely or not safely managed No special skills or programming skills are necessary to make such a diagram The City Water Balance by the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States uses an intuitive Sankey Diagram approach to track the major pathways of urban water. Values for data that is lacking are estimated (Erban et al., 2018) the viewer cannot judge whether the water management practices are appropriate or not Since the compilation of the data is based on the software environment R the user needs programming skills to apply it The Best Practice Water Balance of the International Water Association provides a useful volumetric overview for water utilities from the source to the water distribution, focusing on non-revenue water (Lambert, 2002) Neither the wastewater nor the water quality are considered in the water balance They predict water demand and available water and/or storm water and wastewater production While some models simulate the micro environment (street level) others simulate the macro level (watershed) These computer-based models can be very useful for engineers but require substantial programming and software skills Most of the models do not have visual outputs that can easily be disseminated and understood by a diverse audience The development of the WFD tool was based on a co-creation approach practitioners were regularly engaged and the diagram and underlying methodology were created in an iterative process The practitioners consulted included water and wastewater experts Practitioner engagement took place through bilateral conversations on specific parts of the diagram in regular meetings of Aguasan—a Swiss community of practice of organizations working in the WASH sector—and at five different international water conferences (Stockholm World Water Week All Systems Connect Symposium and the Global Water Operators Partnerships Alliance Congress) The inputs collected during these consultations informed the further development of the methodology If there are significant reasons to add a node to the standard structure Structure of the Water Flow Diagram with six functional groups and the standard nodes The color code was defined as appropriate or problematic on the basis of the adequacy of the water quality and quantity of a flow The evaluation was done by the local project teams together with the researchers from Eawag Four water qualities were defined: uncontaminated biochemically contaminated and chemically contaminated For every section of the water flow between two nodes the water quality was categorized as problematic (red) or appropriate (green) if microbiologically contaminated water was treated by a microbial treatment if chemically contaminated water was treated by a microbial treatment the default output water quality for every node was defined based on the input water quality and the node itself Every case study team applied this detailed guide in close exchange with the Eawag experts throughout the process The system boundary of a WFD is defined at the beginning of every analysis the municipal boundaries or the service area of utilities were used In systems with narrower system boundaries and a higher population density a stronger focus is put on the assessment of water management practices in the urban areas the water flows represented in a WFD always interact with the water flows practices and water quality outside of its system boundaries In diagrams of less densely populated areas the assessment focuses more on the impact of large scale water use and landuse on the water availability and water quality Even an entire catchment area of a city could be within the system boundaries of the WFD Various data sources can be used to compose a WFD Potential data sources are government services NGOs or intergovernmental organizations might serve as data sources estimations for default values can be drawn from comparable contexts or expert judgements Experts included either generalists with multiple years of international experience in the water or sanitation sectors or specialists such as employees of a water utility or members of a farmer's association with solid expertise of a specific aspect of the diagram the average values of a timeline of 5 years were used for the diagram The validity of the data was discussed during the appropriation meeting (see procedure in the following paragraph) where all the stakeholders discussed and approved the final WFD An important element in the validation process of a WFD was that the water flows in the diagram needed to be fully balanced As storage of water in one node is not possible all the water flowing into a node also has to be shown as flowing out Basing the analysis on the water balance permits the stakeholders to analyse discuss and recheck the quantities of water flows that are estimated especially in cases where data of lower reliability are used The WFDs were composed during an iterative and participatory process The stakeholders included the municipality and administrative authorities different private and industrial water users The goal of the participatory process was to build a common understanding of the water management and its challenges This understanding would then become the basis for broadly supported key action points Stakeholders were involved in the initial data collection validation of different evolving versions of the diagram the definition and adoption of action points The procedure followed was different from case to case and is described in Section 2.4 The procedure to develop a WFD consists of the following steps: Ignite the process: a partner organization was found a support statement of the municipality obtained Collect data: data was collected from government services 3. Draft WFD: the data was compiled in an Excel template that was then used to generate the Sankey Diagram, using an open access online tool (sankeymatic.com) which was then graphically edited in PowerPoint Conduct appropriation meeting: the draft WFD was discussed by all interested stakeholders the main messages defined and potential indicators and actions elaborated on Finalize WFD: the diagram with the learnings from the appropriation meeting was finalized disseminated and actions to improve the UWM were proposed The following describes how WFD diagrams were developed in the four case study locations: Bern The capital of Switzerland was the first case study location Bern is a relatively small city with a well-developed UWM The city boundaries were used as system boundaries and included an area of 51 km2 and 135,000 inhabitants corresponding to a density of 2,630 inhabitants per km2 The necessary data was readily available from the wastewater and drinking water utilites and the cantonal office and data from the years 2015–2020 were used was not as central as in other locations since the case study served as proof of concept The wastewater and drinking water utilites and the cantonal office were also involved in the process of defining the diagram and validating it The Mayor of the city supported the process with a letter of support and a video message Rio Pardo de Minas is a municipality in the northeast of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais Its main economic activities are agriculture and small industries The municipal boundaries were used as system boundaries The area included 3,130 km2 and 31,000 inhabitants with a low population density of 10 inhabitants per km2 Information was collected from local partner organizations and from the municipality the National Water Agency database of water use rights was consulted The participatory process was led by the local office of a Swiss NGO Co-creation workshops were organized with the following local organizations: the Rural Workers Union of Rio Pardo de Minas the North of Minas Gerais Alternative Agriculture Center The Mayor of the city supported the process and the appropriation meeting was planned at the municipality level The municipality of Santa Maria lies in the Philippian province Bulacan Over 90% of the economic activities are in the service sector The areas included 91 km2 and 289,820 inhabitants corresponding to a population density of 3,188 inhabitants per km2 The data was obtained from the Municipal Local Government Unit of Santa Maria Bulacan the National Irrigation Association and the municipality's Socioeconomic Plan After the collection of data and the composition of the diagram an appropriation meeting was conducted in Santa Maria It was attended by the members of the Integrated Safe Water and Hygiene (iWASH) Council and the iWASH Technical Working Group of the local government Participants from the local government included the Municipal Administrator the Municipal Planning and Development Coordinator and the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Officer The inputs from the meeting were used to validate assumptions that had to be made due to the data gaps in the diagram Kayar and Keur Moussa are three communities in the suburbs of Dakar Agriculture is the predominant economic activity in this water scarce area and part of the available groundwater is exploited for the water supply of Dakar Diender consisted of an area of 118 km2 with 43,465 inhabitants (368 inhabitants/km2) while Kayar comprised an area of 16 km2 and 33,383 inhabitants (2,086 inhabitants/km2) and Keur Moussa stretched out on 222 km2 with 69,168 inhabitants (312 inhabitants/km2) The participatory process was led by a consultant of the local office of a Swiss NGO supported by two local partner organizations the Environment Development Action for Natural Land Protection (ENDA Pronat) and the Federation of Agropastoralists of Diender (FAPD) The data was obtained from the Water Resources Management and Planning Department Eau du Sénégal (water utility of urban and peri-urban areas in Senegal) The local partner organizations planned and facilitated the meetings between the consultant the sub-prefecture and the technical services as well as the meeting for input from the local communities All the meetings were held at the community level to take the voices of the most disadvantaged sections of the population into account A WFD was produced for each case study location The discharge happened only during heavy rainfall events when sewer and plant capacities were exceeded The diagram identified that improvements of the combined sewer overflow should be implemented Potential measures for improvement consist of infrastructure adaptions or the installation of blue-green infrastructure to reduce immediate run-off after heavy rainfalls *Percentages estimated on the basis of tariff levels Irrigation for agriculture operated by large agrobusinesses producing cash crops consumed almost 100% of the water potentially contaminated with pesticides and fertilizers due to inadequate agricultural practices infiltrated into groundwater and surface water Irrigation methods caused an estimated 70% of water losses due to evapotranspiration It was estimated that 5% of the water input into agriculture was exported with the agricultural products industrial and public uses of the overall water consumption were minor they polluted the surface water and groundwater since for a large proportion of this water there was no appropriate treatment of the wastewater Approximately 25% of the water was lost in the piped distribution network Although the urban dimension of the water flow is hardly visible in this WFD its visualization triggered an intensive dialogue on water utilization and water rights amongst different relevant stakeholders and the municipality the WFD was discussed in workshops together with local partner organizations as described in Section 2.4 During the subsecutive appropriation meeting at the municipal level where the diagram was presented to the city Mayor and his Secretary dozens of miners stormed the city auditorium and demanded to stop the activity They argued that the analysis of the utilization of water pose a threat to the local economy the meeting at the city auditorium was terminated and discussions about the WFD were continued only with unions and NGOs it was agreed that the situation had to first calm down before making another attempt at presenting the WFD at the municipal level In Santa Maria, Bulacan, in the Philippines (Figure 4) ~30% of the drinking water originated from surface water the piped water was distributed to the different users The domestic sector used 41% of the treated water agriculture 34 and 12% were lost in the distribution network 1% of the water used by the domestic sector was not treated prior to use There was no sewer system and the wastewater was either collected in septic tanks (93%) and in pit latrines (4%) or was collected in open channels and directly discharged to the surface water (3%) polluted water from the pit latrines leaked into the groundwater A small proportion of septic tanks were regularly emptied with trucks and the sludge exported but it is unknown what happens to the rest of them (gray flow) Agriculture accounted for the major part of the water consumption rain-fed agriculture was considered in the diagram in contrast to the other case studies It was estimated that 19,712 m3 per year of precipitation fed into agriculture lands and that 60% of the water used in agriculture evapotranspirated partly because inappropriate irrigation techniques were used in the area it was estimated that 10% of the polluted agricultural water flew into surface water bodies 20% into groundwater and 10% of the water from agriculture was exported as agricultural products Figure 5 shows the WFD of Diender More than half of the pumped groundwater was exported to the city of Dakar Another 47% of the water was used for agriculture The water that was used in agriculture was probably polluted with pesticides and fertilizers and would have a negative impact on the groundwater The evapotranspiration rate was estimated to be 60% because of inadequate irrigation methods in the area it was estimated that 5% of the water was exported as agricultural products Similar to the findings from the example of Rio Pardo de Minas inappropriate sanitation systems threaten the surface water resources and the groundwater on which the city of Dakar depends The participative process of collecting data analyzing the diagram and formulating potential measures in Dakar was characterized by a very active stakeholder engagement at the meetings held at the community level which were organized and facilitated by the local partner organizations The process effectively highlighted issues in water management that had been raised by the civil society for quite some time and achieved support to mitigate these issue from the authorities A result of the process was the formation of a committee for integrated water resources management planning in the three communities that consists of members from the utilities and civil society the Ministry of Water and Sanitation in Senegal expressed interest to replicate the WFD in other communities and to use it in local water resource management plans Water Flow Diagram of the municipality of Diender The applied methodology has some limitations the coefficients for evapotranspiration and runoff of water to surface water and groundwater after agricultural use are difficult to measure or estimate rough estimations were used that were derived from literature and expert consulting stakeholder consultations revealed that the irrigation and land management methods were not water efficient the flow toward evapotranspiration were coded as problematic (red) A better judgement is not possible without doing a more systematic assessment of the situation on the ground it was assumed that the water running off after agricultural use was contaminated with pesticides; however this assumption is not based on solid evidence the specificity of the WFDs are limited and the conclusions that can be drawn from them are general water resources are being polluted or where there are leakages in the distribution network cannot be made nor can the extent of pollution be determined An explanatory description that accompanies the WFD can overcome this limitation to some extent the WFD was designed as a communication and advocacy tool that is based locally availably data sets that can be limited in precision Therefore a detailed and precise assessment of hydrological processes is not possible the WFDs depicted the water sources used by the cities highlighted if the water treatment was adequate and revealed how much water was allocated among the different sectors groundwater and surface water were abstracted to be treated only river water was used in Rio Pardo and only groundwater in Diender where the narrower system boundaries excluded a larger part of the non-urbanized areas the major part of water in the other three case studies was used by agriculture agriculture used up to 64,000 L/day per person The domestic water use was 150 L/day per person in Bern 112 L/day per person in Santa Maria Bulacan 49 L/day per person in Rio Pardo de Minas and 32 L/day per person in Diender the losses in the distribution networks were higher than 10% and therefore open water resources were threatened by polluted water either from agriculture or from the lack of wastewater and sanitary infrastructure The extent of polluted water reaching open water bodies varied across the locations and not surprisingly was higher in less developed regions such as in the suburbs of Dakar or Rio Pardo de Minas Bern was the only study site where a comprehensive sewer system was in place and where the pollution of the water resources due to heavy rainfall events that overflow sewer system The other study sites had primarly onsite sanitation systems installed Polluted water leaking from those systems threatened groundwater and surface water bodies In none of the study sites were signficiant amounts of water recycled The selection of system boundaries had a large impact on the conclusions that could be drawn from the diagram If the system boundaries included large rural areas one of the main conclusions was that a large part of the water was used by agriculture the impact of UWMs in systems with large rural areas was more difficult to depict and evaluate as most urban flow arrows were too small to be compared setting narrow system boundaries around an urban area would not show the agricultural and sometimes also industrial activities that take place outside the city boundaries Water related activities outside city boundaries are relevant for the urban population because they impact the availability of water and the amount allocated to the different sectors and they influence water quality One possibility to overcome this challenge is to prepare a WFD that represents the whole water catchment area of a city and a separate “zoom-in” diagram of the urban area The participatory processes required much time to identify all relevant stakeholders and to integrate them into each step of the process This was especially the case in Rio Pardo de Minas and Diender where the processes to compose and discuss the WFD were highly participatory A precondition to be able to conduct the participatory approach was that institutions and organizations were willing to participate and openly share the data A clear explanation of the goal of the participatory process a detailed explanation of the purpose of the WFD and an official support statement by political leaders were helpful to bring stakeholders on board Since the goal of this study was to analyse the practical application of the WFD as a tool the participatory processes were not analyzed in detail the WFD triggerd a dialogue around sustainable water management the participatory discussion of the WFD led to the formation of a committee for water resource management in which the local administrative authorities were strongly involved the Ministry of Water and Sanitation was interested in replicating the WFD in other communities The experience in Rio Pardo highlighted that the utilization of water by different stakeholders is a sensitive issue and that a successful participary dialogue needs to be based on a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter and the trust of the stakeholders in the participatory process and dialogue it needs to be communicated transparently that the WFD can highlight challenges in water management but solutions have to be identified during a joint process The following insights were gained regarding the application criteria outlined in the introduction: The WFD methodology consists of a guide and an Excel-based data file that can be uploaded to an open online tool to make the Sankey Diagram Final adjustments can be made in PowerPoint the tools proved to be easy-to-use for people without any programming skills Basic computer literacy and analytical skills were sufficient to produce the WFDs the development of a WFD was initiated by different actors: researchers in Bern an international NGO in Brazil and a private consultant in collaboration with the public utility in the Philippines population densities varying by a factor of more than 300 full supply from surface water to a balanced supply from three different sources the WFD demonstrated its capacity to visualize the challenges of a city's UWM in a single diagram created the basis for a common understanding of these challenges the results of the WFD depended on the expertise of local stakeholders and the assumptions made such as system bounderies and the judgement of the flows in “appropriate” or “problematic” UWM practices the participatory process brought together different stakeholders and initiated consultation and joint action planning The experiences made during these participatory processes confirmed the suitability of the WFD to be used as a tool to trigger communication about water management and to facilitate concerted negotiations toward solutions On the basis of insights gained during the implementation of the case studies which confirmed the tool's compliance with the design criteria and its effect on triggering corrective measures in UWM there should be a broader dissemination of the tool to a larger community of users the following measures are suggested to extend the applicability of the tool: the total precipitation within the system boundaries could be included in an updated version of the WFD Precipitation plays an increasingly important role in UWM since rainfall patterns are more and more influenced by climate change The diagram could also highlight the potential impacts of climate hazards by showing which areas of the UWM are vulnerable to heavy rainfall providing stakeholders with a tool to identify measures contributing to climate resilience including precipitation in WFDs adds complexity to the diagram in the form of additional flows and nodes and would require more data to be gathered The advantages and disadvantages of including precipitation would need to be assessed carefully and would differ from case to case an adapted version of the WFD could be developed where the system boundaries are shifted from an urban focus to the watershed level This would allow for the consequences of land use changes on larger scales to be made visible Remote sensing data could be used to estimate evapotranspiration and runoff The improved version could also show the coefficients for run-off and evapotranspiration in more detail in order to allow for the making of more evidence-based estimations of evapotranspiration The trade-off in a diagram with wider system boundaries is that the urban water flows become less visible the WFD could be used to visualize scenarios The diagram could show how policies or interventions cause land use changes that affect urban water flows or the hydrologic cycle on the watershed level the diagram could be part of long-term monitoring at regular intervals to make changes in UWM visible the diagram cannot attribute the changes to certain strategies or interventions The changes in UWM might be caused by a certain strategy or intervention a better understandiung of the steps required for successfully steering the participatory process and providing more specific guidance to the implementation partners will improve the application of the WFD a more user friendly web application that can make WFDs more easily available could be developed The experiences gained during the participatory processes to develop the WFDs in the four presented cases revealed that the methodology applied for the WFD yields a suitable tool for the understanding of water flows and that it can be useful in the planning of improvements to an integrated UWM Users can easily comprehend the tool and the information provided in the diagram facilitates the participatory processes Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author Writing – review & editing The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research This research was possible through funding by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation the City of Bern and the aid organization of the Swiss protestant churches (HEKS/EPER) Open access funding by Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) The authors would like to thank all the stakeholders in the different case studies for contributing to the making of the Water Flow Diagrams the water experts who provided valuable feedback on how to improve the methodology as well as HEKS/EPER for the consistent support The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships 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Extinct for 10,000 years, ground sloths and giant armadillos may have built the largest paleoburrows ever discovered on Earth Francisco Buchmann/Unesp Chamber in Minas Gerais showing marks resembling scratches on the wall and a hollow that may have served as a resting spot for ground slothsFrancisco Buchmann/Unesp Valley of Giants is what paleontologist and oceanographer Francisco Buchmann calls a 250-meter-long stretch of the Esmeril River in rural Rio Pardo de Minas a municipality of 30,000 in northern Minas Gerais State the steep slopes along the river are covered by tall The vegetation obscures the entrance to six caves of impressive size—as much as 40 m long and in most cases terminating in a spacious chamber 5 to 10 m wide and up to 4 m high they may have been dug by large mammals such as giant armadillos and ground sloths which lived until about 10,000 years ago in what is now Brazil and constituted the class of animals known as South American megafauna a professor at São Paulo State University (Unesp) in São Vicente when geologist Vitor Ferreira from mining company Sul Americana de Metais discovered them by chance while looking for a spot to set up an iron mining facility in the area Buchmann returned with his team to map the caves and investigate the origin of curious marks etched into the walls which feature arched ceilings and walls and grooves in the rocks—compatible with scratch marks made by strong claws—led the researchers to conclude that the caves in the Valley of Giants must have been excavated by large animals such as those belonging to the South American megafauna In a paper published in the Revista Brasileira de Paleontologia in May 2016 the group asserts that these caves were not opened by water erosion or some other geological process possibly the largest such burrows ever discovered on Earth Francisco Buchmann / Unesp Geologist Vitor Sandin observes a hollow in a paleoburrow in the Valley of Giants in Minas Gerais…Francisco Buchmann / Unesp The Unesp and UFRGS paleontologists interpreted the hundreds of grooves etched into the walls of the paleoburrows as marks left by the animals’ claws as they opened the tunnels. At present, these marks are the principal indicators of the identity of the excavators, given the fact that no primitive sloth fossils have ever been found in paleoburrows in Brazil. Francisco Buchmann / Unesp …and geologist Milene Fornari inspects a paleoburrow in Doutor Pedrinho The researchers noted another feature common to the 15 paleoburrows in northern Minas Gerais. In the last chamber, besides the claw marks there were always one to three hollows in the wall very close to the ground, each one measuring 1 to 3 meters wide (see photo) “The surface of the hollows is smooth and appears to be very polished,” notes Buchmann Paleontologists have already raised the possibility that at least some species of ground sloths may have lived in groups Buchmann favors this hypothesis to explain how the sloths were able to open such large tunnels in the Valley of Giants “When I think about the volume of sediment excavated I can’t imagine how a single individual could have done this,” he says “I think it’s most likely that there was a colony of animals living and digging together.” “These discoveries represent a milestone,” says Cástor Cartelle a paleontologist specializing in prehistoric mammals and curator of the museum at PUC-Minas “The work of Buchmann’s team has yielded numerous interesting pieces of evidence that the animals occupied these burrows for at least some time and left marks on the walls there.” Buchmann suspects that the burrows were probably not excavated for safety reasons, because sloths had few predators. He and his colleagues think the most likely hypothesis is that the sloths were excavating in search of shelter from the climate, which at that time was colder and dryer. Ground sloth anatomy suggests that, like present-day sloths, they had difficulty maintaining body temperature. Cartelle raises other possibilities to explain the size of the burrows and the signs of occupation by several animals. There may possibly have been large fissures in the rocks of these mountains, in which case the animals merely completed the openings rather than doing full excavation. Another possibility is that one animal occupied the burrow, left its marks, and some time later another member of the species did the same. Francisco Buchmann / Unesp Fossilized claw of a giant sloth of the genus Valgipes…Francisco Buchmann / Unesp “I agree that occupation at different times by animals of similar size is a more plausible explanation for the existence of more than one resting place in these burrows,” says Renato Lopes, a paleontologist at the Federal University of the Pampa (Unipampa) in Rio Grande do Sul State, who has done collaborative work with Buchmann and Frank. “We know of no xenarthrans [an order of mammals that includes armadillos and sloths] that form familial groups beyond mother and offspring.” Francisco Buchmann / Unesp …compatible with marks made on the walls of paleoburrows in MinasFrancisco Buchmann / Unesp This new genus has been divided into two species. The largest and widest paleoburrows, attributed to sloths, belong to the species Megaichnus major (see illustration) Most of these were found in southern Brazil and a few others in the states of Minas Gerais and São Paulo one was discovered in Acre State and another in Rondônia State found on the outskirts of the city of Porto Velho is the most recent and extensive of the paleoburrows The narrower and more abundant paleoburrows were given the classification Megaichnus minor Most of these are filled with sediments brought in by flooding The few open tunnels stretch for more than 30 m and may bifurcate and form galleries the researchers have identified marks from claws fur and carapace plates from giant armadillos of the genera Pampatherium and Propaopus Buchmann heads the Paleotocas Project carried out by researchers from six Brazilian institutions who have identified thousands of such tunnels over the past 10 years The group is working to identify and map the paleoburrows and publish what is known about them in southern Brazil where many were known to the local populace but mistaken for caves or attributed to excavations made by indigenous peoples © Revista Pesquisa FAPESP - All rights reserved Official magazine of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) There’s dedication to your craft and then there’s Peter Caton An irregular contributor to Geographical for more than a decade from Brazil and Bangladesh to Somalia and Mozambique.  When I spoke to him, he was still buzzing from the success of an exhibition of his images about flood victims in South Sudan at the OXO Gallery beside the Thames in London (a story that appeared in the March issue of Geographical) I get to see the work on a computer screen An exhibition not only gives him an opportunity to see the images in large-format-print form but also gives others a different experience of viewing his work they’re actually confronted with the images and they can take their time looking at them Peter has specialised in humanitarian stories such as the ongoing disaster in South Sudan ‘The purpose of my photography is to inform – to give a voice to the otherwise voiceless,’ he says ‘I don’t expect the viewer to do anything about it but they should at least be informed and be made aware.  ‘What I’m seeing more and more is the people who are on the receiving end of climate change’s impact – people who live in remote places who are often without a voice,’ he continues ‘I like my work to serve as a reminder for people who live in more privileged parts of the world that this is actually going on And I feel like it’s an immense responsibility to do that.’ this focus on vulnerable people feels almost preordained ‘My parents ran a large children’s home in northern England so I grew up living inside that environment with my family and I suppose it was just a natural progression,’ he explains provided his early life with a strong moral underpinning and raised his awareness of social issues travelling the world covering humanitarian stories – it all seemed to come together when I was 17 and I was deciding which area of photography to go into I watched a documentary on Sebastião Salgado in respect of going around the world taking pictures and highlighting issues and that’s how it’s been since the beginning.’ ‘I did a degree and then worked in factories in Yorkshire to try to save enough money to go to India,’ he says I decided to do a shoot on the Bhopal gas disaster It was the 15th anniversary and people living around the factory perimeter were still suffering The Bhopal work ran over seven pages in Marie Claire and some of the leprosy images did very well in the John Kobal Awards which meant I had three prints up in the National Portrait Gallery On the back of that I moved to London and every time I felt insecure – a small-town boy in the big city – I would drop by the gallery and eavesdrop on people commenting on my prints But that was by no means my “big break” – it was still a lot of hard work he decided that instead of trying to get flown places for work I decided to pack a camera bag and go out there and live in these regions focusing on environmental issues,’ he says ‘That was 17 years ago and I’m still living on the road.’  I get access – access is the key thing,’ he explains ‘It’s very expensive to embed yourself in communities and wait to gain their trust I work with aid organisations that have field workers who have already gained the trust of the community and I can almost piggyback on that.’  it’s clear that the South Sudan flooding story is particularly close to his heart ‘Going back for three years in the floods was really rewarding,’ he says you don’t get to see things on a long-term basis – you go in and maybe shoot the beginning of a campaign because they need to raise money or at the end to show what they’ve achieved It’s very unusual that you get to return to a place again and again.’  Peter’s eyes light up as he describes the experience ‘I photograph with a digital Hasselblad and studio lighting and to take that kind of kit into these kinds of areas to be in that situation of photographing these people and locked into that world he’s also very clear-eyed about the difficulties involved in what he does and the life that he’s chosen ‘I hate airports; I hate living on the road,’ he says Loneliness is something that you’ve got to deal with a lot when you’re out there You have to sacrifice a lot – your friends the community of people that you live within.  ‘If photographers want to do the kind of work that I do they have to be prepared to sacrifice and be committed,’ he continues eat and breathe photography – it’s not a job I spend most of my time in 40°C heat working ten-hour days this is the reality of being a documentary photographer in the 21st century clients can’t afford to fly people out from the West – and they won’t want to do that because of the carbon footprint anyway – so you’ve got to be prepared to live nomadically,’ he says ‘You’ve got to show that commitment and base yourself in a region but you need to choose your region wisely – somewhere that really gets under your skin And choose a subject area that you want to work on ‘I moved to Africa after living in South Asia for nine years,’ he concludes I want to champion these people with my camera and do all that I can.”’ Filed Under: Culture Tagged With: , , Click Here for SUBSCRIPTION details Want to access Geographical on your tablet or smartphone Android or PC/Mac image below to download the app for your device Copyright © 2025 · Site by Syon Media ground sloths and giant armadillos may have built the largest paleoburrows ever discovered on Earth The Valley of Giants is what paleontologist and oceanographer Francisco Buchmann calls a 250-meter-long stretch of the Esmeril River in rural Rio Pardo de Minas The vegetation obscures the entrance to six caves of impressive size terminate in a spacious chamber 5 to 10 m wide and up to 4 m high such as giant armadillos and ground sloths which lived until approximately 10,000 years ago in what is now Brazil and constituted the class of animals known as South American megafauna from the mining company Sul Americana de Metais discovered them by chance while looking for a spot to establish an iron-mining facility in the area as well as grooves in the rocks compatible with scratch marks made by strong claws led the researchers to conclude that the caves in the Valley of Giants must have been excavated by large animals the group asserts that these caves did not develop through water erosion or some other geological process Francisco Buchmann / Unesp Geologist Vitor Sandin observes a hollow in a paleoburrow in the Valley of Giants in Minas GeraisFrancisco Buchmann / Unesp Unesp and UFRGS paleontologists interpreted the hundreds of grooves etched into the walls of the paleoburrows as marks left by the animals’ claws as they opened the tunnels. At present, these marks are the principal indicators of the identity of the excavators, given that no primitive sloth fossils have ever been found in the paleoburrows of Brazil. The researchers noted another feature common to the 15 paleoburrows in northern Minas Gerais. In the last chamber, next to the claw marks, there were always one to three hollows in the wall very close to the ground, each one measuring 1 to 3 meters wide (see the photo on page 46). “The surface of the hollows is smooth and appears to be very polished,” notes Buchmann. He believes that these surfaces were beds, the mylodontids’ favorite resting spots. Francisco Buchmann / Unesp Geologist Milene Fornari inspects a paleoburrow in Doutor Pedrinho Buchmann favors this hypothesis to explain how sloths were able to open such large tunnels in the Valley of Giants He says that there is considerable variation in the size and shape of sloth claws even among individuals of the same species and he questions the identification of the marks “A burrow this size would not provide protection against a predator such as saber-toothed tigers.” In his opinion the most likely explanation is that the burrows were made by giant armadillos Buchmann suspects that the burrows were probably not excavated for safety reasons because sloths had few predators. He and his colleagues think that the most likely hypothesis is that the sloths were excavating in search of shelter from the climate, which, at that time, was colder and dryer. Ground sloth anatomy suggests that, similar to present-day sloths, they had difficulty maintaining their body temperature. Cartelle raises other possibilities to explain the size of the burrows and the signs of occupation by several animals. There may have been large fissures in the rocks of these mountains, in which case, the animals merely completed the openings rather than carrying out the full excavation. Another possibility is that one animal occupied the burrow, left its marks, and some time later, another member of the species did the same. “I agree that occupation at different times by animals of similar size is a more plausible explanation for the existence of more than one resting place in these burrows,” says Renato Lopes, a paleontologist at the Federal University of Pampa (Unipampa) in Rio Grande do Sul State, who has performed collaborative work with Buchmann and Frank. “We know of no xenarthrans [an order of mammals that includes armadillos and sloths] that form familial groups beyond mother and offspring.” Francisco Buchmann / Unesp …which is compatible with marks made on the walls of paleoburrows in MinasFrancisco Buchmann / Unesp This new genus has been divided into two species. The largest and widest paleoburrows, attributed to sloths, belong to the species Megaichnus major (see illustration) Most of these have been found in southern Brazil and a few others in the states of Minas Gerais and São Paulo researchers have identified marks from claws fur and carapace plates from giant armadillos of the genera Pampatherium and Propraopus Buchmann heads the Palaeoburrows Project carried out by researchers from six Brazilian institutions The group is working to identify and map the paleoburrows and to publish what is known about them in southern Brazil where many were known to the local populace but have been mistaken for caves or attributed to excavations performed by indigenous peoples Published in February 2017 © Revista Pesquisa FAPESP - All rights reserved.