Multiple stressors in China’s freshwater ecoregions

China has 38 ecoregions grouped into 8 major habitat types across 9 main basins. The freshwaters of China are at risk of multiple stressor impacts because of a variety of conflicts in the water use in agriculture, industry, and urbanization, although regional variations in human activities and water shortage make the status very uneven. Furthermore, there is often an upstream-downstream gradient of stress, which makes it very challenging to disentangle the main stressors and their effects, as well as to make ecological predictions across ecoregions. Freshwater ecosystem management approaches in China need to be adaptive and embedded within a watershed-wide concept to cope with upcoming pressures.