Cardiff School of Biosciences and Water Research Institute, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF10 3AX, UK.
Department of Biology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, 05405, USA.
Nat Commun. 2019 Apr 26;10(1):1956. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09736-3.
Many species are accumulating climatic debt as they fail to keep pace with increasing global temperatures. In theory, concomitant decreases in other stressors (e.g. pollution, fragmentation) could offset some warming effects, paying climatic debt with accrued environmental credit. This process may be occurring in many western European rivers. We fit a Markov chain model to ~20,000 macroinvertebrate samples from England and Wales, and demonstrate that despite large temperature increases 1991-2011, macroinvertebrate communities remained close to their predicted equilibrium with environmental conditions. Using a novel analysis of multiple stressors, an accumulated climatic debt of 0.64 (±0.13 standard error) °C of warming was paid by a water-quality credit equivalent to 0.89 (±0.04)°C of cooling. Although there is finite scope for mitigating additional climate warming in this way, water quality improvements appear to have offset recent temperature increases, and the concept of environmental credit may be a useful tool for communicating climate offsetting.
许多物种由于未能跟上全球气温升高的步伐而积累了气候债务。理论上，其他压力因素（如污染、破碎化）的同时减少可能会抵消一些变暖效应，用积累的环境信用来偿还气候债务。这一过程可能正在许多西欧河流中发生。我们拟合了一个马尔可夫链模型，该模型基于英格兰和威尔士的约 20000 个大型无脊椎动物样本，结果表明，尽管 1991 年至 2011 年期间温度大幅上升，但大型无脊椎动物群落仍接近其与环境条件的预测平衡。通过对多种压力因素的新分析，通过水质信用支付了 0.64（±0.13 标准误差）°C 的变暖累积气候债务，相当于 0.89（±0.04）°C 的冷却。尽管以这种方式缓解额外气候变暖的范围有限，但水质改善似乎已经抵消了最近的温度上升，环境信用的概念可能是传达气候补偿的有用工具。
