Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Department of Ecosystem Research, Berlin, Germany.
Freie Universität Berlin, Institute of Biology, Berlin, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2020 Feb 13;10(1):2520. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-59107-y.
Climate change has the potential to alter the flow regimes of rivers and consequently affect the taxonomic and functional diversity of freshwater organisms. We modeled future flow regimes for the 2050 and 2090 time horizons and tested how flow regimes impact the abundance of 150 macroinvertebrate species and their functional trait compositions in one lowland river catchment (Treene) and one mountainous river catchment (Kinzig) in Europe. We used all 16 global circulation models (GCMs) and regional climate models (RCMs) of the CORDEX dataset under the RCP 8.5 scenario to calculate future river flows. The high variability in relative change of flow among the 16 climate models cascaded into the ecological models and resulted in substantially different predicted abundance values for single species. This variability also cascades into any subsequent analysis of taxonomic or functional freshwater biodiversity. Our results showed that flow alteration effects are different depending on the catchment and the underlying species pool. Documenting such uncertainties provides a basis for the further assessment of potential climate-change impacts on freshwater taxa distributions.
气候变化有可能改变河流的水流状况，从而影响淡水生物的分类和功能多样性。我们模拟了未来 2050 年和 2090 年两个时间点的水流状况，并测试了水流状况如何影响欧洲一个低地河流集水区（特雷内）和一个山地河流集水区（金齐希）的 150 种大型无脊椎动物物种的丰度及其功能特征组成。我们使用了 CORDEX 数据集下的所有 16 个全球环流模型（GCM）和区域气候模型（RCM），根据 RCP8.5 情景来计算未来的河流流量。16 个气候模型中相对流量变化的高度可变性在生态模型中呈级联式，导致单一物种的预测丰度值有很大差异。这种可变性也会影响到对分类学或功能淡水生物多样性的任何后续分析。我们的结果表明，水流变化的影响因集水区和潜在的物种库而异。记录这些不确定性为进一步评估气候变化对淡水分类单元分布的潜在影响提供了基础。
