Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.
The City University of New York, New York, NY 10017, USA.
Sci Total Environ. 2024 Dec 1;954:176201. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.176201. Epub 2024 Sep 16.
Climate change is forecasted to drastically alter freshwater fish and mussel species distribution. Hydropower dam reservoirs, which modify downstream thermal regimes, may interact with climate change's impact on species distribution. This distribution shift may feedback, affecting hydropower operation costs through environmental compliance. We investigated how freshwater species distribution will shift due to climate change and hydropower reservoirs in the conterminous United States (CONUS), and how this will affect biodiversity mitigation costs for privately-owned hydropower plants. In general, using environmental niche modeling, we found that climate change increased the range of both freshwater fish and mussel species on average. For fish, this was mainly due to the expanded habitat for warm-water and cool-water fish species despite the diminish in habitat for cold-water species. Compared to climate change, thermal stratification of hydropower reservoirs had a small impact on the future range changes of these species in the tailwaters but showed an interaction with the effect of climate change on species range. Geographically, we projected an increase of species richness in the west and a decrease in the central and east of CONUS for fish, while projecting uniform increase for mussels. With this shift in species distribution, we estimated that the Northwest region will face the largest increase in mitigation cost, while the majority of plants in the Southeast will experience a decrease in cost.
预计气候变化将极大地改变淡水鱼类和贻贝物种的分布。水力发电大坝水库改变了下游的热状况，可能会与气候变化对物种分布的影响相互作用。这种分布变化可能会产生反馈，通过环境合规影响水力发电的运营成本。我们研究了气候变化和美国大陆（CONUS）的水力发电水库如何导致淡水物种分布发生变化，以及这将如何影响私人拥有的水力发电厂的生物多样性缓解成本。一般来说，我们使用环境生态位模型发现，气候变化平均增加了淡水鱼类和贻贝物种的分布范围。对于鱼类来说，这主要是由于温水和冷水鱼类物种的栖息地扩大，尽管冷水物种的栖息地减少了。与气候变化相比，水力发电水库的热分层对这些物种在尾水中未来分布变化的影响较小，但与气候变化对物种分布范围的影响存在相互作用。从地理上看，我们预计鱼类的物种丰富度将在西部增加，在中部和东部减少，而贻贝的物种丰富度预计将均匀增加。随着物种分布的变化，我们估计西北地区将面临最大的缓解成本增加，而东南部的大多数工厂的成本将下降。
