scholarly journals Structural and functional responses of invertebrate communities to climate change and flow regulation in alpine catchments

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 1612-1628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Bruno ◽  
Oscar Belmar ◽  
Anthony Maire ◽  
Adrien Morel ◽  
Bernard Dumont ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Flow Regulation ◽  
Functional Responses ◽  
Invertebrate Communities ◽  
Alpine Catchments

scholarly journals Future water temperature of rivers in Switzerland under climate change investigated with physics-based models

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrien Michel ◽  
Bettina Schaefli ◽  
Nander Wever ◽  
Harry Zekollari ◽  
Michael Lehning ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Temperature Increase ◽  
Emission Scenarios ◽  
River Temperature ◽  
Alpine Regions ◽  
Low Emission ◽  
High Emission ◽  
Swiss Plateau ◽  
Alpine Catchments

Abstract. Rivers are ecosystems highly sensitive to climate change and projected future increase in air temperature is expected to increase the stress for these ecosystems. Rivers are also an important socio-economical factor. In addition to changes in water availability, climate change will impact the temperature of rivers. This study presents a detailed analysis of river temperature and discharge evolution over the 21st century in Switzerland, a country covering a wide range of Alpine and lowland hydrological regimes. In total, 12 catchments are studied. They are situated both in the lowland Swiss Plateau and the Alpine regions and cover overall 10 % of the country’s area. This represents the so far largest study of climate change impacts on river temperature in Switzerland. The impact of climate change is assessed using a chain of physics-based models forced with the most recent climate change scenarios for Switzerland including low, mid, and high emissions pathways. A clear warming of river water is modelled during the 21st century, more pronounced for the high emission scenarios and toward the end of the century. For the period 2030–2040, median warming in river temperature of +1.1 °C for Swiss Plateau catchments and of +0.8 °C for Alpine catchments are expected compared to the reference period 1990–2000 (similar for all emission scenarios). At the end of the century (2080–2090), the median annual river temperature increase ranges between +0.9 °C for low emission and +3.5 °C for high emission scenarios for both Swiss Plateau and Alpine catchments. At the seasonal scale, the warming on the Swiss Plateau and in the Alpine regions exhibits different patterns. For the Swiss Plateau, the spring and fall warming is comparable to the warming in winter, while the summer warming is stronger but still moderate. In Alpine catchments, only a very limited warming is expected in winter. A marked discharge increase in winter and spring is expected in these catchments due to enhanced snowmelt and a larger fraction of liquid precipitation. Accordingly, the period of maximum discharge in Alpine catchments, currently occurring during mid-summer, will shift to earlier in the year by a few weeks (low emission) or almost two months (high emission) by the end of the century. In summer, the marked discharge reduction in Alpine catchments for high emission scenarios leads to an increase in sensitivity of water temperature to low discharge, which is not observed in the Swiss Plateau catchments. In addition, an important soil warming is expected due to glacier and snow cover decrease. These effects combined lead to a summertime river warming of +6.0 °C in Alpine catchments by the end of the century for high emission scenarios. Two metrics are used to show the adverse effects of river temperature increase both on natural and human systems. All results of this study along with the necessary source code are provided with this manuscript.

Impact and uncertainty of climate projections on Alpine catchments using high-resolution models

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Sebastian Moraga ◽  
Nadav Peleg ◽  
Simone Fatichi ◽  
Peter Molnar ◽  
Paolo Burlando
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Climate Variability ◽  
Soil Conditions ◽  
Internal Climate Variability ◽  
Mountainous Catchments ◽  
Precipitation Decrease ◽  
Alpine Catchments ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

<p>Hydrological processes in mountainous catchments will be subject to climate change on all scales, and their response is expected to vary considerably in space. Typical hydrological studies, which use coarse climate data inputs obtained from General Circulation Models (GCM) and Regional Climate Models (RCM), focus mostly on statistics at the outlet of the catchments, overlooking the effects within the catchments. Furthermore, the role of uncertainty, especially originated from natural climate variability, is rarely analyzed. In this work, we quantified the impacts of climate change on hydrological components and determined the sources of uncertainties in the projections for two mostly natural Swiss alpine catchments: Kleine Emme and Thur. Using a two-dimensional weather generator, AWE-GEN-2d, and based on nine different GCM-RCM model chains, we generated high-resolution (2 km, 1 hour) ensembles of gridded climate inputs until the end of the 21<sup>st</sup> century. The simulated variables were subsequently used as inputs into the fully distributed hydrological model Topkapi-ETH to estimate the changes in hydrological statistics at 100-m and hourly resolutions. Increased temperatures (by 4°C, on average) and changes in precipitation (decrease over high elevations by up to 10%, and increase at the lower elevation by up to 15%) results in increased evapotranspiration rates in the order of 10%, up to a 50% snowmelt, and drier soil conditions. These changes translate into important shifts in streamflow seasonality at the outlet of the catchments, with a significant increase during the winter months (up to 40%) and a reduction during the summer (up to 30%). Analysis at the sub-catchment scale reveals elevation-dependent hydrological responses: mean annual streamflow, as well as high and low flow extremes, are projected to decrease in the uppermost sub-catchments and increase in the lower ones. Furthermore, we computed the uncertainty of the estimations and compared them to the magnitude of the change signal. Although the signal-to-noise-ratio of extreme streamflow for most sub-catchments is low (below 0.5) there is a clear elevation dependency. In every case, internal climate variability (as opposed to climate model uncertainty) explains most of the uncertainty, averaging 85% for maximum and minimum flows, and 60% for mean flows. The results highlight the importance of modelling the distributed impacts of climate change on mountainous catchments, and of taking into account the role of internal climate variability in hydrological projections.</p>

Ecological restoration on farmland can drive beneficial functional responses in plant and invertebrate communities

2011 ◽  
Vol 140 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 62-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard F. Pywell ◽  
William R. Meek ◽  
R.G. Loxton ◽  
Marek Nowakowski ◽  
Claire Carvell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Restoration ◽  
Functional Responses ◽  
Invertebrate Communities

scholarly journals Climate change effects on macrofaunal litter decomposition: the interplay of temperature, body masses and stoichiometry

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1605) ◽  
pp. 3025-3032 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ott ◽  
Björn C. Rall ◽  
Ulrich Brose
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Litter Quality ◽  
Handling Time ◽  
The Body ◽  
Nutrient Ratios ◽  
Functional Responses ◽  
Decomposition Rates ◽  
Litter Bag ◽  
Climate Change Effects ◽  
Compensatory Feeding

Macrofauna invertebrates of forest floors provide important functions in the decomposition process of soil organic matter, which is affected by the nutrient stoichiometry of the leaf litter. Climate change effects on forest ecosystems include warming and decreasing litter quality (e.g. higher C : nutrient ratios) induced by higher atmospheric CO 2 concentrations. While litter-bag experiments unravelled separate effects, a mechanistic understanding of how interactions between temperature and litter stoichiometry are driving decomposition rates is lacking. In a laboratory experiment, we filled this void by quantifying decomposer consumption rates analogous to predator–prey functional responses that include the mechanistic parameters handling time and attack rate. Systematically, we varied the body masses of isopods, the environmental temperature and the resource between poor (hornbeam) and good quality (ash). We found that attack rates increased and handling times decreased (i) with body masses and (ii) temperature. Interestingly, these relationships interacted with litter quality: small isopods possibly avoided the poorer resource, whereas large isopods exhibited increased, compensatory feeding of the poorer resource, which may be explained by their higher metabolic demands. The combination of metabolic theory and ecological stoichiometry provided critically important mechanistic insights into how warming and varying litter quality may modify macrofaunal decomposition rates.

scholarly journals Functional responses to climate change may increase invasive potential of Carpobrotus edulis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josefina G. Campoy ◽  
Margarita Lema ◽  
Erola Fenollosa ◽  
Sergi Munné‐Bosch ◽  
Rubén Retuerto
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Functional Responses ◽  
Invasive Potential ◽  
Carpobrotus Edulis

scholarly journals Photosynthetic resistance and resilience under drought and rewatering in maize plants

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miao Qi ◽  
Xiaodi Liu ◽  
Yibo Li ◽  
He Song ◽  
Feng Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Functional Traits ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Leaf Age ◽  
Radiative Energy ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Severe Drought ◽  
Functional Responses ◽  
Precipitation Regimes

AbstractAbnormally altered precipitation patterns induced by climate change have profound global effects on crop production. However, the plant functional responses to various precipitation regimes remain unclear. Here, greenhouse and field experiments were conducted to determine how maize plant functional traits respond to drought, flooding, and rewatering. Drought and flooding hampered photosynthetic capacity, particularly when severe and/or prolonged. Most photosynthetic traits recovered after rewatering, with few compensatory responses. Rewatering often elicited high photosynthetic resilience in plants exposed to severe drought at the end of plant development, with the response strongly depending on the drought severity/duration and plant growth stage. The associations of chlorophyll concentrations with photosynthetically functional activities were stronger during post-tasselling than pre-tasselling, implying an involvement of leaf age/senescence in responses to episodic drought and subsequent rewatering. Coordinated changes in chlorophyll content, gas exchange, fluorescence parameters (PSII quantum efficiency and photochemical/non-photochemical radiative energy dissipation) possibly contributed to the enhanced drought resistance and resilience and suggested a possible regulative trade-off. These findings provide fundamental insights into how plants regulate their functional traits to deal with sporadic alterations in precipitation. Breeding and management of plants with high resistance and resilience traits could help crop production under future climate change.

scholarly journals Flooding Related Consequences of Climate Change on Canadian Cities and Flow Regulation Infrastructure

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayushi Gaur ◽  
Abhishek Gaur ◽  
Dai Yamazaki ◽  
Slobodan P. Simonovic
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Flood Hazard ◽  
Flow Regulation ◽  
Hydrodynamic Modelling ◽  
Coastal Regions ◽  
Southern Ontario ◽  
Operating Rules ◽  
Northern Regions ◽  
Projected Changes ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

This study discusses the flooding related consequences of climate change on most populous Canadian cities and flow regulation infrastructure (FRI). The discussion is based on the aggregated results of historical and projected future flooding frequencies and flood timing as generated by Canada-wide hydrodynamic modelling in a previous study. Impact assessment on 100 most populous Canadian cities indicate that future flooding frequencies in some of the most populous cities such as Toronto and Montreal can be expected to increase from 100 (250) years to 15 (22) years by the end of the 21st century making these cities highest at risk to projected changes in flooding frequencies as a consequence of climate change. Overall 40–60% of the analyzed cities are found to be associated with future increases in flooding frequencies and associated increases in flood hazard and flood risk. The flooding related impacts of climate change on 1072 FRIs located across Canada are assessed both in terms of projected changes in future flooding frequencies and changes in flood timings. Results suggest that 40–50% of the FRIs especially those located in southern Ontario, western coastal regions, and northern regions of Canada can be expected to experience future increases in flooding frequencies. FRIs located in many of these regions are also projected to experience future changes in flood timing underlining that operating rules for those FRIs may need to be reassessed to make them resilient to changing climate.

scholarly journals Timing and magnitude of future annual runoff extremes in contrasting Alpine catchments in Austria

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hanus ◽  
Markus Hrachowitz ◽  
Harry Zekollari ◽  
Gerrit Schoups ◽  
Miren Vizcaino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Annual Runoff ◽  
Snow Melt ◽  
Annual Maximum ◽  
Ice Dynamics ◽  
Rcp 8.5 ◽  
Alpine Catchments ◽  
Maximum Flows ◽  
Hydrological Regimes

Abstract. Hydrological regimes of alpine catchments are expected to be strongly affected by climate change mostly due to their dependence on snow and ice dynamics. While seasonal changes have been studied extensively, studies on changes in the timing and magnitude of annual extremes remain rare. This study investigates the effects of climate change on runoff patterns in six contrasting alpine catchments in Austria using a process-based semi-distributed hydrological model and projections from 14 regional climate and global climate model combinations for RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5. The study catchments represent a spectrum of different hydrological regimes, from pluvial-nival to nivo-glacial, as well as distinct topographies and land forms, characterizing different elevation zones across the Eastern Alps to provide a comprehensive picture of future runoff changes. The climate projections are used to model river runoff in 2071–2100, which are then compared to the 1981–2010 reference period for all study catchments. Changes in timing and magnitude of annual maximum and minimum flows as well as in monthly runoff and snow melt are quantified and analyzed. Our results indicate a substantial shift to earlier occurrences in annual maximum flows by 9 to 31 days and an extension of the potential flood season by one to three months for high-elevation catchments. For low-elevation catchments, changes in timing of annual maximum flows are less pronounced. Magnitudes of annual maximum flows are likely to increase by 2–18 % under RCP 4.5, while no clear changes are projected for four catchments under RCP 8.5. The latter is caused by a pronounced increase in evaporation and decrease in snow melt contributions which offset increases in precipitation. Minimum annual runoff occur 13–31 days earlier in the winter months for high-elevation catchments, whereas for low-elevation catchments a shift from winter to autumn by about 15–100 days is projected. While all catchments show an increase in mean magnitude of minimum flows by 7–30 % under RCP 4.5, this is only the case for four catchments under RCP 8.5. Our results suggest a relationship between the elevation of catchments and changes in timing of annual maximum and minimum flows. For the magnitude of the extreme flows, a relationship is found between catchment elevation and annual minimum flows, whereas this relationship is lacking between elevation and annual maximum flow.

scholarly journals Functional responses of recently emerged seedlings of an endemic Mexican oak (Quercus eduardii) under climate change conditions

2018 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 582
Author(s):  
Ernesto I. Badano ◽  
Francisco A. Guerra-Coss ◽  
Sandra M. Gelviz-Gelvez ◽  
Joel Flores ◽  
Pablo Delgado-Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Seedling Emergence ◽  
Canopy Cover ◽  
Growing Season ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Tree Seedlings ◽  
Functional Responses ◽  
Climate Change Simulation ◽  
Survival And Growth ◽  
Growth Of Seedlings

<p><strong>Background: </strong>Climate change will increase temperature and reduce rainfall across temperate forests of Mexico. This can alter tree establishment dynamics within forest and in neighbouring man-made clearings.</p><p><strong>Hypotheses:</strong> Climate change will reduce emergence and survival of tree seedlings, and surviving plants will display functional responses matching with these changes. These effects should be more noticeable in clearings due to the lack of canopy cover.</p><p><strong>Studied species</strong>: <em>Quercus eduardii</em> (Fagaceae, section <em>Lobatae</em>) an oak species endemic to Mexico.</p><p><strong>Study site and years of study</strong>: Tree growing season 2015-2016 (rainy season) in a mature oak forest and a neighbouring clearing in Sierra de Álvarez, state of San Luis Potosí.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>In both habitats, we established control plots (under current climatic conditions) and climate change simulation plots (increased temperature and reduced rainfall). At the beginning of the growing season, we sowed acorns of <em>Q. eduardii</em> in these plots and monitored the emergence, survival and growth of seedlings. At the end of the growing season, we assessed functional responses on surviving seedlings.</p><p><strong>Results:</strong> Seedling emergence and survival were lower in climate change plots from both habitats. However, differences in survival between climate treatments were larger within the forest. Seedlings from climate change plots displayed functional responses indicating higher levels of thermal and water stress.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>This study indicates that climate change will constrain tree recruitment in Mexican oak forests. However, contrary to our expectations, it seems that these effects will be higher within forests than in man-made clearings.</p>

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document