A multi-modeling approach to evaluating climate and land use change impacts in a Great Lakes River Basin

Abstract

River ecosystems are driven by linked physical, chemical, and biological subsystems, which operate over different temporal and spatial domains. This complexity increases uncertainty in ecological forecasts, and impedes preparation for the ecological consequences of climate change. We describe a recently developed ''multi-modeling'' system for ecological forecasting in a 7600 km 2 watershed in the North American Great Lakes Basin. Using a series of linked land cover, climate, hydrologic, hydraulic, thermal, loading, and biological response models, we examined how changes in both land cover and climate may interact to shape the habitat suitability of river segments for common sport fishes and alter patterns of biological integrity. In scenariobased modeling, both climate and land use change altered multiple ecosystem properties. Because water temperature has a controlling influence on species distributions, sport fishes were overall more sensitive to climate change than to land cover change. However, community-based biological integrity metrics were more sensitive to land use change than climate change; as were nutrient export rates. We discuss the implications of this result for regional preparations for climate change adaptation, and the extent to which the result may be constrained by our modeling methodology.

A Review of the Integrated Effects of Changing Climate, Land Use, and Dams on Mekong River Hydrology

“…Future studies should attempt to improve the understanding of the integrated effects of climate change and alteration of land uses due to dam construction and other related water management activities over the entire river basin. Such studies should employ the latest generation of models that bring together the hydrological, agricultural, social, and ecological aspects into a single-consistent framework [83][84][85][86].…”

Consistency of Hydrologic Relationships of a Paired Watershed Approach

“…Work by [35] highlights the limitation of the approach to quantifying effects of urbanization on components of the hydrologic cycle. The above concerns over the paired watershed approach have inspired use of hydrologic models to assess effects of climate and land use change on watershed hydrology [36][37][38][39]. Although hydrologic models are cost and time savers, their relatively higher learning curve and their requirement for multiple data inputs provide challenges to water managers.…”

Plant and Soil Biota: Crucial for Mitigating Climate Change in Forests

“…Particularly vulnerable to climatic change are river networks, whose structure and functions respond to managements of their hydrology [8]. Some fishes, for example, are more sensitive to climate change than to land cover change [20].…”