Ecological assessment of a subtropical floodplain wetland of the Ganga basin in the context of changing climate using GIS tools

Abstract

Climate change associated with anthropogenic stressors is considered the main threat to these wetlands resulting in reduced water connection followed by a decline in ecological functions. This article presents a systemic approach to assess the present ecological status of a subtropical floodplain wetland concerning the fisheries and associated ecosystem services. The analysis of historic climatic data indicated a weak increasing (R2 = 0.098) and decreasing (R2 = 0.042) trend in average annual air temperature and total annual rainfall, respectively. In addition, a significant reduction in the wetland area was also observed. Altogether, 45 fish species were reported in the studied wetland, of which 2 are listed as endangered and 7 are near threatened. Fish production increased from 2010 to 2020 as a result of culture-based fisheries practice. The present study demonstrated the variation of the important fisheries-related environment and nutrient parameters of the wetland through the geographic information system (GIS)-based spatial distribution map for the reader's digest. It has been found that the provisioning ecosystem services are higher in number (n = 9) followed by supporting (n = 6), regulating (n = 4), and cultural (n = 2) ecosystem services. Finally, we have discussed some important case-specific sustainable climate-smart adaptation and mitigation approaches to strengthen the resilience and adaptive capacity of fishers.