Productivity benefits of warming at regional scale could be offset by detrimental impacts on site level hydrology

Abstract

Climate change affects the distribution and persistence of wildlife. Broad scale studies have demonstrated that climate change shifts the geographic ranges and phenology of species. These findings are influential for making high level strategies but not practical enough to guide site specific management. In this study, we explored the environment factors affecting the population of Bar-headed Goose in the key breeding site of Qinghai using generalized additive mixed model (GAMM). Our results showed that 1) there were significant increasing trends in climate variables and river flows to the Qinghai Lake; 2) NDVI in the sites decreased significantly despite the regional positive trend induced by the warmer and wetter climate; 3) NDVI at site scale was negatively correlated to lake water level; and 4) the abundance of Bar-headed Goose decreased significantly at all sites. While the abundance was positively related to NDVI at breeding sites, the GAMM revealed an opposite relationship at foraging areas. Our findings demonstrated the multi-facet effects of climate change on population dynamics; and the effect at global/regional scale could be complicated by site level factors.

Rapid growth of the Bar-headed Goose Anser indicus wintering population in Tibet, China: 1991–2017

“…On the Bar-headed Goose breeding grounds within China, more than six national nature reserves have been created since the 1980s, including Chang Tang National Nature Reserve in Tibet (334,000 km 2 ; established 1993), and Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve in Qinghai Province (152,300 km 2 ; established 2000). Two national nature reserves on Bar-headed Goose breeding grounds where surveys have been conducted include Altun Shan in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (15,4000 geese; Zhang et al 2012) and Qinghai Lake in Qinghai Province (˜6,000 geese; Zhang et al 2009, Zeng et al 2017), highlighting the importance of these reserves to the world’s Bar-headed Goose population.…”

“…Bar-headed Goose breed and moult primarily on freshwater, brackish, and saline lakes as well as in shallow wetlands (Batbayar et al 2014, Zhang et al 2015, Takekawa et al 2017, Zeng et al 2017, Luo et al 2020). The Tibetan Plateau has the highest concentration of high-altitude inland lakes in the world including ˜31,600 lakes <1 km 2 (Lei and Yang 2017), and between 1,171 (Wan et al 2016) and 1,291(Mao et al 2018) lakes >1 km 2 .…”

The spatial-temporal variations of vegetation cover in Qinba Mountains from 1982-2015

“…The climate system is undergoing significant changes characterized by global warming in the past 100 years, and the effects of terrestrial ecosystems caused by such changes have been highly valued by humans (Shen et al 2013;Huang et al 2017;Zeng et al 2017) . As the main body of terrestrial ecosystems, vegetation is the natural link connecting the relationship between atmosphere, water and soil, and plays an important role in material circulation and energy flow (Braswell et al 1997 (Nemani et al 2003).…”