2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference

March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH

6/08/2017 | 11:15 AM - 11:30 AM | FLOW REGIME ALTERATION DEGRADES ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS IN RIVERINE ECOSYSTEMS | 302B

FLOW REGIME ALTERATION DEGRADES ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS IN RIVERINE ECOSYSTEMS

Riverine ecosystems are governed by patterns of temporal variation in river flows. This dynamism is threatened by climate change and the near-ubiquitous human control of river flows globally, which may have severe effects on species distributions and interactions. There is therefore a fundamental need to forecast riverine ecosystem responses to changing flow regimes over long timescales. We employed a combination of population modeling and network theory to explore the consequences of possible flow regime futures on riparian plant communities in the American Southwest, including scenarios of increased drought, flooding, and flow homogenization. We show that even slight modifications to the natural flow regime can have severe consequences for the structure of riparian plant networks. Networks of emergent interactions were most dense at the natural flow regime and became simplified as a function of flow alteration. The most influential component of flow alteration was flood reduction, with drought and flow homogenization both having greater negative community-wide consequences than increased flooding. Maintaining floods under future climates will be needed to overcome the negative long-term consequences of flow modification on riverine ecosystems.

S31 Moving forward in flow ecology: identifying and testing key hypotheses
C20 Climate Change
S24 Towards a predictive freshwater ecology: using time-series data to understand and forecast responses to a changing environment

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Presenters/Authors

Jonathan Tonkin (), University of Canterbury, jonathan.tonkin@canterbury.ac.nz;