2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference

March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH

5/21/2018 | 9:00 AM - 9:15 AM | TRADE-OFFS AND CO-BENEFITS OF FUTURE FLOW REGIMES ACROSS MAJOR TAXONOMIC GROUPS | 310 B

TRADE-OFFS AND CO-BENEFITS OF FUTURE FLOW REGIMES ACROSS MAJOR TAXONOMIC GROUPS

We highlight the antagonistic vs. synergistic effects of target-oriented flow management, and argue that mechanistic models provide useful tools for understanding river dynamics under uncertain futures. We developed three independent community-wide flow-population models for riparian plants, fish, and benthic invertebrates for use with a single flow regime. These models, which mechanistically link river flows with population dynamics, demonstrated the central importance of natural cycles of flooding and drought for the maintenance of healthy communities. Here, we demonstrate how these models can be employed to understand the effects of diverse future flow regimes across river ecosystems and the various trade-offs associated with managing flows for specific goals (e.g. natural flow mimicry, targeting native fish abundance) compared to business-as-usual (e.g. flow homogenization, climate change). By simultaneously examining multiple scenarios across three major taxonomic groups, we explore ways that flow regimes can be optimized to minimize the ecosystem-wide ecological deficit of designer flows. Different frequencies of response to flows among taxa provides unique challenges when setting out to optimize flows, but mechanistic models allow for robust forecasting of possible flow-regime futures.

Flow
Community
Dams

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Presenters/Authors

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