Impact of climate change on freshwater ecosystems: a global-scale analysis of ecologically relevant river flow alterations

• Published in: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
• Main Authors: P. Döll, J. Zhang
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2010
• Subjects: Technology; T; Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering; TD1-1066; Geography. Anthropology. Recreation; G; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Greenland; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-14-783-2010; https://doaj.org/article/e8d2b474b8704d9ca6ce40a3fba38abb

River flow regimes, including long-term average flows, seasonality, low flows, high flows and other types of flow variability, play an important role for freshwater ecosystems. Thus, climate change affects freshwater ecosystems not only by increased temperatures but also by altered river flow regimes. However, with one exception, transferable quantitative relations between flow alterations and ecological responses have not yet been derived. While discharge decreases are generally considered to be detrimental for ecosystems, the effect of future discharge increases is unclear. As a first step towards a global-scale analysis of climate change impacts on freshwater ecosystems, we quantified the impact of climate change on five ecologically relevant river flow indicators, using the global water model WaterGAP 2.1g to simulate monthly time series of river discharge with a spatial resolution of 0.5 degrees. Four climate change scenarios based on two global climate models and two greenhouse gas emissions scenarios were evaluated. We compared the impact of climate change by the 2050s to the impact of water withdrawals and dams on natural flow regimes that had occurred by 2002. Climate change was computed to alter seasonal flow regimes significantly (i.e. by more than 10%) on 90% of the global land area (excluding Greenland and Antarctica), as compared to only one quarter of the land area that had suffered from significant seasonal flow regime alterations due to dams and water withdrawals. Due to climate change, the timing of the maximum mean monthly river discharge will be shifted by at least one month on one third on the global land area, more often towards earlier months (mainly due to earlier snowmelt). Dams and withdrawals had caused comparable shifts on less than 5% of the land area only. Long-term average annual river discharge is predicted to significantly increase on one half of the land area, and to significantly decrease on one quarter. Dams and withdrawals had led to significant decreases on one sixth of the ...