Abstract
Measures to be taken in order to restore freshwater ecosystems to good ecological status, as required by the Water Framework Directive (WFD), need to consider future climate change. The diversity and population structure of aquatic organisms are affected by climate through physico-chemical properties of their habitats and climate driven interactions within the biological part of the ecosystem. Climate change may result in abrupt regime shifts that may change future class boundaries for ecological status. In this project we will investigate how climate change influences management actions and assignment of ecological status of water bodies under WFD legislation. By utilizing existing and emerging large-scale databases on physico-chemical and biological qua lity elements covering major climatic and biogeographic gradients in Scandinavia, we will link present day geographical variation in climatic conditions and physical and chemical properties of water bodies. We will further combine these data with current information on fish communities and population structure of lakes, and this will serve as our mail tool and target to describe how climate affects ecological reference conditions, including non-linear threshold relationships between biological quality ele ments and pressures. We will then subsequently test if climate change scenarios alter physical and chemical properties of water bodies to an extent where ecological class boundaries are likely to be crossed, and assess how management actions could mitigat e environmental impacts in order to meet good ecological status set by static reference conditions. We believe this could be directly applicable also to other systematic groups, notably invertebrates. The project will be carried out as a joint research ef fort between major Norwegian and Swedish institutional players on the subject, and benefit from synergies with initiated collaboration between NINAs and NIVAs Strategic Institute Initiatives on climate change.
Norway