River ecosystem endangerment from climate change-driven regulated flow regimes

Major threats of freshwater systems are river damming and habitat degradation, further amplified by climate change, another major driver of biodiversity loss. This study aims to understand the effects of climate change, and its repercussions on hydropower production, on the instream biota of a regulated river. Particularly, it aims to ascertain how mesohabitat availability downstream of hydropower plants changes due to modified flow regimes driven by climate change; how mesohabitat changes will influence the instream biota; and if instream biota changes will be similar within and between biological groups. We used a mesohabitat-level ecohydraulic approach with four biological elements – macrophytes, macroalgae, diatoms and macroinvertebrates – to encompass a holistic ecosystem perspective of the river system. The ecological preferences of the biological groups for specific mesohabitats were established by field survey. The mesohabitat availability in three expected climate change-driven flow regime scenarios was determined by hydrodynamic modeling. The biota abundance/cover was computed for the mesohabitat indicator species of each biological group. Results show that climate-changed flow regimes are characterized by a significant water shortage during summer months already for 2050. Accordingly, the regulated rivers' hydraulics are expected to change towards more homogeneous flow conditions where run habitats should prevail. As a result, the biological elements are expected to face abundance/cover modifications ranging from decreases of 76% up to 67% increase, depending on the biological element and indicator taxa. Diatoms seem to endure the greatest range of modifications while macrophytes the slightest (15% decrease to 38% increase). The greatest modifications would occur on decreasing abundance/cover responses. Such underlies an important risk to fluvial biodiversity in the future, indicting climate change as a significant threat to the fluvial system in regulated rivers.