Distribution and Composition Patterns of Aquatic Communities for Predicting the Impact of Global Changes on Headwater Stream Ecosystems - AQUACOM

Coordinating Institution: CRP Gabriel Lippmann
Contracting Partner(s): University of Barcelona (E)
From: 01/04/2010
To: 31/03/2013
Budget: 444,000.00€
Contact(s): Ector Luc

Summary

In the context of global changes of ecosystems, climate change impacts are assumed to cause important biodiversity losses during the next decades. Despite their global ecological importance and although there is now increasing evidence that the global climate change is already having measurable biological impacts, information about stream ecosystems is scarce. When existing, data usually concern single sites or single species. Therefore, the effect of climate change on population and community levels is difficult to extrapolate.

There is, however, a huge necessity to undertake immediately management measures enabling to mitigate the impacts of global warming on stream ecosystems and particularly to preserve intact headwater systems in Luxembourg as resilience areas for their unique and diverse biota. The general objective of the project consists in finding out among different attributes of aquatic communities early signals of warming influence enabling us to understand and predict how climate changes will influence temperate headwater stream ecosystems.

To this end, information obtained from longitudinal distributions, assemblage compositions, life-history strategies and trophic structures of two important aquatic organisms in the lotic food webs (i.e. phytobenthos and benthic macroinvertebrate communities) will be measured simultaneously with the same sampling strategy in temperate (Luxembourg) and Mediterranean (Spain, Catalonia) headwater streams. Two sampling campaigns are scheduled in 2010 (spring and autumn). From the outset of the project, the first objective of the partners will be to locate in each bioclimatic region (temperate and Mediterranean) the two pairs of headwater streams to be investigated.

In particular, the project requires careful selection of streams in order to maximize the different land uses in the respective catchments (presence or absence of riparian native vegetation in the most part of the watershed), and to minimize other environmental gradients (e.g. geology, granulometry of the substrate, mineralization of the water, global dimensions, hydrological and morphological features of the catchments).