Climate change drives widespread shifts in lake thermal habitat

Kraemer, Benjamin M.; Pilla, Rachel M.; Woolway, R. Iestyn; Anneville, Orlane; Ban, Syuhei; Colom-Montero, William; Devlin, Shawn P.; Dokulil, Martin T.; Gaiser, Evelyn E.; Hambright, K. David; Hessen, Dag O.; Higgins, Scott N.; Jöhnk, Klaus D.; Keller, Wendel; Knoll, Lesley B.; Leavitt, Peter R.; Lepori, Fabio; Luger, Martin S.; Maberly, Stephen C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3541-5903; Müller-Navarra, Dörthe C.; Paterson, Andrew M.; Pierson, Donald C.; Richardson, David C.; Rogora, Michela; Rusak, James A.; Sadro, Steven; Salmaso, Nico; Schmid, Martin; Silow, Eugene A.; Sommaruga, Ruben; Stelzer, Julio A.A.; Straile, Dietmar; Thiery, Wim; Timofeyev, Maxim A.; Verburg, Piet; Weyhenmeyer, Gesa A.; Adrian, Rita. 2021 Climate change drives widespread shifts in lake thermal habitat. Nature Climate Change, 11 (6). 521-529. 10.1038/s41558-021-01060-3

Before downloading, please read NORA policies.

Preview

Text N530510JA.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (10MB) | Preview

Abstract/Summary

Lake surfaces are warming worldwide, raising concerns about lake organism responses to thermal habitat changes. Species may cope with temperature increases by shifting their seasonality or their depth to track suitable thermal habitats, but these responses may be constrained by ecological interactions, life histories or limiting resources. Here we use 32 million temperature measurements from 139 lakes to quantify thermal habitat change (percentage of non-overlap) and assess how this change is exacerbated by potential habitat constraints. Long-term temperature change resulted in an average 6.2% non-overlap between thermal habitats in baseline (1978–1995) and recent (1996–2013) time periods, with non-overlap increasing to 19.4% on average when habitats were restricted by season and depth. Tropical lakes exhibited substantially higher thermal non-overlap compared with lakes at other latitudes. Lakes with high thermal habitat change coincided with those having numerous endemic species, suggesting that conservation actions should consider thermal habitat change to preserve lake biodiversity.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.1038/s41558-021-01060-3
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Water Resources (Science Area 2017-)
ISSN:	1758-678X
Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:	Open Access paper - full text available via Official URL link.
Additional Keywords:	biodiversity, climate-change ecology, ecology, environmental sciences, freshwater ecology
NORA Subject Terms:	Ecology and Environment
Date made live:	15 Jun 2021 10:52 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/530510

Actions (login required)

View Item

Document Downloads

More statistics for this item...