Relationships between stream macroinvertebrate communities and new flood‐based indices of glacial influence

Abstract:

As glacier shrinkage is accelerating due to climate change, it is important to understand the effect of changes in glacier runoff on downstream aquatic communities. The overall goal of this study was to test the relevance of recently developed wavelet‐based metrics of flow variations caused by glacial melting cycles to deepen our knowledge about the relationship between glacial influence and aquatic biodiversity. In an equatorial glacierised catchment, we selected 15 stream sites covering a gradient of direct contribution from glacial runoff. At each site, we recorded water level time series for 10 months and sampled benthic macroinvertebrates. Wavelet analyses on the water level time series were used to calculate three indices: glacial flood intensity, frequency and temporal clustering. We then examined how these three indices were related to macroinvertebrate community composition using generalised additive …

Año de publicación:

2014

Keywords:

Fuente:

google