TY - JOUR

T1 - Climate change and alpine stream biology

T2 - progress, challenges, and opportunities for the future

AU - Hotaling, Scott

AU - Finn, Debra S.

AU - Joseph Giersch, J.

AU - Weisrock, David W.

AU - Jacobsen, Dean

PY - 2017/11

Y1 - 2017/11

N2 - In alpine regions worldwide, climate change is dramatically altering ecosystems and affecting biodiversity in many ways. For streams, receding alpine glaciers and snowfields, paired with altered precipitation regimes, are driving shifts in hydrology, species distributions, basal resources, and threatening the very existence of some habitats and biota. Alpine streams harbour substantial species and genetic diversity due to significant habitat insularity and environmental heterogeneity. Climate change is expected to affect alpine stream biodiversity across many levels of biological resolution from micro- to macroscopic organisms and genes to communities. Herein, we describe the current state of alpine stream biology from an organism-focused perspective. We begin by reviewing seven standard and emerging approaches that combine to form the current state of the discipline. We follow with a call for increased synthesis across existing approaches to improve understanding of how these imperiled ecosystems are responding to rapid environmental change. We then take a forward-looking viewpoint on how alpine stream biologists can make better use of existing data sets through temporal comparisons, integrate remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) technologies, and apply genomic tools to refine knowledge of underlying evolutionary processes. We conclude with comments about the future of biodiversity conservation in alpine streams to confront the daunting challenge of mitigating the effects of rapid environmental change in these sentinel ecosystems.

AB - In alpine regions worldwide, climate change is dramatically altering ecosystems and affecting biodiversity in many ways. For streams, receding alpine glaciers and snowfields, paired with altered precipitation regimes, are driving shifts in hydrology, species distributions, basal resources, and threatening the very existence of some habitats and biota. Alpine streams harbour substantial species and genetic diversity due to significant habitat insularity and environmental heterogeneity. Climate change is expected to affect alpine stream biodiversity across many levels of biological resolution from micro- to macroscopic organisms and genes to communities. Herein, we describe the current state of alpine stream biology from an organism-focused perspective. We begin by reviewing seven standard and emerging approaches that combine to form the current state of the discipline. We follow with a call for increased synthesis across existing approaches to improve understanding of how these imperiled ecosystems are responding to rapid environmental change. We then take a forward-looking viewpoint on how alpine stream biologists can make better use of existing data sets through temporal comparisons, integrate remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) technologies, and apply genomic tools to refine knowledge of underlying evolutionary processes. We conclude with comments about the future of biodiversity conservation in alpine streams to confront the daunting challenge of mitigating the effects of rapid environmental change in these sentinel ecosystems.

KW - Benthic

KW - Biodiversity

KW - Conservation biology

KW - Ecology

KW - Glacier recession

KW - Global change

KW - Lotic

KW - Macroinvertebrate

KW - Microbial ecology

KW - Mountain

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85010191075&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/brv.12319

DO - 10.1111/brv.12319

M3 - Review

C2 - 28105701

AN - SCOPUS:85010191075

VL - 92

SP - 2024

EP - 2045

JO - Biological Reviews

JF - Biological Reviews

SN - 1464-7931

IS - 4

ER -