Global change and freshwater ecosystems

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This review addresses the potential effects of global climate change on lake and stream ecosystems and is limited to fishes, which interact strongly with lower trophic levels. The review is organized around two broad scales of change: transition scales (landscape-level shifts in location, morphometry, and persistence of lakes and streams and their biotas over decades to centuries) and perturbational scales (pertaining to events, such as floods, droughts, or fish recruitments, with return times of years to decades and affecting entire stream or lake ecosystems). The review then turns to ecosystem metabolism as an integrated response to climate and to feedbacks between freshwaters and regional climate. The authors close with discussion of uncertainties which should influence future research priorities. They conclude that the most severe stresses on freshwater ecosystems have resulted from watershed modifications and use and from contamination of aquatic resources by humans. Climate change adds to and interacts with substantial ongoing anthropogenic changes in ecosystems. This feedback must be incorporated into all views of ecosystem dynamics.

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ELECTRONIC FILE - Zoology