Science Articles

Reducing current and future risks: Using climate change scenarios to test an agricultural conservation framework

Journal of Great Lakes Research
2017
Hall, Kimberly R.; Herbert, Matthew E.; Sowa, Scott P.; Mysorekar, Sagar; Woznicki, Sean A.; Nejadhashemi, Pouyan A.; Wang, Lizhu
Publisher N/A
SourceWeb of Science
Volume / Issue43 / 1
Pages59 - 68
Total Pages9 pages
Article Link N/A
PDF Linkhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0380133016302118
ISBN N/A
DOI10.1016/j.jglr.2016.11.005
Editor(s) N/A
Conference / Book Title N/A
Flag N/A
Tagsclimate adaptation; climate change; Great Lakes; fish; conservation outcomes; agricultural impacts; nutrient loading; agriculture
Other N/A
Conference Title N/A
Conference Date N/A
Publication DateDecember 08, 2016
Article Date N/A
GS Citation N/A
AbstractEvaluating the potential effects of changes in climate on conservation practices can help inform strategies to protect freshwater biodiversity that are robust, even as conditions change. Here we apply a climate change “test” to a framework for estimating the amount of agricultural conservation practices needed to achieve desired fish conservation outcomes for four watersheds in the Saginaw Bay region of Michigan, USA. We developed three climate scenarios from global climate model outputs (high emissions scenario, “2080s” timeframe) to provide insight on potential impacts of a climate driver that represents a key uncertainty for this management system, the amount and timing of spring and summer precipitation. These scenarios were used as inputs to agricultural watershed models, which produced water quality outputs that we compared to thresholds in fish biodiversity metrics at the subwatershed scale. Our results suggest that impacts of climate change on evaporation rates and other aspects of hydrology will shift the relative importance of key stressors for fish (i.e., sediment loadings vs. nutrient concentrations) across these different watersheds, highlighting the need to design resilient implementation plans and policies. Overall, we found that changes in climate are likely to increase the need for agricultural conservation practices, but that increasing the implementation rate above current levels will likely remain a good investment under current and future climate conditions.
Created: 12/14/2017 10:30 AM (ET)
Modified: 1/3/2019 1:05 PM (ET)
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