Human activities have altered the Earth’s natural climate. The IPCC has shown with high confidence that “a large fraction of species faces increased extinction risk due to climate change during and beyond the 21st century”. Extinction will probably be most severe in freshwater ecosystems (e.g. rivers), since they already show a much higher rate of species decline than marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Thus, it is urgent to anticipate the effects of climate change in rivers. In this regard, aquatic macroinvertebrates can be very useful indicators. However, despite their potential to monitor climate change, macroinvertebrate-based climate change indices are still lacking for most regions of Europe. These indices would help us to put in place adaptation strategies to safeguard biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and human welfare in the face of climate change.
The main objective of MACROCLIM is to develop an index to monitor climate effects on European rivers (e.g. changes in the species distribution ranges, local extinctions) based on the thermal tolerances of aquatic macroinvertebrates. MACROCLIM will exclusively focus on changes in temperature, but we acknowledge that climate change will affect river flows and this can have important implications for aquatic biodiversity. In this regard, we will coordinate efforts with the on-going H2020 project DRYvER, in which part of the MACROCLIM team is involved and that will develop strategies to mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts on drying river networks. The specific objectives of MACROCLIM are the following:
O1: to collate a database of thermal tolerance ranges of aquatic macroinvertebrates in European rivers and of associated groups of bioecological traits (i.e. trait profile groups).
O2: to validate the thermal tolerances and sensitivity of selected taxa.
O3: to create a climate change index (MACROCLIM index) based on the results of O1 and O2.
O4: to predict the future distribution of the taxa used to calculate the MACROCLIM index.
O5: to design a network of sites for monitoring climate change in rivers using the MACROCLIM index.
O6: to raise awareness of climate change and train stakeholders on the monitoring of climate change in rivers.
Funding: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Project reference TED2021-131206B-I00
Non-IDAEA Researchers: Astrid Schmidt-Kloiber, Ben Kefford, Maria Soria, Núria Bonada, Narcís Prat, Pau Fortuño, Ralf Schäfer, Sami Domisch, Thibault Datry and Virgilio Hermoso
Partners: Universitat de Barcelona, Universidad de Sevilla, University of Canberra, University of Klobenz-Landau, University of Vic, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (Vienna), Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE)
