Quantifying ecologically relevant changes in streamflow patterns in response to climate change
Abstract
Our work aims to quantify and improve understanding of streamflow controls on river ecosystem functioning in response to changes in climate across California, a region of high seasonality and interannual variability. Using a novel method of seasonal streamflow feature analysis, we assessed both historic and modeled reference flow time series under a variety of climate perturbations to quantify historic and potential shifts in ecologically relevant streamflow characteristics. Observed historic reference flows demonstrate a high degree of interannual variability that has historically buffered monotonic trends in seasonal flow characteristics in many regions of California. However, modeled streamflow derived from a suite of global climate model simulations suggests statistically significant shifts over the next century in climate-sensitive aspects of streamflow such as spring snowmelt and dry season intensity. To complement these statewide findings, streamflow patterns in the Merced River Basin on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada range were assessed using hydrologic model perturbations of air temperature and precipitation intensity to represent a range of potential climate futures. Results reveal both monotonic trends and changes in intensity of ecologically relevant streamflow characteristics in a typical western Sierras basin. This research has direct implications for management of environmental flow regimes in regulated rivers and offers deeper understanding of hydrologic changes affecting both aquatic ecology and water resources management in California.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMH102...04P
- Keywords:
-
- 1804 Catchment;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1807 Climate impacts;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1813 Eco-hydrology;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGY