Are headwater-dependent lakes the early warning system for climate change, and can we still adapt to avoid collapse?
Abstract
More than 70 percent of the global population lives within 5 kilometers of a river and billions of people rely on waters that originate in headwater systems. These systems that form the foundation of modern society are in danger of total collapse as they prove themselves unreliable in the face of climate change, drought, changing water demands, and population growth. Unfortunately, headwaters are among the least monitored freshwater systems, and we lack adequate data for even the most basic water balance quantification. Further, as coupled natural-human systems, headwaters disproportionately experience climate change and increasing competition with downstream regions for water supply to cities, agriculture, energy production, and ecological flows. These impacts have been studied at smaller scales or as individual variables, but few researchers have investigated the full extent of complex dynamics throughout a riverine system.
Within a novel researcher coordination network and the unique opportunity facilitated for young scientists to investigate headwater-dependent systems along the Pan-American montane transect from the Northern Rockies to the Southern Andes, we evaluate the conditions surrounding 5 desperate lakes in a state of drying distress. These lakes range from high alpine fed by surrounding glaciers to an extremely shallow valley lake dependent on its rain-fed drainage basin. Policy interventions, or a lack thereof, further complicate conditions by benefiting or exacerbating lake dynamics. Evaluating lakes across the transect through inter- and trans-disciplinary lenses yielded a key set of variables as the most important drivers of lake conditions, including physical drivers, such as climate, geomorphology, and the built environment, and social drivers including economics, population dynamics, and governance. The resulting framework built to analyze these systems is a novel approach to addressing challenges headwater and montane ecosystems are facing. With unique perspectives and more diverse involvement in framework and research development, we present the results of environmental conflict analysis for consistencies across these lake systems. Results discussed here include the important overlap between social and environmental components.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2022
- Bibcode:
- 2022AGUFMGC42T0955B