Untangling climate and water chemistry to predict changes in freshwater macrophyte distributions.

ABSTRACT: Forecasting changes in the distributions of macrophytes is essential to understanding how aquatic ecosystems will respond to climate and environmental changes. Previous work in aquatic ecosystems has used climate data at large scales and chemistry data at small scales; the consequence of using these different data types has not been evaluated. This study combines a survey of macrophyte diversity and water chemistry measurements at a large regional scale to demonstrate the feasibility and necessity of including ecological measurements, in addition to climate data, in species distribution models of aquatic macrophytes. A survey of 740 water bodies stratified across 327,000 square kilometers was conducted to document Characeae (green macroalgae) species occurrence and water chemistry data. Ch

SUBMITTER: Sleith RS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5838067 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature