Resilience of a stream community to extreme climatic events and long‐term recovery from a catastrophic flood

Floods and droughts are predicted to increase in intensity, duration and frequency in many future climate scenarios, yet long‐term data that track before‐and‐after responses of natural communities remain scarce. We explored the impacts of a series of extreme events, including a particularly catastro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Freshwater biology 2015-12, Vol.60 (12), p.2497-2510
Main Authors: Woodward, Guy, Bonada, Núria, Feeley, Hugh B, Giller, Paul S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
base flow
Chironomidae
climate
climate change
drought
floods
Freshwater
functional diversity
interspecific variation
recovery
resilience
rivers
seasonal variation
species diversity
species traits
storms
stream community persistence
streams
summer
time series analysis
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Summary:Floods and droughts are predicted to increase in intensity, duration and frequency in many future climate scenarios, yet long‐term data that track before‐and‐after responses of natural communities remain scarce. We explored the impacts of a series of extreme events, including a particularly catastrophic flood, over 13 years in the Glenfinish River in Ireland. Overall, seasonal cycles of absolute and relative abundance were the strongest temporal signal in the data, and the community as a whole was relatively persistent. At interannual scales, a core of c. 15 taxa were present throughout most of the time series, which spanned >10 generations for most taxa, whereas extreme events had negligible or weak effects, with two notable exceptions. The catastrophic 1986 summer flood triggered a 10‐fold decline in abundance: although most populations returned to their pre‐disturbance state in
ISSN:0046-5070
1365-2427
DOI:10.1111/fwb.12592