Ensemble projections of rare and endangered flood meadow species under climate change

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Lutz Breuer
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems ; Hydrogeology, Hydrology, Limnology, Urban Water Management, Water Chemistry, Integrated Water Resources Management
• Term: from 2018 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 415543995

Flood meadows are highly endangered and vulnerable ecosystems, particularly impacted by global change. The aim of this project is to enhance our capabilities and knowledge to forecast the occurrence of flood meadow species under climate change impact. We will project the hydrological regime of a typical river floodplain under climate change with high spatial and temporal resolution and use this information for plant species distribution modeling. The species distribution model will particularly look at rare and endangered species. The resulting model framework CMFhabitat will be applied in the nature reserve Kühkopf-Knoblochsaue of the Rhine river, one of the largest floodplain of its kind. In the intended modeling framework, we will include relevant uncertainty sources and evaluate their particular contribution to the global uncertainty of the model. Particularly we will look into the uncertainty of parameterization, downscaled climate models, hydrological model structure and habit model structures through ensemble modelling. Our results will have a vital role for conservation planning, restoration measures and global change impact studies on biodiversity in floodplains. Our modeling approach will provide a sound basis for further ecological modelling studies where hydrology meets biodiversity, including benthic invertebrate assessments of groundwater-impacted ecosystems.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants