Nonstationary Runoff Responses Can Interact With Climate Change to Increase Severe Outcomes for Freshwater Ecology

Abstract

Climate change is projected to impact multiple components of the flow regime. However, changes in some ecologically important aspects of flow seasonality and variability are not well-represented by global climate models. We used a stress testing method and global sensitivity analysis to investigate whether interactions between five different, but plausible, change “dimensions” (hydroclimatic variables or relationships) led to worse ecological outcomes than individual changes. The five dimensions include changes in long-term average rainfall and temperature, low-frequency variability of rainfall, seasonality of rainfall, and the rainfall-runoff relationship. Our case study involved regulated ..