Developing Models of Large-River Fish Population Response to Global Climate Change Incorporating Downscaling and Predictive Uncertainty

• Activity Number: 254
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, July 30, 2012 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): Mark Wildhaber*+ and Christopher Wikle and Christopher J Anderson and Kristie J Franz and Edward H Moran and Rima Dey
• Companies: U.S. Geological Survey and University of Missouri and Iowa State University and Iowa State University and U.S. Geological Survey and University of Missouri-Columbia
• Keywords: Missouri River, Pallid Sturgeon, Hydrology, Modeling, Climate Change, Uncertainty

Abstract

Climate change operates over a broad range of spatial and temporal scales. Understanding its effects on ecosystems requires multi-scale models. For understanding effects on fish populations of riverine ecosystems, climate predicted by course-resolution Global Climate Models must be downscaled to Regional Climate Models to watersheds to river hydrology to population response. The main limitation of such models is the task of quantifying sources of uncertainty given the highly nonlinear nature of interactions between climate variables and community level processes. The hierarchical modeling approach presented helps to account for these uncertainties so forecasts of community or population response include realistic measures of uncertainty. The goal is to evaluate the potential distributional changes of pallid sturgeon in the Missouri River, given distributional changes implied by a series of linked climate and system models under various emissions/use scenarios for evaluation of management options for coping with global change consequences. Predicted pallid sturgeon population responses were dependent on the basis of the bioenergetics model used and the climate scenario considered.