Aquatic ecosystems and climate change. What’s new? and what difference does it make?
Since a decade a lot of works have been focused on the effects of climate change on ecosystems. We have identified the most obvious and we have now much more information on the expected mechanisms with a finer resolution. In this talk I remind the global patterns of actions-responses and I highlight the most recent advances.
However, even with this information, the change of scale from individual to aquatic ecosystem remains a huge challenge, especially at regional scales. Uncertainties come mainly from i) the lack of knowledge in the interactions between species, ii) the species’ relative part of move or adapt on site, iii) the timing of extinction and settlement processes.
The combination of climate change scenarios and adaptation of societies with these uncertainties in ecological responsaes lead to difficulties in ecosystems and species management which have also to be adaptive.