Ecological Indicators

Journal: Ecological Indicators

Publisher

Elsevier

ISSN

1470-160X
1872-7034

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Publications 1 - 10 of 69

The effect of water temperature changes on biological water quality assessment
Khaliq, Imran; Chollet Ramampiandra, Emma; Vorburger, Christoph; et al. (2024)
Ecological Indicators
Increasing temperatures caused by anthropogenic climate change are leading to changes in the composition of local communities across biomes. This has implications for ecological assessment methods that rely on macroinvertebrates as bioindicators of water quality. To investigate the influence of changing water temperature on these assessment methods, we analysed macroinvertebrate data from Swiss national monitoring programs. We used a species distribution model to simulate temperature change effects on macroinvertebrate communities and estimated the resulting changes on three biological indices commonly used in Switzerland, namely the species richness of Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera (EPT), the Swiss biological (IBCH) index along with its components, as well as the species at risk pesticides (SPEARpesticides) index. While results vary by temperature scenario and index, our model results for the most realistic water temperature increase scenario of + 2 °C across most sites in Switzerland suggest no, or only a minor, influence of temperature (not accounting for other hydrological changes). Our model projection predicted only a small increase in the probability of occurrence for 70 % of the studied families. The sensitivity to temperature as captured in our model is generally not very high and varies among the biological indices: on average across all sites, a + 2 °C increase in temperature resulted in a 7 % increase in EPT species richness, a 4 % increase in the IBCH index, and a less than 1 % increase in the SPEARpesticides index. Our study suggests the robustness of these biological indices to moderate warming and points towards the usefulness of these biological indices for the next few decades as tools for water quality assessment. Despite some limitations of statistical species distribution models (e.g., not accounting for dispersal limitation or biotic interactions, predictive performance varying by taxon), the study provides valuable insights into the complex relationships between environmental factors and macroinvertebrate communities, and the potential impacts of future temperature change. These findings can inform conservation and management efforts for these important ecological systems.
Differential responses of taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic multi-taxa diversity to environmental factors in temperate forest ecosystems
Vigués Jorba, Jan; Scherrer, Daniel; Duchenne, François; et al. (2025)
Ecological Indicators
Accelerated global biodiversity loss critically threatens forest ecosystem multifunctionality and service provision. Understanding environmental drivers across taxonomic (TD), functional (FD), and phylogenetic (PD) biodiversity facets is essential for effective conservation. However, the multi-dimensional nature of biodiversity is difficult to assess, and many studies overlook the interplay between functional traits and evolutionary history within a community. Here, we use Hill numbers to integrate TD, FD, and PD across five ecologically distinct taxa (birds, butterflies, snails, vascular plants, and mosses) to better understand environmental factors driving forest biodiversity in Switzerland. We included micro- and macroclimatic conditions, soil properties, topography, and vegetation structure and diversity. Our results highlight the intricate, taxon-specific nature of environmental effects on biodiversity. Across taxa, vegetation structure and diversity, and climatic factors emerged as key drivers of biodiversity facets, while soil characteristics mostly influenced less-mobile taxa. Vegetation structure and diversity acted as strong ecological filters shaping species richness and traits, reflecting responsiveness to short-term dynamics like disturbance or management, but were weak predictors of PD. Conversely, more temporally stable abiotic factors such as climate and soil conditions were consistent drivers across all facets, highlighting their broad impact on biodiversity. We show that FD and PD metrics complement TD by revealing additional insights into ecosystem functionality and evolutionary history. Given the differential responses of biodiversity indicators to environmental drivers, especially climate, maintaining ecosystem functionality and resilience under climate change requires assessments that go beyond taxonomic diversity and include the functional and phylogenetic dimensions.
A multi-scale analysis on the importance of patch-surroundings for farmland birds
Klein, Noëlle; Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne; Herzog, Felix; et al. (2023)
Ecological Indicators
Agricultural intensification has profoundly changed agricultural landscapes with important biodiversity impacts. There is increasing knowledge on the general effects of landscape structure and management practices on plant and animal species but understanding the role of surrounding landscape structure for patch-scale biodiversity is more complex. While it can be reasonably assumed, that adjacent habitats are more important than more distant ones, the importance of landscape structure has often been tested at the landscape scale but rarely at smaller scales such as patch-surroundings. We assessed the influence and interdependences of landscape composition and configuration (LCC) and land use/land cover (LULC) on bird species richness and abundance through a multi-scale analysis with specific focus on the surrounding patches. In two agricultural regions in Switzerland, we collected point data of birds on 36 transects (500 m) and combined them with detailed spatial data on LULC. Bird richness and abundance were correlated to sets of landscape metrics as proxies for LCC computed at the transect-scale as well as for the patch surroundings. We analysed patch LULC as well as the most important patch-surrounding metrics using generalized linear mixed models. The results illustrate that patch LULC is the most important predictor of bird richness and abundance. Woody structures increase bird richness, followed by extensive management on patch scale. On the transect-scale semi-natural structure and heterogeneous LCCs are beneficial for bird richness and abundance. The effect of patch-surrounding structure LCCs is only small and interacts with patch LULC. Birds in grassland benefit from fallows in the surroundings, while in cropland they tend to respond positively to surrounding extensive grassland. Our results highlight that considering surroundings can help improve patch-based biodiversity assessments, which will then better predict the consequences of farmland management and make the outcome more applicable for practice.
Understanding the LCA and ISO water footprint: A response to Hoekstra (2016) "A critique on the water-scarcity weighted water footprint in LCA"
Pfister, Stephan; Boulay, Anne-Marie; Berger, Markus; et al. (2017)
Ecological Indicators
Documenting climate-driven changes in Swiss macroinvertebrate communities with a ‘temperature index’: An evaluation of different sources of thermal preference data
Khaliq, Imran; Narwani, Anita; Vorburger, Christoph; et al. (2025)
Ecological Indicators
Freshwater ecosystems support a disproportionate share of global biodiversity. Freshwater macroinvertebrates are frequently used as bioindicators to assess the ecological status of streams and rivers. However, ongoing climate change is altering the compositions of these communities, highlighting the need for tools to detect climate-related shifts. We propose and evaluate an ecological index based on the SPEcies At Risk (SPEAR) approach to quantify the proportion of species that are sensitive to higher temperatures within Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera communities. We calculated this index using six different data sources for thermal preferences: experimentally measured thermal tolerances, the mean temperature from global occurrence records (GBIF), preferred temperatures obtained from multivariate species distribution models (SDM), the central temperature tendency derived from Swiss monitoring data according to the KLIWA approach, and two different sources of expert knowledge from a curated trait database. For all sources, we designated the species comprising the lower 50th percentile of thermal preference values as sensitive and the upper half as insensitive to warmer temperatures. To evaluate the performance of the six versions of this SPEAR_{temperature} on a geographic scale, we leveraged data from two Swiss wide monitoring programs including samples from 570 sites for the period 2010–2022 and from 183 sites for 2018–2023. While all six versions recapitulated a declining proportion of sensitive species with increasing water temperature, the relation was strongest when using the KLIWA-based thermal preference classification. On average across all sites, we observed a significant decline of the SPEAR_{temperature} index over the 2010–2022 period, independent of the source for the classification. This is consistent with a signal of warming-related community turnover, or ‘thermophilisation’. These results indicate that the index is suitable to document temperature-associated variation in EPT communities over both time and space. The attempt to derive a similar SPEAR_{temperature} index for fish was not successful.
Towards a national set of ecosystem service indicators: Insights from Germany
Albert, Christian; Bonn, Aletta; Burkhard, Benjamin; et al. (2016)
Ecological Indicators
Identifying best-indicator species for abrupt transitions in multispecies communities
Dakos, Vasilis (2018)
Ecological Indicators
Bringing ecosystem services indicators into spatial planning practice: Lessons from collaborative development of a web-based visualization platform
Wissen Hayek, Ulrike; Teich, Michaela; Klein, Thomas M.; et al. (2016)
Ecological Indicators
Composition of highly diverse diatom community shifts as response to climate change: A down-core study of 23 central European mountain lakes
Kuefner, Wolfgang; Hofmann, Andrea; Ossyssek, Stefan; et al. (2020)
Ecological Indicators
Alpine mountain lake biota are adapted to harsh conditions making them particularly vulnerable to global change. However, as each mountain lake has a different limnology, there are supposed to be differential responses and degrees of resilience to climate change. In this study, 23 lakes in the Bavarian-Tyrolian Alps differing in altitude, size and geology were examined for their diatom community response to climate warming. Subfossil data were related to 210Pb and 137Cs-dated sediment cores. Correspondence and regression analyses revealed five different assemblage developments depending on lake depth, altitude and origin. Planktic species, especially Cyclotella, dominated deeper and lower-altitude mountain lakes earlier and stronger. This depends on the stability and temperature of the epilimnion which in turn determines the tipping point. Instead, shallow lakes exhibit higher species reorganizations of diatom assemblages. Mountain lakes of lower altitudes or affected by water level fluctuations (WLF) establish complex substrata and Achnanthidium accompanied by epiphytic species or Denticula tenuis in WLF-lakes replace dominating Staurosira. Conversely, alpine shallow lakes lack directional shifts and Staurosira dominate, but approach the tipping point of macrophyte establishment. In a deep doline lake, Diploneis species replace Nitzschia denticula with negligible planktic proportions. In mountain lakes with direct anthropogenic influence, enhanced nutrient supply disguises diatom response to global warming. These findings revealed deep mountain lakes with low nutrient levels to be more resilient to climate change than shallow lakes with a higher trophic status as the onset of the response to rising temperatures is earlier and thus smoother. In conclusion, subfossil diatom analyses can provide a powerful tool for climate change assessment and other anthropogenic impacts on mountain lakes. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd.
Co-occurrences and species distribution models show the structuring role of dominant species in the Vez watershed, in Portugal
Alves, Cristiana; Marcos, Bruno; Gonçalves, João; et al. (2023)
Ecological Indicators
Knowing the structural role of species within communities is important for their conservation and management in the context of recent/ongoing biodiversity loss. In a community, dominant species can influence the distribution and composition of subordinate species. Despite existing research, an approach is lacking to help understand the important role of dominant species in the community, without requiring more detailed data. In this study, we describe an approach to rank the relative importance of plant species within a community based on their abundance and co-occurrence patterns. The Co-occurrence Community Importance Index (CoCII) – a newly proposed index translating the degree of influence that each dominant species has on all its co-occurring subordinate species – was calculated and analysed. We used both abiotic and biotic variables within a species distribution models framework, with data collected in the Vez watershed in the North of Portugal. Our analysis included 114 plants – 26 dominant and 88 subordinate species. Spearman correlations were used to analyse potential interspecific relationships between co-occurring dominant and subordinate species. Using the CoCII, we ranked the relative importance of each dominant species within the plant community. Our results support the role of plant-plant interaction patterns regarding our study area's most highly inter-correlated species. Our approach to ranking species' importance can be directly translated into conservation schemes for managing and maintaining the structure of plant communities. Moreover, it can provide insights into the relative importance of dominant species in a plant community from commonly available datasets including presence-absence, presence-only, or percentage cover data, which allows for the relatively cost-efficient in-field collection and monitoring infield. Furthermore, this approach could allow us to advance the field of community ecology by providing essential information on the species that assure the stability of natural or semi-natural habitats of conservation concern.

Publications 1 - 10 of 69

Journal: Ecological Indicators

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