Impact of Climate Change on Freshwater Ecosystem and Its Sustainable Management

Abstract

Freshwater ecosystems are vital for global biodiversity and ecosystem services. Freshwater ecosystems are susceptible to the impacts of environmental change, which may cause irreversible damage to these ecosystems upon which huge amount of biodiversity and ecosystem services are dependent. Within the next few decades the climate change will have considerable ecological impacts on most of the fresh water ecosystems as per the current climatic predictions. Different freshwater ecosystems will be affected differently by climate change. One of the most important and major impact to be caused by climate change will be on fresh water flow regime. The speed of climate change will be abrupt and uneven rather than slow and even. Impacts caused by climate change on freshwater ecosystems will be visible both physically and chemically. It is very hard and more complex to forecast the impact on freshwater recourses due to climate change. In most of the cases, climate change together with other man made pressures will cause much damage to freshwater ecosystems. It is very difficult to predict impact of climate change on freshwater ecosystems in the next few decades using current global climate models. Rather than focusing on impact assessment a risk–based approach should be adopted to assess and respond to climate change. A number of measures are required to protect freshwater ecosystems such as reducing extraction of water from ground and surface water, maintaining water flows, management of macrophytes, artificial oxygenation and mixing, sediment removal etc. so that fresh water ecosystems are not affected largely by small climate induced changes. When a diversity of healthy habitats of freshwater ecosystems can be maintained, the assimilative ability of freshwater ecosystems will be further strengthened. Incorporation of long lasting, observed study data with models and manipulative experiments will assist the progress of mechanistic, and hence predictive, perceptive of responses to future climate change.