Climate change effects on lowland stream flood regimes and riparian rich fen vegetation communities in Denmark

ABSTRACTThere is growing awareness that an intensification of the hydrological cycle associated with climate change in many parts of the world will have profound implications for river ecosystem structure and functions. In the present study we link an ensemble of regional climate model projections to a hydrological model with the aim to predict climate driven changes in flooding regimes in lowland riparian areas. Our specific aims were to (1) predict effects of climate change on flood frequencies and magnitudes in riparian areas by using an ensemble of six climate models and (2) combine the obtained predictions with the distribution of rich fen communities to explore whether these are likely to be subjected to increased flooding by a climate change induced increase in river runoff. We found that all regional climate models in the ensemble showed increases in mean annual runoff and that the increase continued through the two scenario periods, i.e. 2035–2065 and 2070–2099. We found concomitant increases in ...