Indicators for Monitoring Climate Change-Induced Effects on Habitats – A Wetlands Perspective

Abstract

Indicators for tracking ecological effects of climate change in habitats provide important management and monitoring tools for nature conservation service in protected areas. One of the objectives of the HABIT-CHANGE project was to propose operational ecological indicators of climate-induced changes in habitats based on ecosystem relevance, reliability and ease of use for land managers. Initially established lists of indicators covered more than 100 indicative parameters including a group of those assigned to climatic, hydrological and land use changes as well as those purported for specific ecosystems such as wetlands, meadows, forests and mountains. Environmental changes at larger scales, such as landscapes and total protected areas, can be captured by indices built on data from remote sensing, whereas for detecting and monitoring habitat changes at local level, further detailed procedures must be carried out with the use of more complex methods and measurements of indicative parameters. This work focuses on local level habitat quality indication for the assessment of climate change-induced habitat changes and monitoring of future trends. With the aid of criteria evaluating indicator integrity, relevance to climate change and suitability for management decision support, several indicators were selected for the purpose of indicating climate change effects on habitats within the investigation areas. It was found that for wetland ecosystems the indicators built on metrics such as soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition, soil CO2 emission, soil carbon content (SCC), changes in the content of soil nitrogen and its mineral form, concentration and composition of soil solutions as well as in the presence and numbers of nitrophytes are strongly assigned to climate change. Collectively, the above mentioned indicators represent a habitat level assessment which may be used for integrated bioindication and monitoring of climate change effects, e.g. in wetland areas. To render it available to the site managers, the complex bioindicatory information resulting from habitat monitoring shall be processed and visualised in the form of maps and models.