Understanding the Impacts of Climate Change on Small Wetland Ecosystems.

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The Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on climate change assessment report has been released. The evidence is unequivocal that the climate is changing and there is a strong consensus that the changes are being caused by human activities. Mitigation of climate change impacts is going to require reasonably accurate predictions of the effects of climate change over the next 50-100 years. While there has been a great deal of research aimed at addressing climate change impacts in aquatic systems there have been few, if any, that have been able to use a combination of whole-system manipulations, observations of natural systems and laboratory experiments to predict climate change’s impact. Changes in temperature and precipitation are likely to have both direct and indirect impacts. Direct impacts are caused by pushing some organisms outside the range of temperatures or hydroperiod which they can tolerate or by altering growth and development rates and changing biotic interactions among species within aquatic systems. For example, both green frogs and wood frogs are likely to benefit from the direct effect of deeper, longer lasting ponds under increased precipitation because they are less likely to undergo mortality due to pond drying. However, the beneficial effect on wood frogs of increased hydroperiod may be offset  by increased predation of wood frog eggs by green frog tadpoles.The Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on climate change assessment report has been released and the evidence is unequivocal that the climate is changing and there is a strong consensus that the changes are being caused by human activities. Mitigation of climate change impacts is going to require reasonably accurate predictions of the effects of climate change over the next 50-100 years. While there has been a great deal of research aimed at addressing climate change impacts in aquatic systems there have been few, if any, that have been able to use a combination of whole-system manipulations, observations of natural systems and laboratory experiments to provide to predict climate changes impact. Changes in temperature and precipitation are likely to have both direct and indirect impacts. Direct impacts caused by pushing some organisms outside the range of temperatures or hydroperiod which they can tolerate or by altering growth and development rates and indirect impacts by changing biotic interactions among species within aquatic systems. One example of such a potential indirect effect caused by changes in biotic interactions is between green frog and wood frog tadpoles. Both green frogs and wood frogs are likely to benefit from the direct effect of deeper, longer lasting ponds due to increased precipitation because they are less likely to undergo mortality due to pond drying. However, the beneficial effect on wood frogs of increased hydroperiod may be offset or overwhelmed by increased predation of wood frog eggs by green frog tadpoles.