Goals

The priority programs of field, experimental and modelling studies to analyse the impacts of the anticipated climate change on aquatic ecosystems. According to most forecasts for our region, emphasis will be given to the effects of seasonal temperature increases with most of the warming occurring in winter. For running waters also increased frequencies of extreme events can be considered. It is anticipated, that climate change will differently affect light dependent processes (e.g. primary production) and temperature dependent processes (e.g. heterotrophic processes). As a consequence, not only changed phenologies and population dynamics of singles species but also shifts in biotic interactions (competition, predation) are expected. It will be the focus of the priority program, to analyse the community and ecosystem level consequences of a temporal de-coupling ("mismatch") of hitherto synchronised processes ("match"; e.g. temporal coincidence of food abundance and prey demand by certain life-cycle stages of consumers).

Approaches

• Retrospective analysis of filed data (long-term time series and latitudinal data) for the dependence of the seasonality of aquatic ecosystems and ecosystem components on climate variability
• Experimental studies with key species on the physiological and micro-evolutionary basis of adaptations to a changed seasonality
• Experiments with species assemblages to analyse the consequences of shifts in seasonality on biotic interactions and community and ecosystem functioning
• Application of existing ecosystem models to predict the consequences of climate induced changes in abiotic conditions on interactions within food webs.